Getting Killed By Competition
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:18 pm
I'm a PHP freelancer and I'm getting killed by the competition this week. It's like someone just dumped a bunch of site scripts on the market and I missed the memo. I had a proposal come across my inbox for a video game review site that was sort of like Reddit, but simpler. However, it would use a richedit control and a combination of jQuery and AJAX for some of the desired effects, such as instant comment posting, instant plus/minus reviews, and then an admin interface that was geared towards moderation -- not just a bunch of table editors. He'll need pagination of reviews and comments. There's also user profile management from a user's perspective and an admin's perspective, and email notification with levels. It needs to be composed in a fresh, Web 2.0 style with XHTML/DIV/CSS and all the usual effects, color choices, and graphics, much like what you see for most of the sites on webcreme.com.
I quoted it at 200 hours, but, in a pinch, I might be able to knock it out at 150, and 100 if I cut down a bunch of testing.
Well, someone quoted him 30 hours and like 75% my rate.
What's he going to do, grab a site script and customize the heck out of it? Are there really good site scripts out there like this? More than likely, here's what's going to happen to that freelancer:
- There's just no way humanly possible he can satisfy the client's needs for anything less than 100 hours, if not 150.
- He won't have a site that's fully tested.
- The admin interface will be nothing more than a glorified table editor, not geared to moderation of users or their listings much at all, and with no stats feature, password reset feature, security stats and IP blocking, and usual stuff that an admin interface should have.
- He'll screw up the site or have it half-completed.
Sure, I'm learning to optimize the heck out of my work because competition is stiff. I've moved on to:
- 80/20 admin scaffolding so that I can have an admin interface that's 80% written and I customize the last 20%.
- Using jQuery to reduce time spent on cross-platform testing and fighting with DHTML quirks.
- Reusable PHP source templates so that I don't have to think about what to do next -- I just fill in the blanks.
- Keeping the parameter-templated SQL in a single conf file so that I know where to find it in order to make tweaks.
- Either outsourcing the XHTML/DIV/CSS initial page templates or just use Blueprint CSS.
- Creating attractive forms in 3 CSS styles that I can just bolt in depending on client tastes.
- Borrowing concepts from previous difficult parts of other project.
- Creating my own set of site scripts that I can reuse for common projects you see such as this one.
However, I guess it's not enough. There's too many liars out there.

I quoted it at 200 hours, but, in a pinch, I might be able to knock it out at 150, and 100 if I cut down a bunch of testing.
Well, someone quoted him 30 hours and like 75% my rate.
What's he going to do, grab a site script and customize the heck out of it? Are there really good site scripts out there like this? More than likely, here's what's going to happen to that freelancer:
- There's just no way humanly possible he can satisfy the client's needs for anything less than 100 hours, if not 150.
- He won't have a site that's fully tested.
- The admin interface will be nothing more than a glorified table editor, not geared to moderation of users or their listings much at all, and with no stats feature, password reset feature, security stats and IP blocking, and usual stuff that an admin interface should have.
- He'll screw up the site or have it half-completed.
Sure, I'm learning to optimize the heck out of my work because competition is stiff. I've moved on to:
- 80/20 admin scaffolding so that I can have an admin interface that's 80% written and I customize the last 20%.
- Using jQuery to reduce time spent on cross-platform testing and fighting with DHTML quirks.
- Reusable PHP source templates so that I don't have to think about what to do next -- I just fill in the blanks.
- Keeping the parameter-templated SQL in a single conf file so that I know where to find it in order to make tweaks.
- Either outsourcing the XHTML/DIV/CSS initial page templates or just use Blueprint CSS.
- Creating attractive forms in 3 CSS styles that I can just bolt in depending on client tastes.
- Borrowing concepts from previous difficult parts of other project.
- Creating my own set of site scripts that I can reuse for common projects you see such as this one.
However, I guess it's not enough. There's too many liars out there.