About customers low-budget websites
The issue of developing low-budget websites was discussed in the 207th issue of the Website Building Library distribution. They said that, in principle, if you have experience with site-building, as well as when circumstances are randomly formed, the web developer can agree to take part in creating the site for very low pay. After the newsletter came out, I received letters from subscribers - the readers said that the situation will never be resolved - there will always be clients who want to get the project “almost” for free, and there will always be developers who will take up the task. To list all the reasons why the problem of low-budget sites remains relevant, meaningless, most of them are obvious.
First of all, of course, the reasons should be sought in society as a whole, in a standard of living that will differ from region to region. Moscow prices for web sites are strikingly different from those in St. Petersburg, which, in turn, differ from regional Russian ones. In the post-Soviet countries - in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, the standard of living is lower, which means that the capacity of site customers is lower - at a completely lower level of qualification of specialists. In Moscow, the budget for developing a website of tens and hundreds of thousands of conditional units is no longer surprised, in Gomel and Kharkov it will be at best a few thousand, or even hundreds of the same bourgeois money. But at the same time pay attention - one of the most worthy information resources for web developers - the webmascon.com site of Alex Kachanov is a project of (initially) Belarusian masters, and if you look at the same Ukrainian city of Kharkiv through the eyes of “Yandex”, we will see an industrial city with developed industry and an impressive number of universities, mostly technical. And now in every first lyceum, institute, university, programming is taught in many specialties, including web programming. Therefore what? The number of highly qualified, educated and experienced IT-specialists per capita is so high (at a relatively not high standard of living in terms of average salary) that it becomes clear that web development is cheaper and noticeable here.
Further, the IT services market is very little tied to borders, i.e. A web developer can work remotely for years on the same Moscow and gourmet customers, and at the same time the quality of work will be decent. Customers of websites and services are well aware of the situation, and often enter regional markets in search of capable developers who can complete the planned work with a moderate budget. However, at the same time, the desire to plan a compact budget, to save on developers — many know it, have experienced it — borders on banal greed, and greed, as we know, breeds poverty.
')
Let's look at a typical low-cost customer. As a rule, it is an organization or a person who is rather little aware of the real depth of the problem that they intend to solve, about the real value of the right decision. As an example in the last issue, we cited a customer (not invented) who wanted a full-fledged portal with a large number of services — an engine for creating and managing texts (news and articles), chats and forums, a product catalog and accounting for statistics and other small pleasant things - with a budget of $ 300; and what do you think? Part of the budget specialists was ridiculed, the customer himself was called a sucker. But then there were developers who announced that they would be able to accomplish a minimum of work for the money indicated, and for the same amount they would be able to deliver a full-fledged working project on a turnkey basis.
During the discussion, it turned out that this particular customer actually had very little idea of ​​what he really needed, did not encounter problems of security, information security, and also had no experience in supporting and administering projects of the desired level. He will be able to evaluate the project received for $ 300 only after a certain period of time, when he tries to tune him for real work and faces ordinary everyday problems - when on the wet engine he can neither change, nor even modify, brush his own child’s visual design, and suppliers of the engine - they might agree, for extra money. And with the movement in the market of web programmers, which is present in all regions - with a high standard of living and with a low one, it may be that he no longer finds these programmers at all, and even if he does, it turns out that they already work not in one team, and the first without the second will not be able to help, and the second works in a cool computer company and it is simply not interesting for him to return to the development of that engine that no one plans to develop (but the point is, if the budgets are symbolic), and in general once, all for now. The situation is also not invented, many “economists” have encountered this problem.
I ask the next few paragraphs of information not to be taken seriously and biased, and not to ask what the author of these lines smokes? Just thinking. Look here - the website customer is looking for a developer who will undertake such a cheap project. However, for obvious reasons, he himself is not going to hire inexperienced students as contractors, this is clear. Those. He is looking for a professional who - lo and behold! - agree to cooperate. Do you really think there is any chance? And no. Long-term observations show that there are chances, and in the last issue we said that the web developer is a human being and he can have any ordinary human problems. He can completely suddenly, not planned to lose his job and a stable salary. Of course, if he is really professional, he will not be left without work for a long time. But even a short period of time should not become penniless. And if his life was such that with a rich baggage he had to (again) change his place of residence to some small region with a low standard of living, and it would be impossible to find stable work with a high salary, but to organize development with a constant stream of customers remotely ”is, as always, a time that is not there, a time during which you still need to earn money somewhere.
