Victim or Perpetrator?

If you're in professional services of any type, where you have to put a price tag on your time, this definitely happens to you. If you are not, it's likely you're doing this to people delivering professional services to you.

Let's look back, for a moment, to my post "Thank You For Your Time" -- are you expressing gratitude to people for their one finite commodity, their time?

Service professionals in all industries struggle with the question of pricing. The actual real value of the dollar fluctuates constantly, the purchase power of each greenback gets weaker by the moment, housing, stocks, retirement savings plans, investments, everything around us is bouncing around like a yo-yo on a daily basis, but we need to have a snapshot fixed hourly or service-based rate that we can quote to people. Or perhaps today we're sending out a 20-page proposal on a 6-month contract and trying to gaze deeply into our crystal ball and project our financial needs for 6-months + the period of time we'll be looking for the next contract + padding for inflation and emergencies over 6 months, and oh yeah a profit margin so maybe we can actually advertise.

But for some reason, people have little or no respect for time -- our one finite commodity. As they firmly grasp and push forward the hands of our lifetime clock, taking our time that we will never get back, the mechanisms screaming protest in clockwork agony, they hold onto their wallets for dear life. Money, however, is an asset that you can quite readily get. Ask any affiliate marketer, you can get a residual income for an up-front investment. That up-front investment, again, is time. But it will continually pay off, the check's in the mail from the company paying you a commission. If you ask law of attraction aficionados money is ready to come to you in great quantities once you free yourself from disbelief and actually act on your dreams, fulfill your mission in life and STOP WASTING TIME by getting in your own way.

Even as they lengthen our lives with medicines, cybernetic enhancements, nanoprobes, and everything that the creativity of science can leverage against the Reaper, lives will still run out. We can squeeze only so much out of life before it is gone. With the caveat of a few people on ice awaiting immortality.

So why do people "leak minutes" on the boob tube? (I don't) Why do we often commit sins of robbing others of their time and being stingy on the compensation? While we should come at this with an attitude of gracious thankfulness, instead we hang on to our wallet when someone is willing to leverage their expertise, blood, sweat, and most especially precious moments to further our cause. It's perhaps one of the leading causes of burnout amongst the experts, since we always have to fight for the right to feed our families, insure our business, plan our financial future. Hear the sound of clients crying in agony, clinging to their wallets like we were ripping out their heart, when what they're paying for is the ransom for saving them that one absolutely finite commodity -- time.

If you could do it yourself, in less time than it takes you to make that money, and with the same quality, then you should do it yourself. What you are hiring is higher quality than you can produce, with less of a <cough> commitment <cough> of your time (remember: the pig is committed*), far less stress, and the ability to "set it and forget it" with regard to achieving the results you need. You decide what price that's worth to you, and PLEASE save the expert a lot of time by telling us up-front if there's a hard price limit on what that's worth to you. We shouldn't spend 5 hours writing the 20 page proposal if we can tell we'll need over $15,000 to do the work, but your hard limit is $10,000.

Below is a video message that's absolutely brilliant. I think it was meant to be funny, but I didn't laugh. I thought I would share it to help you understand the patent ridiculousness of arguing with service professionals who have set their fees, or poured over your RFP to give you a quote.

Are you the victim or perpetrator? Enjoy:






Perhaps this can help change people's attitudes? Here's my wishful-thinking:

If you're in need of an expert's services...quit haggling. If you must, ask if the price is final, or if there's budge room, but don't whine if the quote is final. Perhaps removing a few unnecessary items from a quote will lower the price to an acceptable fee for excellent service. You can save precious minutes, or hours if you keep requesting revisions to a quote -- both yours and the professionals. And if you're more interested in price than the high quality of the professional who gave you the quote, ask: "Do you know someone who can provide a comparable service for $1000?" Cut to the chase. Everyone can save some grey hairs on the issue.

On the service person's end: if you've poured over pricing and you think it's fair -- It Is! Quit letting customers haggle. If you really feel that you want to work with them, level with them: "What exactly are you willing to pay?" Then decide whether you can remove some items from the list of deliverables to bring it down to their price, but don't compromise. If there's no equitable solution cut your losses, reclaim precious minutes and walk away. Someone so willing to haggle over everything is going to be a source of pain for every moment while you're on the job. If you lower your prices, you will resent doing the work. You shouldn't charge money if your very best will be tinged with resentment or regret. Don't low-ball yourself by jumping the gun and offering lower fees if the potential client hesitates. Just keep your trap shut and wait. Either they want you or they don't want you: they'll speak with their wallet.

*In the making of the average american breakfast, the chicken and cow are involved, the pig is committed.

Pack Rat and Synchronicity

I'm an unashamed pack-rat. It's my doom, especially in a small home. It's also occasionally enabled those odd moments of synchronicity to occur. Right now is one of those times. Being organized is exceptionally important, mind you. But I get stressed out when I go on the occasional tossing streak, because at the time I collected something, I probably had a reason for it, whether conscious or subconscious.

Flashback to something like 2-3 years ago, when I was frequently combing Craigslist for what was going on in the Hudson Valley. My eye was caught by an ad for massage space by the hour. On the surface, I thought Maxine Ward, my favorite massage therapist could use the space for her practice. I gave the info to Maxine, but held on to it myself. It tickled my mind somewhere -- I couldn't let that paper go. I found it during a descavation (that's to say the digging out of one's desk under long-standing rubble). Try as I might, I couldn't figure out how to categorize it, and I couldn't figure out what to do with it. So, it being on a Post-It™ note, I just stuck it to my desktop almost under my keyboard -- it was temporary. I'd do something with it shortly.

