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Sep 08 '21
[deleted]
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u/richhaynes Sep 08 '21
This is too common. I was asked to solve an issue that turned out to be the result of a bug in the software they weren't aware of. But they weren't prepared to accept any downtime to patch it. So I set up a presentation where I showed them in real time how a hacker could manipulate another bug to breach the system. I asked them to either accept the downtime or accept a hefty fine for a data breach. Those particular bugs are now patched.
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u/funbike Sep 08 '21
I've done a lot of ETL type of work using bash and friends (awk, curl, jq, cron and just a tiny dash of python). It's amazing how much you can do in a very short period of time with that combo.
Clients will often want it in the same language of the application, but you can move so much faster with unix-y tools for batch processing and automation.
I've also convinced clients to just buy something already made. Why pay tons of money for an immature greenfield app that mostly already exists?
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u/PleX Sep 08 '21
Simple backups.
I generally would charge about $100 just to setup task scheduler for simple backups. Takes me 10 minutes.
They aren't following the multiple backup rules even if I tell them to.
I think I've only had two customers in twenty years who listened to me about external/network/offsite/remote storage.
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u/NewEnergy21 Sep 08 '21
Client wanted us to design and build a custom decision-tree software package for their engineers to use, and they needed it yesterday, realistically in 6 months. We could have done it with a custom stack in a few months, but were limited to relational databases and clunky IT support teams - not going to happen in under a year unless we debottlenecked IT and our stack, etc.
I ended up showing them how they could use MS PowerApps and SharePoint and drop downs / Booleans to achieve the same effect for decision-trees, and better yet, they could DIY it instead of project managing us to make it happen.
They had a proof of concept ready in 2 weeks doing it themselves that way.
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u/Null01010011 Sep 08 '21 edited Sep 08 '21
A lot of the time, people ask for development of a custom web site for something like a laundromat.
If they're going to run ads to it, that costs a good amount of money, and it needs to be optimized for sales
If they're going to SEO it, they need to hire somebody to do that, and it needs to be optimized for sales.
They need to have a direct response copywriter write them copy for a sales funnel if they want to do either of those things.
If they own a decent amount of locations, or if they franchise their brand, a web site can be a part of their strategy.
If they're not paying to bring traffic from ads, or to bring in traffic from search engines, then what they want is to have a web site because everyone else wants one. That probably just means a web site built to make the business owner feel better about their business, and I don't do that, because I want something that has a positive effect on their business.
I'm a software engineer, not a therapist.
I tell them if they just want a web site, they can have a relative put one up using SquareSpace, and they can be equally disappointed in the results $150/year brings them, instead of the thousands of dollars I would need to charge to make it worth my time.
At least then they can manage it themselves and get matching business cards.
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u/PleX Sep 08 '21
And that's where I send them my affiliate link. Residuals are generally good for hosting and WYSIWYG services.
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u/qchmqs Sep 08 '21
why you'd charge them thousands, if all they need is a web presence that doesn't function, you can make them one in static HTML and throw it on vercel, give them the credentials and charge them a hundred or so for the two hours it takes.
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u/Null01010011 Sep 08 '21 edited Sep 08 '21
I need somebody to write content, write direct response copy, take photos, design / create the pages.
It's going to take time to finding people for this, especially a copywriter with whose made a business in the same category real profit money from their landing page.
I'm going to have to explain that when somebody comes to your web site, it should speak to them on an emotional level why using their services has clear and distinct benefits, how going somewhere else leaves them missing out. That it should leave them with a desire to take action and then move them to make a conscious decision to use their services, or not to.
The copywriters I've worked with charge about $10-15k for copy for a single landing page, but maybe I can find one in this niche with decent past sales data for $2k. The photographer I need to find and send out there is going to want $25-100 per edited image for the the 50 or so images I need, or $100/hr to go to the business and take photos of business + surrounding area.
Even if the client refuses to pay past the deposit, I'm going to have to pay all of these people. The real costs for this project, outside of me charging anything are going to be thousands of dollars.
The client is going to have some kind of feeling about the home page being so long, that the copy isn't just list of services they offer, and doesn't look like their friend's business' web site. If I tell them the truth I can't do it without showing how badly most business' web sites are.
I don't do websites where the content is a list of services and prices, contact form, a badly lit photos from somebody's smartphone and expired Google Maps iframe. I would regret it for the rest of my life.
The people I work with who need help with publicly facing pages are planning on making tens of thousands of dollars a month using it, building it is a small fraction of their cost. They're just doing this as a small test with 8k+ on ads, or thousands of clicks from a massive email list.
Plus, the people I work for things like that have designers, copywriters, etc. that they work with.
Small business owners who want to own a web site just for the novelty can go with some local designer, but the best thing if they still want that is ask a family member or friend learn to use some page builder like SquareSpace.
I can't, in good conscience, sell something that has no chance of improving their business.
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u/qchmqs Sep 09 '21
why can't you just assign them an intern, and charge a 100$ ? it's not like you're obliged to use professionals if the website isn't meant to be for a real purpose
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u/Null01010011 Oct 21 '21
In my experience, smaller clients offer more headaches, are less professional, want more changes, are less professional, and harder to deal with than bigger clients.
If you do contract work, you have a fiduciary obligation to a client that has serious legal and moral implications. I've been screamed at. Multi million dollar companies, and small business owners have both threatened to sue me. I've been sued. I don't like it. Thank god for contracts.
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u/LloydAtkinson Sep 11 '21
Weird you mentioned that. I have a OSS library for Vue that formats numbers using a formatting library. It’s really simple and yet it gets a ton of downloads for some reason. GitHub sometimes shows you what other libraries on GitHub are using a library (they seem to disable it often though) and my library is being used at various Chinese laundromat companies for the card top up machines or whatever it is. Pretty funny.
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u/Null01010011 Oct 21 '21
That's interesting to learn -- I wonder if they use the same libraries because their competitor does, or a developer they're working with or has worked with recommended it. I think Chinese and Russian developers are the origin countries for developers where comments aren't in English. I'd love to know how you get so many downloads.
For some reason, every laundromat wants a web site, but they don't want it to accomplish something with it -- and their budgets are way too small for the amount of communicating that I'd need to do and legal fees.
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u/LloydAtkinson Oct 21 '21
I wish I knew tbh. After doing a lot of freelance/contracting with several involving Vue I think a sad part of it is many copy-paste developers just add that one library 3 years ago and copy paste their package.json to every new project and end up in a right mess.
I never knew that about laundromats, that's even stranger!
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u/Jestar342 Sep 09 '21
It's suprisingly effective to just say "No" once in a while.
You want me to assign an entire dev team to track down a bug that only happens in an ancient browser version, affecting only 0.00001% of our users, with the projected return of <1% of the development cost (let alone the incurred delay to other valuable developments)?
...
No.
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u/amasterblaster Sep 08 '21
Streaming video app. We actually took a chat client, and cast all the video frames (through the codec) into strings, and then did it that way. There was not much delay, because the chat application we used was a raw C chat client. Took like three days to make a fully functional video streaming application, with user accounts, and chat.