Problems can arise of any nature. They may be associated with health - the developer himself or his loved ones, when money becomes more important than professional pride (more recently, with great regret observed the development of a similar situation). And here - with the accumulated experience, with developments in the form of engines, server scripts and full-fledged services, with thorough knowledge of the network and the ability to create great interfaces, the developer agrees to participate in the low-budget project. He agrees, because circumstances compel him to do so. And this is exactly what the customer needs! Those. indirectly, he is not poorly pleased that, thanks to something bad that is happening in the developer’s life, he was able to get such a specialist into the project for a penny! But I will tell you that with such actions the customer spoils his karma very well - and the karma of his project. On another misfortune you cannot build your success. Yes, circumstances may force the developer to sell and sell their products in a cheap way, but the customer who tries to take advantage of the situation and underpaid when he sees that the development will take place anyway, seems to me to be as flawed as any creature parasitizing in an arbitrary environment , and thereby aggravating the general ill health of the environment. And the benefits not received in such a situation will turn into the minus to the same customer, anyway.
Ok, let's leave the discussion of karmic problems and look in the same direction, but in a different way. Once again, through the eyes of the developer. Which (especially if circumstances are not critical and do not explicitly coerce to agree to participate in low-cost development) in turn provokes customers to further reduce the budget, and others (perhaps less qualified developers) will charge even lower prices for their services. Andrei Muravyov (Grandmaster) on his blog just recently published a post on a topic that was dedicated to seo-masters who agreed to work within low budgets, but the same words are true for all web developers, so let me quote his words:
Gold words. Therefore, I once again warn you, dear beginner and professional web developers, against overly generously scattering your knowledge and experience - for we expose ourselves with such actions, while we dig a hole for ourselves. By the way, the idea of ​​trade unions of IT specialists has been discussed on the network for many years and, although it is still there, one of the ideas of creating such professional communities was precisely to save the IT market from dumping, thereby increasing its importance and credibility in the eyes of potential customers.
On the other hand, in general, it’s not enough that there are projects that were created and supported practically “on the bare enthusiasm” of its authors, and I would like to collect a list and history of development of such web projects in the near future :) so if there is tell you - write here or on the mail nundesign@gmail.com.
First of all, of course, the reasons should be sought in society as a whole, in a standard of living that will differ from region to region. Moscow prices for web sites are strikingly different from those in St. Petersburg, which, in turn, differ from regional Russian ones. In the post-Soviet countries - in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, the standard of living is lower, which means that the capacity of site customers is lower - at a completely lower level of qualification of specialists. In Moscow, the budget for developing a website of tens and hundreds of thousands of conditional units is no longer surprised, in Gomel and Kharkov it will be at best a few thousand, or even hundreds of the same bourgeois money. But at the same time pay attention - one of the most worthy information resources for web developers - the webmascon.com site of Alex Kachanov is a project of (initially) Belarusian masters, and if you look at the same Ukrainian city of Kharkiv through the eyes of “Yandex”, we will see an industrial city with developed industry and an impressive number of universities, mostly technical. And now in every first lyceum, institute, university, programming is taught in many specialties, including web programming. Therefore what? The number of highly qualified, educated and experienced IT-specialists per capita is so high (at a relatively not high standard of living in terms of average salary) that it becomes clear that web development is cheaper and noticeable here.
Further, the IT services market is very little tied to borders, i.e. A web developer can work remotely for years on the same Moscow and gourmet customers, and at the same time the quality of work will be decent. Customers of websites and services are well aware of the situation, and often enter regional markets in search of capable developers who can complete the planned work with a moderate budget. However, at the same time, the desire to plan a compact budget, to save on developers — many know it, have experienced it — borders on banal greed, and greed, as we know, breeds poverty.
')
Let's look at a typical low-cost customer. As a rule, it is an organization or a person who is rather little aware of the real depth of the problem that they intend to solve, about the real value of the right decision. As an example in the last issue, we cited a customer (not invented) who wanted a full-fledged portal with a large number of services — an engine for creating and managing texts (news and articles), chats and forums, a product catalog and accounting for statistics and other small pleasant things - with a budget of $ 300; and what do you think? Part of the budget specialists was ridiculed, the customer himself was called a sucker. But then there were developers who announced that they would be able to accomplish a minimum of work for the money indicated, and for the same amount they would be able to deliver a full-fledged working project on a turnkey basis.