I did. A few days later, under the sounds of jackhammers, and exchange students with dust masks and brushes gingerly brushing the sand off the desktop, I got annoyed at said Post-It™ note. I have this wonderful saying captured from a judge from the MyDreamApp.com competition:

I welcome with open arms any tool that tries to make me more organized! But I have one reservation about this idea –– and this is largely a personal problem ––— to me, Post-It notes are, in a way, the very opposite of organization. They're 3 inch squares of pastel-packed institutionalized chaos, the paper product demon spawn of Lucifer himself. What starts with one simple Post-It note "Don'’t forget to e-mail Ged!" quickly devolves into four hundred incomprehensible notes saying things like "magic beans" and "do thing".

During the descavation, my partner Chris (yeah, Chris) laughs because I'll find pieces of sticky note that are rendered completely undecipherable by time. The exchange student hands me something that might be useful, or beetle dung. I just exclaim "Magic Bean!" or "Do Thing!" and throw it out. My partner chuckles.

I was having a "Do Thing!" moment when looking at this note. I grabbed it, crumpled it, tossed it into the recycling with dozens of other Post-It™s. Then the little voice in my head said "Noooooo!" and it turned into a scene from Indiana Jones, with everyone rushing to the precipice of a newly uncovered chamber of some ancient Pharaoh's tomb. I dove nearly head-first into my recycle bin and fished it out. I had it -- I knew suddenly why I had been holding on to that piece of paper for Two Years. I was becoming a coach, business & life coach, and there was no way with my towers of pack-rat-itis that I'd have clients peacefully recline in my home office and tell me their dreams. No. Nope. No-way.

Suddenly the piece of paper was a string of rubies, the collar of the Pharaoh's wife, a new sarcophagus. I could use this woman's hourly massage room to coach clients. The heavens opened up, and pixie dust rained down on me. An epiphany.

Today she returned my call, and we're meeting later this week. You can tell I'm a little excited.

Was this an epiphany, design of my conspiratorial subconsious, the world's Abundance, divine design, or just a coincidence? I don't care!! "What does it matter--you weren't looking anyway." (What Dreams May Come) I wrote to Cindy Marsh-Croll, professional organizer, just to let her know:

Score: 1 for being a Pack-Rat.

But then again, if it weren't for Croll Organizing, there would have been no descavation at this site in the first place. Thank you, Cindy for teaching me that there might be some treasures, or even an ancient city, buried on my desk. I might even find Atlantis!

Note: Post-It™ is a trademark, probably registered, of its respective trademark holders and thus I didn't manufacture or attempt to claim the label as my own....I just tried throwing it out.

Note 2: My son wants me to make another disclaimer. I disclaim my ability to make another disclaimer on his behalf. I'm just doing this because it makes him laugh.

Business Brainstorming & new website

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shining beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last.
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn (quote from book, link to video clip)

[caption id="attachment_91" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Small Business Challenges - Dec 4, 2008"][/caption]

I moderated at an Orange County Chamber business brainstorming forum on Thursday last week with 26 people participating. It's called "Small Business Challenges" and is touted as a peer idea generation forum. We split into tables of up to 6 people. Here's a paraphrase of how I introduced the meeting:

To steal a phrase that may date back several hundred years: "No matter where you go, there you are." It doesn't really matter how we got to where we are, we're here now. And we need to move on from here. Whether we're in a recession, or a depression, it's the first time we're in this situation in the new Information Age, and just like every time it's happened before, it's unique unto itself. Hats off to every person who says "But this time it's different..." because they're right. And that's a good reason to celebrate. Let's make history together!

We need to think differently, start doing different things, so we can get different results. Today we're borrowing the ideas of other people to help us to think differently about our business, to make new plans, to revise our goals. Meet your temporary board of directors sitting at your table with you. Keep an open mind and let them help you.

There are plenty experts out there, plenty books to read, but unless they know you and your particular business or industry, their advice has to remain generic. It needs to fit many other business, many other people. Today we're here to address our specific issues, in our specific industries, within our specific situation, and figure out how to go on from here.

If you hung your coat at the coat check, please picture that you've hung your fear there with it. We're not here to be angry or frightened. We're here to move on into a new and exciting future, to marshall our considerable resources to tackle our own challenges, and to help others with our creativity.

---

The feedback on the session is excellent. We'll be tweaking the format and it will return on February 10th. If you need help before February, please consider requesting a one-on-one brainstorming session, or attend my small group brainstorming sessions in the meantime. I will gladly lead other larger business brainstorming sessions for other business organizations, have one-on-one brainstorming sessions with you, or you may come to The Crissing Link group sessions. Please see http://LiberateYourBusiness.net for more information and testimonials.

Here's to the crazy ones.[...]Because the ones crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Apple Computers, Think Different

Logo Design vs. Artwork Cleanup

I've decided to change from a package rate to an hourly rate on logo design. A logo needs to get the job done, and a package with a set number of trial & errors is not the best deal for the client. I can still offer a flat-rate on logo design, if you really like it, but I was considering raising my price to $1000, and that punishes clients who know exactly what they want and those who communicate effectively, make quick decisions, and the times that I hit the nail on the head the first time.

