Ask FreelanceSwitch #6
In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at website maintenance packages and what to do if people have a problem with were you live.
Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.
It’s go time!
Question #1
My partner and I are starting a small web and graphic design business. We are still in the process of building our website and figuring out how to handle clients, etc, what I wanted to know though is what to do after you’ve completed a project for a client. Should you offer to maintain the website for a monthly fee (how much…?), or just leave it be as it is? Because if you do, then I guess you should offer that to all of your clients, but seeing as we’re only a two people team, the more websites we’ll have to maintain, the more hectic it will become in the long run. What if they call us 6 months after this is done saying “my website is down, help ASAP!” Are we supposed to help them for free, charge them…?
-Kimo
Thursday: In general, it’s up to you whether or not to provide maintenance service in the long run — assuming that you aren’t providing hosting. There are benefits to providing at least a certain level of maintenance, though: you can have regular income that isn’t dependent on landing new clients. As a two person team, it can seem tough to manage maintenance for multiple sites, but as long as your monthly fee covers your time, it’s worth working into your schedule. After all, if you have enough websites to maintain, you can always bring in a third person to handle the tasks associated with maintenance.
If a client doesn’t ask for or pay for maintenance, but calls six months down the road wanting help with an emergency, you’re under no obligation to help them free of charge. While you want to be polite to past (and potentially future) clients, it’s reasonable to tell them that you are unable to help or offer them emergency services at a price. Your time is valuable and it isn’t unreasonable to expect clients to understand that.
Travis: I heard a good line from one of our freelancers that a website is never finished, it’s just abandoned.
I think one of the most difficult things to get across to a client is that a website is never really done. In their mind they want to pay the price and be done with it and they start to get all twitchy when you bring up the idea of monthly work. It’s your job to educate them on how the website is an ongoing marketing tool and not a one off purchase.
You’ll want to start this education early, so don’t leave it to the last minute.
Some clients will get it, some wont. Before long you’ll get a feel for which type of client they are. Just don’t try pushing a monthly package on a client whose firm on wanting a boring static website. Just say to them – I see that you’re going to be a boring person. That always works.
I also heard another good line from one of our freelancers- There once was a man from Australia…
Question #2
What can I do to not put off people by mentioning “I’m a freelancer from India”?
While I do realize why there is so much dislike for Indian IT workers in general across the web, for obvious reasons mostly caused by Indians, I am just concerned about my business. I have always had this problem of staying online with my real identity as an Indian.
So my question is I have 2 choices :
A. Should I not disclose my location?
OR
B. Just mind my business on the internet without trying to be a part of the elite western IT club?-Deb
Thursday: It isn’t right or fair, but many people — clients, bloggers and everyone else — make some automatic assumptions when they see a freelancer is from certain countries. How you deal with those assumptions depends on what your goals are. It is possible to build connections and land clients no matter where you’re from, but you can often do so faster if you’re willing to keep your current location under wraps. I wouldn’t suggest lying to a client, but simply not disclosing your location is an option. That said, it is possible to succeed while still disclosing your location. It requires perseverance, but you may be able to create a higher quality of connection in the long run.
It’s not an easy decision to make and there are consequences to both approaches. It’s important to choose the route that best matches what you feel comfortable with, as well as what your long-term goals are.
Travis: That’s a real tough one Deb. I think I’d also go with Thurday’s advice and keep your location under wraps.
If you do good work, then let your work speak for itself. I don’t care where people live as long as they are passionate about their work and deliver quality. And besides, India is the home of Aishwarya Rai, and if that isn’t high quality I don’t know what is.
If people really want to know where you are from, give them the name of your state or town. Or if you’re feeling particularly sneaky, grab yourself a US mail address and say you’re location independent and work out of many places.
For example, I live in Canada, but if for some reason I didn’t want people to know that, I could say I live in Saskatchewan. And then people would say “Gesundheit.”
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But if you’re continually maintainting past projects, wouldn’t they start piling up?
Not necessarily. As I mentioned in my larger post – a typical client touches base only a few times per month, and that’s part of providing great customer service. They may start “piling up” – but if you keep a retainer, that would allow you to hire more staff to help.
In the long run its well worth it. Half of my money freelancing comes from retainers and maintenance packages.
Re the first question: I’ve been doing solo freelance web/graphic design full-time for 10 years now, and I always offer to do maintenance on a client’s website. In my initial contract, I list (separately) that if they would like me to manage updates down the road my rate is $XX/hour, billed in quarter hour increments. That way, if they do show up months later needing anything updated, they already know my terms.
Web maintenance/updates has been great for my business because it gives me extra income in lean times, and, when you’re working for someone (even in the capacity of simply updating a phone number on their website) you’re in their mind. So, when they need something bigger like another project done, or their friend needs a referral, you’re the first one they think of.
If you find the maintenance gets to be too much for you, you can always hire an intern and pay them a fraction of what you charge the client. That way, the client is happy, the intern is paid, and you’re still making money while staying in the forefront of the client’s mind.
You know – I never thought of hiring in an ‘intern’ – because I’d normally source out work to the local colleges. Great idea!
This is in response to Question #1:
I’m inclined to agree with Thursday – it is up to you in the end whether or not you’d like to provide maintenance for websites. However, here’s my experience in doing so.
