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A rant about this guy's "services"

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2010 5:02 pm
by Payton
First of all, please browse this website for a couple of minutes: http://anonym.to/hinctechal.com/

I could go on and on all day about the way "his" website looks, but that's not really why I'm making this topic. I am making this topic to present some questions to you guys (and for the sake of ranting, because I'm pretty angry). Before I can give you the questions, check this:

Image
(if the image doesn't load, use this: http://grab.by/4TgC)

I couldn't get my initial question in the screenshot, however, here's how things basically went down: On this guy's Formspring profile, someone asked him if he built his websites from scratch, to which he answered "No, and neither does anyone else." I asked him about this statement because clearly just by looking at this very board, many people make their websites without assistance from a program like Wordpress or Dreamweaver.

So, when he responded telling me that most people do invest time in their website(s), I went back to what I was doing. But, two minutes later I was notified of a new tweet and checked Twitter.

This was about the time I hit the RAEG key on my keyboard.

I don't need to go further into the story because I've provided a clear picture of the whole "conversation," if you can call it that much, so I'll move into my questions for you.
  1. How do you feel about people who charge high prices for websites, but don't actually spend time making them?
  2. Do you think it's fair for people to do what I said above?
I think I should also mention that a few months ago, this guy charged $200.00 for "custom built websites" and $150.00 for Wordpress installations.

So, I'll just leave this here.

Re: A rant about this guy's "services"

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:39 am
by josh
You're jealous because this guy is making a good living with relatively little effort. Is it ethical? Maybe not. Is there really much you can do? No. Focus on you. Have you heard the saying "you do you, im going to do me"? You need to worry about what you're doing not what this guy is doing. $150 for a wordpress install? I'd charge $1,000. If you don't like it you're free to undercut me, or try to offer a competing solution ;-)

Re: A rant about this guy's "services"

Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 1:19 am
by Payton
josh wrote:You're jealous because this guy is making a good living with relatively little effort. Is it ethical? Maybe not. Is there really much you can do? No. Focus on you. Have you heard the saying "you do you, im going to do me"? You need to worry about what you're doing not what this guy is doing. $150 for a wordpress install? I'd charge $1,000. If you don't like it you're free to undercut me, or try to offer a competing solution ;-)
I'm not so much jealous as I am just irked that this guy can make a living this way. I'm not doing website building or any website hosting services, but still, I just don't see how people could be this way. It's cheating other people out of their money, in a sense, while there are plenty of people who offer much better services. I put the final three sentences of your paragraph into consideration, and yeah, that's true. I find flaw in that, though, because this guy is happy with what he does and I'd be raining on his parade, get on worser terms with him, and "battling" would ensue. As you can see I'm not cut out for the business world. That aside though, you're right.

Re: A rant about this guy's "services"

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:00 am
by josh
If you think he's morally wrong for charging too much, you should charge a small amount. Its not morally wrong to compete with other businesses. If anything its wrong to with-hold your affordable services from the market. If you feel bad about his customers paying too much, do something about it by giving his customers an affordable alternative. Business is like a sport, yeah its a competition but we don't look at a ball player and say he is in the wrong for playing ball.

Once you actually do a few jobs you might realize you have to charge as much as him too, to keep up with demand & provide the quality work a high end client expects. Look at this way there are garbage men that make $1,000 a week in some places, because of the difficulty & risk of the work involved.

If you really want to change how it is, start a business helping people fix their crapily coded sites. Use your profits to start a political lobbying interest, put out public service ads helping people get educated on what to look for in their web designer, or start a non profit site helping people learn what good/bad sites are, and rank different designers. You get the idea. Profit first, then comes power. In a way wouldn't it be better for you to get the $1,000 client instead of him, because you're doing better work and using the money to do good deeds?

Re: A rant about this guy's "services"

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 10:10 pm
by Payton
Those are very good points and have changed a lot of my feelings toward the situation. I'll consider all of that.