I decided to stop punishing the easy logo design clients, and start rewarding them instead by charging hourly creative charges. My creative charge is $70/hour because being creative is as tough as being technical (this is the same rate for my technical skills clients). This charge is at an hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments, rounded up. So an easy logo can cost $70, a tough case can go for several hundred dollars, and you get to choose how long you want to nitpick over details (and it's your logo -- you SHOULD nitpick over the details!!!). Designing business cards, flyers, post cards, etc. goes under this category.

So what about people who need something easier, less creative?

While it can be time consuming, some clients just need artwork cleanup rather than creatives. If you never received a clean copy of your logo design suitable for imprinted products, or scaling up, Eclectic Tech is charging less for artwork cleanup charges. In-trade (printers, promotional product consultants, screen printers, designers, etc.) the charge is $50/hour. For one-time-only clients, i.e. direct-to-consumer, I'm charging $60/hour. So please come to me if you need your logo or artwork cleaned up for a project. Most artwork doesn't take more than hour to clean up. Half-hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments rounded up.

If you give me anything from a vague idealistic concept of what you're looking for through a rough sketch (back of a cocktail napkin or computer mock-up rough) of what you're looking for, it's a logo design charge. If you have finished artwork that just isn't up to snuff for the project at-hand, needs a text change, a color change, etc. then it's a "light design" charge and goes under artwork cleanup. If you already have a business card, and you want the exact same design with a change in a phone number or color, the charge is an artwork cleanup charge.

Prices may change in the future after this blog entry. Please check my website for current charges.

My first client for artwork-cleanup is Prisms Promotions -- I've done almost a dozen cleanup projects for them, and I've decided to advertise the service. See my portfolio page or testimonial page for more information on who is using this service.

[tags]creative,design,economy,identity,local business,logo,money,portfolo,prices,print design[/tags]

Who are you hiring on the web? Web traps and anonymity

I'm a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that's different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don't care if you're looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I'm not providing), you probably want -- or need -- to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I'm removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I'll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. "You get what you pay for" is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There's either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it's out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don't have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter "theirdomainname" in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (".com") and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous.... Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it's worthwhile. If they're hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn't need to resort to the "whois database" method above, just to figure out where you're located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up -- the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that's a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people's Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration -- check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you're in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you're doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.


Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

Don't Litter in Cyberspace

There is an awful lot of clutter on the web. There ought to be a fine for littering in cyberspace. You've seen the kind of junk I'm talking about here and there: content that is there for the sole benefit of search engines, such as white keyword text on a white background, people who spam in blog comments, and even the harmless pages of nonsense that grows like weeds on each of our websites.

In June I tightened ship on my own website. I've implemented some new security on the blog software, notably reCAPTCHA, a captcha project by Carnegie Mellon University. Captchas use images containing distorted text that you have to re-type into a form field. The reCAPTCHA project uses portions of scanned/OCR'd books that failed to be recognized easily by computers to test users. Once the text is verified to be read by a human, it helps add books to electronic libraries. So using this method not only foils spammers, but helps with online literature projects.

I'm also working on editing down my website. I am guilty of using my ability to create web pages so easily as an opportunity to be too wordy. Some websites don't have enough information, and you leave disappointed that you couldn't find what you needed to know. Others are too wordy: "Welcome to (this website). We're so glad you came... have a seat. Would you like some tea while you're waiting for real content? The bathroom is down the hall." I'm guilty as charged, in a court of my own self-examination.

I altered the navigation on the site, so it should hopefully make more sense to someone at least passingly familiar with websites. I started out with really obscure labels for the links, now I'm back down to the basics. Practice what I preach: I'm always telling my clients what should be on their homepage, how their navigation should be labeled. I have finally followed my own advice.

As a new service, I'm helping clients with their website "talk" -- a website needs to be the executive summary of a longer proposition. The longer proposition can be there, behind the scenes, and you can bring on the content in layers that are carefully crafted to build detail into the subject. However, people don't need to be hit over the head with a heavy sales pitch, proposal, or autobiography from the get-go.

Tightening up the wording, reducing babble, using bullet lists for main points, taking advantage of proper linking, and proper keyword integration.

People don't have time to sit through a long reading: they came with something in mind, even if it was just to learn more about you, and then they're going to go on to the next thing in their life. I'm working on other ways to increase website traffic to my client's site other than the stinking, lying, cheating ways that some search engine optimization businesses have taken up. It's a definite art, and it's easier to do on content that you didn't write yourself, so for me it's slow going between projects, and for clients, hopefully it won't be as slow and inconsistent.

Some of my new philosophies about optimization of websites were covered in my second workshop at the QED Business Edge conference yesterday: "Who's your website for?" It went over well. More about it later.

Because I'm expanding my business into content development and website planning, I'm starting to subcontract some design work out so I can make room for adding new services to my business. To see what this looks like, see the Rhthym and Rhyme Childcare and Simply FlawlessFaces websites.

Easy-to-Edit website Demo Movie available!

Liberate Your Website (part 1)

I've come to realize that people aren't "getting it" when I tell them that my websites are "easy to edit" so I've created a movie (6 minutes 10 seconds) to demo it.

It isn't one of those build-your-website applications you always see on the web -- those force you to do all the dirty work and BOY can you break the website, create some hideous Frankenstein-monster website contraption that frightens away clients.

No, that's not at all what this is.

You can't really break the website when you use this application. Maybe you can make some poor content design choices, such as making all your content text bold, or italic, so that you have no means left with which to emphasize a word. Maybe you can type in all caps, make everything on the page a headline, etc. But you aren't playing with the design, only the content, of your website, and changing styles and colors is not an accident.