Rather than offering to do maintenance to the website at $xx.xx, offer to do a monthly or yearly “retainer” for the client. In my case, I have a cloud package from RackSpace and host about 98% my client’s websites – which makes it eternally easy for managing 50+ domains. I do this because the client has their own login, for 3$/month they can get on-the-phone technical support directly by RackSpace as if it were my me, and they can enjoy not having the hassle of managing their own hosting. A basic retainer for me averages about $50.00 USD – and with higher-end sites with a retainer between $500-1500/month (which includes certain additional services, such as social media management, PPC marketing & SEO services)
Trust me – when you do work for a client and they do their own hosting, but forget to pay their bill and their website goes down, it can cause lots of issues in the long run ( i.e. “Why didn’t you keep a backup – I lost everything!!!!” or “I thought you were managing that” or even my favorite “It’s your fault it went down, fix it”). It’s easier to centralize things in one service, so long as you stick to it – remember, your clients are depending on you and you, in turn, are depending on them.
Now, you mentioned being overburdened with work – and maintaining a hosting service for clients will definitely cut that down – but keep in mind, a typical client only wants to touch base once or twice a month with minor changes. At this rate – by the time you get to the “hectic” part, you should have enough retainer income to support hiring someone else to help out on customer service.
In response to Thursday’s last comment about your time being valuable – let me leave you with a thought a good friend of the family gave me: “Your time is valuable, yes – just think of it as someone ‘renting’ little pieces of your life that you can’t get back. You’ve studied and learned everything you know, and it’s only reasonable to charge what you are worth. Remember, these little bits of time – you can’t get back”
I agree with the thought of having your own host for your client. I have been trying to do that myself, but since my friend already hosts my clients, he doesn’t want me getting his money source
Nonetheless, it’s a great way to have a somewhat-steady income.
Good post. I was just thinking about that same question-#1-. The follow up comments are helpful also. I am starting to accept projects for web design and wondered if I should do the maintenance or look into CMS. I’ve searched thru this site and haven’t found on article on CMS. Can someone provide some links or resources. Thanks.
Most of my associates who are web developers have told me that they prefer to build a site and leave it to the clients rather than taking up the maintenance part of the site. I on the other hand beg to differ.
When I was starting up my web consultancy business a few years back, I picked up a few website maintenance projects to keep the business afloat. The fees that I charge vary according to how complex the website is, and how complicated the developer made the source codes to be.
Fast forward to the present, I still keep these projects on a retainer and they do provide sustainable revenue for the business.
Thursday, Travis, thanks for the answer! Just a little thing : my name is actually “Krimo”, not “Kimo”, it’s ok though, not exactly a common name…A bit like Thursday? Is that a common name in the states?
Bob, thank you for the valuable insight. I heard about the retainer idea before and how it has helped some freelancer increase their income as well as facilitate their organization in general. I will look into that.
The thing is right now, we are about to take our first client and want everything to be as smooth as possible. There is just so many things to remember, so many resources out there that it’s a bit difficult to think of it all without feeling overwhelmed. But well, it’s a learning process.
A quick hello to everybody on the site from Paris, France, where the weather is as crappy as ever! (it’s so funny to see how foreigners romanticize this city sometimes…
)
#1 I include a period of a few months after the site is ‘signed off’ for minor tweaks, spelling mistakes missed initially, small text change, etc. Basically simple cut and paste work that takes minutes. I think this is good for customer relations, building a good working rapport. Once I have so many sites (I wish) and this becomes a burden then I’ll have a rethink.
Best not to have all your sites with the same host or your multi host account, in case the server goes down, the s..t will quickly hit the fan. Also try and avoid having clients domain name with the same company that hosts the site. This will allow fairly quick transfer to a new host server if things really go belly up.
#2 From a UK point of view, frequent experience is with Indian call centers, generally not good. Lack of knowledge of where they are being called from and in particular inability to pick up on accents.
From a Scottish point of view; ‘we are all jock thamsen’s bairns’.
I`m a programmer and not really a fan of opinion pieces so I`ll keep my thoughts to myself for this one.
I always write in my contracts that website maintenance is available at my specified hourly rate, in addition, that rate is fixed for 6 months, then is subject to change.
That way when they call for help, I’m getting paid. I’m also not tied to a specific rate for a website I did years ago.
Deb,
I would embraced your geographic location as part of your brand. You know? Something like,
“The A-Typical Freelancer From India”
then on the homepage have a quick section answering immediate questions that people might have like, “Yes, I’m from India” … “No, I don’t work ‘this way’…” etc. That way everything is up-front and people can get your message right away and see you in a different way.
Hope this helps and I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way. I just thought it would be good to embrace it rather than try and avoid a question someone might have about it or might come up later.
Rick
Nice post and set of comments!
@Rick I like your way of extending the project by offering a 6 months fixed-rate option.
Personally, I like retainers – they help me budget plus offer good value for my customers. The downside is unless you cover every detail in a contract, some clients want 180 hours of work for they £300/month.
On the location question, since relocating to Spain from the UK, I’ve, for the first time in my career, not won projects due to my location.
I’m English, quoting to UK companies for work in English and to be completed for a UK-market; yet I hear all the time “you are a bit far away” or “how would you maintain our site?”.
The location of a designer, despite most correspondence happening via Skype, email and telephone, is an issue that new clients need to come to terms with rather than designers.