Not signed in (Sign In)
A podcast and forum for those who design, develop and run websites.
Boagworld is not just a web design podcast, it is also a thriving online community. Whether you build, design or run websites there are always people here to help. Whatever your question there is sure to be somebody with the answer.
- subscribe via itunes
- subscribe via rss
- or get blog posts by email
Welcome, Guest
Want to take part in these discussions? Sign in if you have an account, or apply for one below
Vanilla 1.1.10 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
General Exit Strategy: When you have outgrown a project that is dragging you down
Bottom of Page1 to 8 of 8
-
Hi everyone, just thought I'd ask your opinion on this as I'm guessing some may have had a similar experience at some point. Basically I feel like I need to "dump" a client whose site I've been doing bits and pieces on for almost 5 years now.
The story goes like this: I was a recent graduate and a friend of a friend asked me to do some work on their site as their old designer had "disappeared suddenly". She wanted to be able to make changes to the site and had already bought Dreamweaver to do this. She was paying me £10 per hour to add images, edit text and occasionally add new pages with new content and every now and again showing her how to do bits and pieces herself with Dreamweaver (you can see where this is going...)
The previous designer had done a table-based layout and was using inline styles and a whole range of other bad practices but I (naively) just went along with what she said and pocketed my juicy £10 per hour, when really we should have scrapped the whole thing and started from scratch. After a while it got silly. She was calling me up when she had problems with her computer or email, and the questions about adding things to the site just got increasingly imaginary. Somehow I have let it drag on though as she still contacts me now and again wanting me to do something.
Now 5 years later the situation is terrible. The site has completely outgrown itself does not work. She has added a lot of new pages (but forgets to add links to them), resized images with HTML... I could go on. It is a disaster area and I need to get out now, like I should have years ago.
Last year I told her I was going to have to start charging a higher rate, hoping that would scare her away. It didn't. She agreed and now I just feel guilty for charging her proper money for working on a site that just should not be on the internet. Every time she contacts me, I make it clear that I am very busy, advise her to consider not changing the site any more and suggest she ask other people's opinions (in the hope someone will tell her to stop throwing money at it).
A few months ago she sent me a daft email when I was having a bad day, I decided that was it and laid myself bare and said as professionally as possible that it is in her interests to stop wasting money on the site and that she would be better off saving up and investing in a new site altogether (ie a CMS that she can edit without Dreamweaver). I explained that I am very busy, not happy with the work I am doing on her site and want to dedicate all of my spare time working on personal projects (which is true). She replied saying don't worry and that she is very happy with the work I am doing, and she can't afford to completely do the site again from scratch with a CMS so needs me to keep working on it. Now she puts "when you have time" at the top of the emails she sends. And if I ignore them, she calls me to check I received it.
Is the web design god punishing me for the mistakes of my past? I feel obliged to keep doing the work as a favour for having ripped her off all of this time. I'm at the point where the only way for me to get out of it is to email her back saying "I AM NOT DOING ANY MORE WORK ON YOUR SITE EVER. DO NOT EVER EMAIL ME". Does anyone know how I can handle this without hurting her feelings? Or the name of a good hitman? -
So your getting a good hourly rate for easy constant work in which you have no deadline and your moaning about it? :O
Do you charge her for the phone questions too?
If your not personally happy with the work your doing just dont include it in any kind of portfolio. I feel that is the main gripe with web designers feelings towards their work. They think "if other web designers in the field seen this they would laugh" but the work your doing isnt for them.
What you should be doing is advising her as best as possible of how to use you properly.
i.e. instead of using your hourly fee's to sort their email out. Tell them you would think in order to get the site upto speed and creating sales for them, they should allocate a set amount of hours per week/month to concentrate on re-doing the site.
That way, yeh they may not be able to afford it all in go. But if they are paying you for hours and hours of work all the time, it adds up.
Be thankful for what you have, not what you could have! :)
That would be my advice anyway. -
OK Thanks sypher, that's made me look at the situation a bit more positively...
-
-
CommentAuthorThe Tall Designer
- CommentTimeDec 6th 2009
Charge for everything, charge a proper hourly rate. Organise a detailed quote for a proper CMS managed system and give her that along with projected costs fr her current site for the next 5 years and for a content managed site.Also give her the figures for what she's been charged in total over the past five years.
But at the end of the day - money's money, and £35 an hour for sorting out someone's email isn't that bad ;) -
-
Outsource the work to somebody else?
-
OK thanks Paul and everyone for the suggestions. I actually might look for someone to "pass her on to". Feels a bit like the movie "The Ring" though...
-
Haha, surely she cant be life threatening :D
*note to Paul, quotes dont work? -
Similar thing happened to me. I gave the guy an ultimadum to upgrade his websotre to something more modern, gave him a quote on doing that for him and a deadline. I told him I didnt want to take his money and work on outdated technology that would cost him a factor of 2-3 times more to use over the next year. I told him that would do neither of us any good.
Friday at sundown came and went, me "so do you want to new store" him "no I still have to think about it" me "ok". I left and never looked back, found some decent clients and moved on.
1 to 8 of 8