So, take a look at the demo and see how this is a simple CONTENT management system, and don't frighten your clients away anymore! In the demo movie -- which is only 6 minutes! -- I play with several real live websites, so you can see how easy it is to edit your own content. In 6 minutes I could hardly explain to a web designer what I want them to change on a website; I'd rather do it through the Easy-to-Edit system. That's why all my websites are using this system: in spite of being a web designer, I want to have a quick and easy way to add and edit website content on my sites.

How Design is not Art

Design in many fields is a process of creating something functional within an aesthetic guideline.

Art, on the other hand, is the path of taking a creative means to an aesthetic and evocative end.

Both certainly use aesthetics as heavy influences in their end goal, but on a practical level the two are quite different.

A design should be objectively judged against its function. A piece of art should be subjectively judged against one's aesthetic values. In a proper design course in school, one is given hard criteria against which your project is defined for a grade. In a proper art class, you are graded mainly on effort and applied techniques, not on the subjective judgement of the aesthetics of the finished works.

Better put perhaps is to give an example: A beautiful fountain is designed, a classical sculpture is art. If the fountain does not allow water to flow, the fountain ceases to be a fountain. All parameters in creating the fountain must take into account that the end goal is that the fountain shall allow water to flow and all aesthetic considerations must account for the end function of the fountain. A sculpture has no such boundaries, and the only end use is aesthetics alone. Note I have to set aside mechanical and functional sculptures -- these are design not art ;)

You can have an artist create a logo, but it may not, in the end, function as a logo. It may be a very beautiful illustration, but if it does not meet the functional parameters of a logo, it will be an illustration -- a work of art -- and not something identifying a corporate brand.

It is a generally accepted thought that art can be liked or disliked, but is not WRONG. It may be considered skilled, unskilled, "pretty" or "ugly," but it is not judged against a defined set of functional criteria. I don't hold my designs against the criteria of "art". My designs can be wrong, if their form does not facilitate their function. If their form does not facilitate their function, they're unfinished, or need to be re-thought-out.

If you purchase a finished painting, it is bad form to request correction or changes. The art is "done". Design should not be fully purchased until it is done. And for it to be done it must fulfill its functional parameters.

When you purchase a web design or a logo design from Eclectic Tech, you're not purchasing art -- I'm an occasionally inspired artist, but I'm not an exceptionally skilled or talented artist. You're purchasing a design, and I have inspiration, talent and skill in design -- in seeing the functional parameters and applying inspiration towards aesthetics while always testing the overall function against the parameters required.

[tags]creative,design,education,essay,identity,information,inspiration,logo,planning[/tags]

New Service: Project Planning

It seems that many customers who come to me have not planned their website or print project. My normal flat-fee prices don't include this time-intensive service. I would really have to get into the company in question, to almost become a temporary staff member, to plan out their website for them from soup-to-nuts.

I'm now offering project planning services, both for website design, content and feature planning, and for print design campaigns and marketing strategies. My usual services require design briefs, copy (content), assets (photos, logos, multimedia, and all other materials) and a list of features provided up-front. I will provide only cursory project planning assistance, guidance, or advice during project intake. I will not write for you, research for you, draw up diagrams, etc.

What my project planning services will provide will depend on each company's needs and budget. Prices will start at $100 for something relatively simple like site diagramming and navigation planning, and from there the sky's the limit; you tell me your budget, and I'll come up with a list of what services your budget allows for, or you give me a list of the services you're looking for, and I'll come up with a price. Or we can do hourly rates, I'll come on-site, and I'll become a member of the project team.

Services may include:

• Serving in the capacity of a knowledgable aide in the process of project planning


• Company profiling


• Supplying principles or relevant persons with questionnaires for the project


• Corporate history review


• Mission statement assistance


• Research into your competitors marketing materials or website


• Market research for design related to your specific industry


• Review of your current marketing strategy, advertising, materials, website, etc.


• Business marketing development


• Content planning


• Feature planning


• Step-by-step planning of a website or printing campaign


• Website navigation and hierarchy planning


• Guiding your representatives through the creation of an RFP or design brief


• Suggestions for assets or copy to be included in the project


• Composition of a creative brief on your behalf


• Storyboards, mockups, thumbnails, or sketches


• Composition of custom color schemes for the project


• Stock photography, font, or clip art research


• Copy editing, and review or copy writing


• Acquiring permissions or releases for included materials


• Supplying lists of materials to submit to Eclectic Tech or other contractors

If you choose to use another vendor to complete the project outlined, I can offer:

• Overseeing project progress and resolution, quality control, communication with vendors


• Vendor research (printers, programmers, designers, etc.)


• Supply vendors with materials for the project

These services don't alleviate the principles of your organization from their responsibilities in project planning: I will need to interview them, acquire lists of materials, names to get releases for photography, a company history, supply of old marketing materials, and more. What this does is add another member to your web design team who is knowledgeable, insightful, and entirely dedicated to the one project, which allows your principles to concentrate on other projects with the assurance that if something is needed from them, it will be brought to their attention.

[tags]planning,education,information,news,print design,time,web applications, web standards,writing[/tags]

Speak Out sale - add a blog

I've changed my prices on everything except my hourly rates, as promised.

Now I've gone and put a sale on blog additions to the Easy-to-Edit website package.

Whatever it is that you have to speak about, I've got the software to help you say it!

Watch the sale page each month for specials. Most specials apply to the Easy-to-Edit package, so get the base package before the price goes up hire -- all my prices will slowly be escalating for the next several months, and proposal expiration dates will be strictly adhered to.