During the discussion, it turned out that this particular customer actually had very little idea of ​​what he really needed, did not encounter problems of security, information security, and also had no experience in supporting and administering projects of the desired level. He will be able to evaluate the project received for $ 300 only after a certain period of time, when he tries to tune him for real work and faces ordinary everyday problems - when on the wet engine he can neither change, nor even modify, brush his own child’s visual design, and suppliers of the engine - they might agree, for extra money. And with the movement in the market of web programmers, which is present in all regions - with a high standard of living and with a low one, it may be that he no longer finds these programmers at all, and even if he does, it turns out that they already work not in one team, and the first without the second will not be able to help, and the second works in a cool computer company and it is simply not interesting for him to return to the development of that engine that no one plans to develop (but the point is, if the budgets are symbolic), and in general once, all for now. The situation is also not invented, many “economists” have encountered this problem.
I ask the next few paragraphs of information not to be taken seriously and biased, and not to ask what the author of these lines smokes? Just thinking. Look here - the website customer is looking for a developer who will undertake such a cheap project. However, for obvious reasons, he himself is not going to hire inexperienced students as contractors, this is clear. Those. He is looking for a professional who - lo and behold! - agree to cooperate. Do you really think there is any chance? And no. Long-term observations show that there are chances, and in the last issue we said that the web developer is a human being and he can have any ordinary human problems. He can completely suddenly, not planned to lose his job and a stable salary. Of course, if he is really professional, he will not be left without work for a long time. But even a short period of time should not become penniless. And if his life was such that with a rich baggage he had to (again) change his place of residence to some small region with a low standard of living, and it would be impossible to find stable work with a high salary, but to organize development with a constant stream of customers remotely ”is, as always, a time that is not there, a time during which you still need to earn money somewhere.
Problems can arise of any nature. They may be associated with health - the developer himself or his loved ones, when money becomes more important than professional pride (more recently, with great regret observed the development of a similar situation). And here - with the accumulated experience, with developments in the form of engines, server scripts and full-fledged services, with thorough knowledge of the network and the ability to create great interfaces, the developer agrees to participate in the low-budget project. He agrees, because circumstances compel him to do so. And this is exactly what the customer needs! Those. indirectly, he is not poorly pleased that, thanks to something bad that is happening in the developer’s life, he was able to get such a specialist into the project for a penny! But I will tell you that with such actions the customer spoils his karma very well - and the karma of his project. On another misfortune you cannot build your success. Yes, circumstances may force the developer to sell and sell their products in a cheap way, but the customer who tries to take advantage of the situation and underpaid when he sees that the development will take place anyway, seems to me to be as flawed as any creature parasitizing in an arbitrary environment , and thereby aggravating the general ill health of the environment. And the benefits not received in such a situation will turn into the minus to the same customer, anyway.
Ok, let's leave the discussion of karmic problems and look in the same direction, but in a different way. Once again, through the eyes of the developer. Which (especially if circumstances are not critical and do not explicitly coerce to agree to participate in low-cost development) in turn provokes customers to further reduce the budget, and others (perhaps less qualified developers) will charge even lower prices for their services. Andrei Muravyov (Grandmaster) on his blog just recently published a post on a topic that was dedicated to seo-masters who agreed to work within low budgets, but the same words are true for all web developers, so let me quote his words:
Many beginning specialists and some companies charge prices for their services, which are noticeably lower than the average on the market. Personally, I also attacked this rake. I would like to bring 5 arguments that may help change the attitude to pricing.1. It is possible that this will surprise someone, but for many people the price of a service is an indicator of its quality (the higher the price, the higher the perceived quality of the service, and vice versa). By setting prices below market, you give the buyer doubts about the quality of your services. If you yourself do not appreciate your services, then why should others appreciate them? And besides, many people remember the saying: “free cheese is only in a mousetrap”. Seriously reducing the prices for services you rather do not attract, but discourage good customers.
2. By offering low prices for quality services once, it will be very difficult for you to raise your prices, since any price increase will cause customers to protest - they will quickly get used to good and cheap.
3. By positioning your services as the cheapest, you occupy a very precarious position in the market. There will always be someone who can offer lower prices.
4. A client who has chosen your services only because of a low price will hardly appreciate your cooperation. He can easily go over to your competitor if he offers a lower price.
5. Work in the lower price segment is often economically unprofitable, with the same effort you earn less money.
Gold words. Therefore, I once again warn you, dear beginner and professional web developers, against overly generously scattering your knowledge and experience - for we expose ourselves with such actions, while we dig a hole for ourselves. By the way, the idea of ​​trade unions of IT specialists has been discussed on the network for many years and, although it is still there, one of the ideas of creating such professional communities was precisely to save the IT market from dumping, thereby increasing its importance and credibility in the eyes of potential customers.
On the other hand, in general, it’s not enough that there are projects that were created and supported practically “on the bare enthusiasm” of its authors, and I would like to collect a list and history of development of such web projects in the near future :) so if there is tell you - write here or on the mail nundesign@gmail.com.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4356/
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