[tags]blog,open source,easy-to-edit,prices,programming,sale,web applications,writing[/tags]

Don't say I didn't warn you

Attention to all customers:

June of last year I raised my hourly fees. This year, I'm going to change my package prices. I've priced some exceptionally attractive packages, but I'm losing time and money on the deals.

I'm going to phase in new prices incrementally over the next several months.

Starting February 1st, I'm going to raise all the package prices on the website and any new work proposals that go out will be at the new prices -- and that raise in prices will be about 10% per month until approximately November. Proposals always go out with an acceptance clause ("prices are good if you respond within X days"), and starting February 1st, work proposal acceptance clauses will be strictly adhered to. If you call the next month, after your offer has expired, the price will go up.

I will extend a courtesy for proposals that expired in January: Any proposal that expires in January can be locked in at the old rate if you sign a project agreement and submit a deposit before February 15th. Proposals that expired before January need to be re-estimated. Deadlines will also need to be changed, and it will be reflected in your work proposal.

Any customers whose proposals expired before January should request a new proposal for their work. It will give my new proposal system a good test and keep me busy.

Money Saving Tips:

1. If your proposal or project agreement expired before January, request a new proposal or agreement and accept by February 15th or the expiration date, whichever is later.


2. If your proposal or project agreement expires in January, sign a project agreement by February 15th.


3. If you miss the boat, you'll pay more.

Too late for THIS holiday season - Shop Local Online

Last month, at the Orange County Professional Women's Network, we did an exercise about holiday stress, and how to relieve it. Many people's answer to mall traffic and stress was "shopping online".

I have a better idea: Shop Local Online.

I saw a Times Herald-Record article today about shopping local. I couldn't agree more.

I have to remember to toss my e-commerce sites on sale around July-August next year, to have them ready by October-November. I might only be able to serve the first 20 or so clients, put up bare-bones undesigned sites, or I may have to hire a helper or three, but my goal, as always, is keeping the local economy thriving. I'll come up with great ideas for increasing the economy locally, but everyone has to help me out.

If we can spend the next year in a concerted effort to get local businesses online, and find unique ways to deal with the crunch shopping period that seems to now start from Halloween preparations through January, we can pull some of that economy back into the region.

Anyone with more great ideas for how to help out the local economy, let me know. Meanwhile I have more and more ideas to unleash slowly over the next year or two.

Here are some great ideas: 1) Mention to local businesses when you would have chosen them to purchase from but you didn't have the time or patience to do anything but online shopping. 2) Sponsor a local business's e-commerce site! I can put a banner ad on the e-commerce site that points to your business' site, you help the business pay for the site set-up and installation. A custom designed e-commerce site goes for $1000 and has space for 4-6 banner ads -- think of that; an e-commerce site with up to 6 $100 ad spaces with ads running for a year can slice the price down to less than half! [Ed - this price is going to be going up over the year!] 3) Mention Eclectic Tech and my Shop Local Spree that will be starting next summer -- I can start taking names on a waiting list for businesses that would get in on my sale before the sale begins! Heck, maybe I'll have 20-30 sites lined up before the summer vacation! When I officially announce the waiting list, I'll figure out how much the sale will be for ($100 off? maybe more! I only hesitate because e-commerce sites are really cumbersome projects that suck up a LOT of my time) [Ed - as of Feb 1st the plan is for $200 off on the base site, and more than half off non-product pages in July & August - with a complimentary sale for Easy-To-Edit sites with PayPal Buy Now buttons], and whether I require a small deposit to be on the list (like $50 non-refundable deposit?).

Ideally more than just gift-selling retails will want to get in on it, from a "Buy Now" button for a gift certificate on a normal site, through pizzerias and delis with website-to-fax order placing for deliveries. We just have to get creative. Give me ideas I can run with.

Criss

[tags]e-commerce,economy,money,prices,sale,web applications[/tags]

Open Source Programmer's Insurance

Slashdot rejected my question submission, so I'll write about it in my blog and see if anyone is interested in answering it.

I have insurance, but I want exactly the RIGHT insurance. My insurance agent says that what I have may very well cover what I do, but is hunting high and low for insurance that will explicitly rather than implicitly cover both the design AND the programming portions of my business without making me broke. All she's finding are either policies with specific exclusions for web programming, or policies that are exceptionally expensive.

The problem is that every programmer is being lumped together. That means that programmers working on the stock exchange big bucks applications with billions of dollars in transactions a day at risk are being lumped in with smalltime web programming outfits like mine. I'm a programmer on the PmWiki project, and I create custom plug-ins for PmWiki for clients before contributing what I can back to the project, or accept bounties for plug-ins made directly available to the general public. I've also made alterations to other plug-ins for other open-source projects, and I'm creating an open source project or three of my own.

Now, I am not belittling the risks to my customers. I know that their business is everything to them, and that's why I'm looking for insurance. But I don't play with the big boys and my customers are not forking over the big bucks to cover the overhead I would have to pass along to my customers to cover the big insurance policies.

If I'm installing ZenCart, and ZenCart has a bug, am I covered? I never touched the back-end of the program, but of course every application -- open source or otherwise -- has inherent bugs and risks. I trust open source because the bugs are squished in a timely manner and I don't have to pay for upgrades. Would all those policies with programming exclusions cover this?

When a policy excludes programming, I see there being a really fuzzy line between "web design" and "web programming". Certainly there's a point at which something is very clearly web programming, but is it programming if I create a script that processes a webform to email the results to my client? Is it programming if I'm creating JavaScript DHTML DOM alterations? What about when I'm working on a design for a Smarty template? There's pseudocode and even PHP code in there, but it's all about the design.

In any case, what I want to know from my fellow collaborators in the world is:

What, if anything, do you do about insurance for your web application or programming company?

Do you have any suggestions for underwriters for open source programmers?

If you aren't insured, have you even considered being insured?

[tags]insurance,programming,open source,custom programming,web application programming,expenses,design,legal,money,slashdot[/tags]

Why I Won't Build Your "MySpace Killer"

Often the topic of starting a "great" web business comes up, and in my age and wisdom (being both old to be a freelance web programmer, and one of a minority of women in the field) -- there's two ways to go: thinking "in" the box = come up with new brilliant technology, patent it and hire people to program it better and faster than anyone else can so you can quickly market it. If it climbs to the top before it is cloned you become the next target for people trying to out-do your website. This track is getting VERY old, VERY fast. Mainly you and your absolute best friend need to be programmers to do this (think Microsoft, Google...) because you can't trust anyone with your terrific idea. Also it has to be so ground-breaking that only the best (read: smartest, wise, long-range thinking) of venture capitalists will see the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold sits. If it is easy to get the funding for your idea, someone probably is making it already.

Thinking "out" of the box = coming up with a way to use normal everyday technology to do something that fills -- rather than creates -- a real need or niche. It's cheaper, faster, and if it really IS filling a need, it's going to spread by word-of-mouth, and it won't be "just a fad". This technique aims lower and comes in under the radar -- no billion dollar baby here -- but it's safer, less stressful, and you don't have to be a programmer, generally speaking. The programmer is unlikely to run off with your baby if it doesn't look like a "google killer".

The problem is that great ideas are easy -- the means to really make them work is the harder part (invention = 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration). I'm frustrated with people who want to "share" the rewards of their great web program idea (equity sharing) of up to 50%, but won't be doing any of the actual work to make it hang together and be practical. If someone comes to me with a truly great idea (and I have NDA's if they don't), I can find them a great programming team, but the team will probably want cash on delivery, not equity. More "google killers" die every day than make it. They're not original ideas, and if a site dies before it makes money, there's no equity and it's a huge waste of the programmer's time.

Imagine that someone turned to you and said, "I have a great idea for a newspaper! I'll give you the ideas, you develop the newspaper and run it, staff it, write for it, etc. I'll give you 50%." That approach frustrates me. People don't get it. I can translate it to dozens of other fields -- "I have a great plan for a house, you just have to build it. Then you can live on the top floor, and I'll live downstairs. Ok?"

Somewhere in there people are cheapening the act of programming. After all, it's just bits and bytes, right???

The Internet mimics life in a "survival of the fittest" way. I don't pretend to know what's "cool" or "hot" anymore -- I work with "useful" :) I won't get rich but that wasn't in my personal game plan. I have my own great or good ideas, some might make me money, some won't but will look really good on my resume.

Then there's the flip side of this: If you're not the head of the programming team and you've paid someone to build the google killer -- what if it works? Now you have to program new features, fix bugs, etc. You either need to re-hire the same team, or get a programming staff. You go on Craigslist and choose the person who claims somehow to be able to fulfill your great Internet dream, but if you have this beautiful web baby together, are you really ready for that long-term commitment with a total dweeb with no business sense?

I can't wait to be so busy with people I've looked in the eye and shaken the hands of that I can't afford to even GLANCE at another Craigslist ad. I love my clients dearly, but you don't know how rare it was that the people I dealt with BECAME clients at all. I certainly wouldn't want to become business partners with some guy with the "next killer app" idea and had to actually look on Craigslist for a programmer. So wait -- your only experience is the front end of websites as a user, and you think you can somehow manage a killer web application programming team? That's an incredibly poor business move and you'll get laughed out of the bank. And you want the programmer to work for nothing but equity? That's spec work.

That brings me to another thing: Have you ever had one of those managers who knows absolutely nothing about what you do? It happens in IT all the time, but much less so in other professions. BUT if you've ever heard a nurse bitch that someone "stepped in" as the head of the nursing staff from a business-only background, you might get the idea. In most large corps -- and this is a place where Microsoft does NOT get bad rankings -- the heads of the corporation have NO IDEA how to produce their main products...much less have a clue what their IT department does sitting at their computers all day.

It's never a good idea to manage something you don't understand. Ever.

On that note, are you interested in a basic web programming class? :)

oscommerce is a beast

I want to continue to offer e-commerce at a reasonable price, and that reasonable price will not be tagged on oscommerce. Oscommerce will easily be double the price of any other shopping cart going forward. The program is a beast, and as long as it's been around, it's turned into a Frankenstein monster.

To extend the program through "contributions" requires hacking it to bits. I installed only one or two modules that installed without having to individually hand-edit program files, but note that these modules completely and utterly REPLACE files from the base oscommerce installation, just as the ones that required hand-editing rendered the program un-upgradable.

This is point #1 in being absolutely and utterly unable to upgrade the package once installed and so-called plug-ins (read: hacks) are added.

This implies that oscommerce does not have "Hooks" - - no points at which contributions can easily be put into the program execution queue without disturbing the original files.

The templating of the program out-of-the-box is absolutely unforgivable. There is no separation of logic and design on the back-end of the program. Each are enmeshed within each other. One contribution forcibly ripped the template code out of the program code and separated them. I'm both grateful that someone went through the trouble and appalled that doing so was needed -- again this absolutely breaks the ability to upgrade the program.

I think I'm very spoiled by PmWiki. I never have to hack the program code to add a feature. Ever. That's Patrick's duty. Cookbook recipes (plug-ins) are kept separately from the program code. There are an abundance of program hooks to slip custom code into. The base install can be upgraded with or without the recipes being upgraded, with a minimal chance of breaking recipes, since the hooks serve as an API layer in the program, and rarely need to change how they behave.

I'm tempted to write in a shopping cart module, because oscommerce is the exact opposite of everything I've learned about a good, extensible and maintainable package.

I will be trying Zen Cart next. I now know enough about oscommerce to install it and even customize it, but I am not able, in any good conscience, to recommend it to a customer, and my price for installing oscommerce must be double what I thought it should be.

I have to apologize to the Frankenstein monster for having insulted him by comparing oscommerce to him. Oscommerce is far more of a hack than one body being combined with another brain.

[tags]e-commerce, custom programming, modules, open source, prices, programming, rant, usability, web applications, web standards[/tags]

Storms

There was a sudden loud knocking at the kitchen door. I rushed over to answer. A FedEx man handed me a box I wasn't really expecting, delivering my fixed LaCie backup drive. I thanked him and signed for it, only barely noticing the thick pallor that enshrouded the land and the smell that said the air was thick with moisture.

I tore open the box in haste, gloating over LaCie having entirely replaced my drive -- I hadn't had to return the power cords or gadgets with the drive for repair, and now I had duplicates for everything. With no emotion but relief for a minor ordeal being tidied up, I plunked the new drive down on a cluttered wire shelf next to my crochet work and back-up CDs, and sat in my seat, ready to check email and RSS feeds -- my day of working-as-usual.

There was a large boom, somewhere nearby, and entirely out of the blue. Could that be thunder? I had gotten no storm warnings in my RSS feeds from the National Weather Service, but that gloom outside wafted back to my consciousness -- it certainly COULD be thunder. A louder crackle-boom, far too close with no distant warnings. My hand automatically reached out and yanked the power cord from my laptop, and my other hand reached out for my desktop mouse -- time to Shut Down.

Doorstop, my moody desktop, doesn't shut down properly. In spite of a recent re-install. I've replaced every component in the case except for the video card and motherboard, and it absolutely refuses to shut down properly. I even have the boot-up and shut-down in "verbose" mode, so I can read all the system messages on the screen to see if I can figure out what's wrong. The machine spits "continuing" onto the screen then waits for what seems like forever. I push the moody power switch and wait for the machine to shut off.

Cable goes out. It's enough of a problem to be so dependent on my laptop battery -- now I have no Internet. It's definitely not a good sign. Chris, my partner, starts unplugging equipment wholesale, so I reach down, yank Doorstop out of the way, and grope blindly behind my desk, pulling the two plugs from the wall socket, saving Doorstop and my servers.

With a shrug, I grab my crochet work and move to a more comfortable chair.

What ensued was a violent (and sudden) thunderstorm in our area. We lost power for about a half hour. I can't say if we would have gotten a surge sufficient to take our computers out, but I've witnessed lightning strikes that have done extensive damage throughout home networks, taking out every ethernet card on the network, and any motherboard with built-in ethernet. Note that all my Macs have built-in ethernet. In other words, a power strike could kill my computers. A power strike on my cable line through to my ethernet network will kill my computers absolutely dead with no hope of return. My laptop is joyfully wireless, so it's not under that risk.

It took at least an hour for our Internet to come back up. I got a lot of crochet work done.

---

Last winter, we had a storm that took out our power for almost 24 hours, starting on a Friday.

In the case of power loss, I have no Internet connection and about 1-3 hours of laptop battery before I can't work at all anymore. Hopefully people can understand this problem. It's not like I live in the boondocks, either; I'm on the edge of Middletown, a pretty sizable city. Regardless of power loss, I need to take my computers offline, and work solely off my laptop, for the duration of any electrical storms. Any backup battery is insufficient to protect my computers from a direct electrical hit on the (overhead) power lines, and my laptop isn't on the backup battery, since it technically doesn't NEED a backup battery.

Not every admin is this paranoid, but then again not every admin has seen the effect of direct hits the way I have.

These storms will affect my ability to work. I pad my deadlines partially because of problems like these, but should power go out, I may have to move my deadlines, with profuse apologies.

I can crochet you a hat to make up for it though! Just ask! :)

Pricing Revisions

My Services page has been updated with some lower, and more explicit, pricing.

I had made a mistake when putting up the pricing for flat html design, and made it sound like it was $400 per page -- now it specifically says that I am changing $250 and up per page design. So if you want a design for the homepage, and a separate design for "inside pages" it would be $500+ and a per-page fee for the inside page content.

I also corrected the costs for putting pre-designed designs into web applications, a few web applications are easier to template than others and their fees are listed separately.

I'm sorry if that caused anyone to panic and run :)

[tags]prices[/tags]

CMS Disappointment

I have been trying to work out the features and the back-end program to run Holistic - Hudson Valley.

As I would do for any client, I wrote up a sheet of the major features I required. I checked 3 CMS packages that are free/open source, and that I have confidence that they have a large number of add-ons and a strong community: Drupal, Joomla! and Xoops.

I've used Xoops, and I liked it A LOT.

I've used Drupal, but when looking for plug-ins that would give the package the features I was looking for it fell short.

I researched packages for Joomla, and except for true single-sign-on integration with Moodle, it came up with the most promising feature availability. I saw that a couple of the components would cost money. The amount wasn't enough to hamper me, so I dove in. I started working on it, decided to opt for my first purchase of a module, which was more than the original price I thought I would be spending on the feature ($99). I bought it. It's one of those no-money-back things. Then I saw that Joomla! did not include the fine group permissions that I had come to expect from using Xoops.

My first barricade was that the new $99 module only works with a certain release of Joomla! -- that was OK because I'd downloaded two versions of Joomla. I installed the correct one, got it working, fed it the database info, and everything was happy. Or so I thought. I could now install the somewhat expensive module (the other modules were cheaper).

Joomla! comes with a pre-created set of a few user group types. And no way to customize them, unless you want to buy someone's hack. I have a list of about 8 module features I need installed. The group modification hack gives no easy indication of which other modules it plays nice with -- you need to pour through the forums. Maybe they've created patches for it to work with the modules you want -- maybe not. No guarantees. Oh, yeah, and if you want the best version of their package, there's a subscription fee. Not a one-time license fee -- a monthly or annual subscription fee. This stopped me dead in my tracks.

I was looking for something cheap and easy. So far I'd spent about $100 and had at least another $50 USD and £22.50 (probably about $50USD) to spend ahead of me. If any more unexpected barriers came up and I had to shell out any more money for modules that did not guarantee playing nice with other modules --- this was going to end with me going postal.

I'm starting to think that Joomla! is a rip-off -- about 1/3 of the functionality I was looking for as a base to begin was going to cost me money. I think some of the people charging money for components were on the package's core development team. If the component is terribly useful, and should be ported to the main body of the program -- such as flexibility with user groups -- it would probably never happen because the guy who is making money off the module is going to scream bloody murder. That is not the type of open source generosity I'm looking for. I don't mind asking for donations, and I don't mind giving donations if I make money off my project -- AT ALL. But Joomla! doesn't say "Warning, most of what you want to extend this package with will cost you."

I should have considered my choices longer and harder, but thankfully I've only spent $99 so far. Once I spent the other $100 or so, I may have found out that something else essential was missing, and how much would that have cost me?

I'm off to do more research on the Xoops packages. Xoops has a better core philosophy as far as I can tell. The basic package is deliberately made to be extensible without having to hack the core code. Even if I do end up having to buy an add-on or two, they won't come with huge warnings that they are hacks of the core package and may not play nice with other modules. I've used Xoops and was very happy with it. If there's a module I can't find to fill a feature I need, I can try creating it myself.

Xoops had come in a close 2nd place in my assessments, but I was lured in by the promise of everything "just working" with Joomla!. Joomla! is more polished to the eye, but apparently the "just working" isn't true. I'm going to need to triple check that none of the modules I want costs money, but I'm pretty sure they don't. In any case, I have some experience in hacking Xoops modules...and I know the user groups are already fine-grained and fully customizable.

*Grumps*
[tags]cms, drupal, xoops, joomla, open source, web applications, custom programming, modules, expenses[/tags]

Thank You For Your Time

People probably don't get it, but I write "Thank you for your time" out by hand at the bottom of my emails, above the pre-generated sig lines.

Time is my one finite commodity.

If someone puts a project request up on a site or write to me asking for a bid, they've spent time on that, and in return they're looking forward to quality in the response. I find that many of my competition on such venues are a disaster, a blight on my industry. Their responses are form letters, no consideration is given to whether they fit the job or why, generic quotes are pasted in, if any time has been spent on the response at all. They're quite stingy with their time, and I'll bet it shows when they're on the clock.

When I write to someone, I'm hoping that they read what I have to say. From the moment they open my email, to the moment they close it, their time is being spent on me. Time they will never get back. They're moments closer to the end of life on this fair Earth. My response, even if it ends up being the bid they choose, has just sucked away some portion of their time above and beyond the responses I have no control over.

I send out my blessings for the time they are spending on me every time I write "Thank you for your time" and click send.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that the return-on-investment of me spending my time on these people hand-writing to them probably far overshadows the quality of responses I receive, if any. I get few if any clients through such competitive venues. That's why, if I know I don't fit a job, I am not going to waste my time writing to the person, unless--

Unless somehow I'm going to serve them in a very quick and definitive fashion.

I often write to people who seem to need a little advice. I have no intention of taking their job, it probably doesn't fit me, but something they said implied a need for direction. Sometimes I'm misguided, and should keep my fingers on the mouse, move on to the next ad. Sometimes I earn a bit of respect for my wisdom.

A long time ago I decided that the chance to help people is well worth spending my time on. If I save someone a moment of time, maybe that's one more time they smile at a child, blow dandelion seeds into the wind, procrastinate one less chore. Perhaps I'm saving some people far more than just a moment. Minutes. Hours, even! Those bundles of moments we measure.

I want to take a moment, if you have read this post, to thank you for your time. I really appreciate that you've listened to my babbling on this. This is a very important and dear topic to me.

With luck, I will eventually have sufficient referrals, print ads, and repeat business to leave off reading Craigslist and other posting venues, and spend more time creating, advertising, dreaming, and contributing to the works of others. In the meantime, here's a toast to the customers I have found at such places, the associates within my field, and to all the moments where people really connect and collaborate, whether for a minute or a month, and then sit back and salute a job well done.

Blessings,

Crisses

[tags]time, gratitude, clients[/tags]

Wiki Sale Over

I'm sad to see the Wiki sale end. Hopefully you weren't one of the people who missed out. Still, $149 is a great deal. Maybe I can put it on sale again in the future, but for now, I can't afford that much extra work.