June 09, 2004 | View Comments (27) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: Worst thing ever offered you for your design services.
Just recently, I was contacted by an old client, whom I worked for back when I was starting out, and I didn't charge a whole lot for sites in generel. He wanted me to do site redesign.
He offered me a f*cking grill.
Writes Brian.
I think that would be a good non-scientific poll for you, or at the very least, rather amusing:
Worse offer you've ever received for your services.
Write Ryan
So that is the poll. Probably the lamest thing that has been ever offered to me is a night out at the strip club. You might not think this is too bad, but this was for a full fledged e-commerce site. What you got?
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Someone wanted me to do the design for an adult website offering live webcam services.
Instead of money I would have received a free lifetime membership. Needless to say, I turned down the offer. An adult website is not quite the dream site you want to put in your portfolio, now... or is it? :P
Lucian S.
I was received a proposal to design a website whereby I would forfeit a fee in return for a profit share.
That wouldn't have been so bad if my "client" was a diamond dealer, but his "product" (and the only thing he planned to sell) was a PDF magazine for students - arguably the poorest demographic.
I declined. His website eventually went live (I've no idea who did it) and he produced a grand total of 3 issues of his magazine before the site was left to stagnate.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I missed there!
DarkBlue (http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/)
A friend of mine was going to give me $5/month to design and host a site, as well as keep it updated for him.
....right.
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
I'd recently left my web dev job to start up my own shop with a couple of so-called friends. I'm crap at business and sales, which is what I needed them for. As the person actually building the sites, I was the first to leave my job.
After months of them doing absolutely nothing and leaving my high and dry, I got the oh-so-generous offer of "pocket money" from one of them to design a fully-fledged e-commerce website for a new business he was starting up. That's right, he was claiming to not have the time for the business he started with me, but somehow found the time to start a whole other business.
I am no longer in business with them. Pocket money for fuck's sake!
J
I think the worst offer I received was that the client would find me services, or literally outsource my skills. I agreed, thinking he would find me some work and all would be well in the land of web development.
However, it never worked out as planned. Not only did he not find me other clients (supposedly lucrative contacts he knew), but he also never paid me for my $1500.00 in services.
Needless to say, it was a shady deal and I found out later he applied that money towards his daughter's wedding. When I called him about it, he said the check "had been mailed out" but that he had received word from the bank that it had been cashed. Certainly not by me I exclaimed and then he further implied that I was doing shady business!
kartooner (http://www.kartooner.com)
I won't say that this is a crappy offer, but I used to work for a golf course for 7 years. About 2 years ago, I talked with the pro about doing a site design for his other business, which was selling golf carts. It never got off the floor, but we discussed that in return for the website, any sales made from people visiting the site (not an ecommerce deal, but they would call via a number on their site), I would get a bone thrown to me. I thought that was fair enough since I was just starting out, but like I said, it never got off the ground.
Turns out, 2 years later, they are still interested, and even though I have a full time job, I am considering doing it just because
a. I like the Pro
b. It would be a good project (portfolio and such).
But the payment is what I don't know about. It might be the same deal, get some money thrown my way for every sale via the website. It will probably be a static website anyways, maybe 10 pages or something.
Still, that is about my "worst" offer, but I don't consider it too bad.
Bryan (http://www.juicedthoughts.com)
I did a site for a friend of a friend who was starting a new business. Although I never actually met with the client, it seemed like a no brainer for them to pay me the $2k after I designed it, which only took me about two weeks, but my friend said they weren't able to pay yet, but that maybe they could send $50 every few months until it was paid. In my initial tirade, I was able to get them to agree to send $200, but I never saw another dime.
Preventing me from really pursuing this was the fact that my friend was renting his house from his friend(the client), so he was reluctant to "push them".
Do we need any more proof that we should NEVER, EVER, I mean NEVER work without a signed contract? I surely learned my lesson.
chuck (http://telerana.f2o.org)
I am so surprised that you actualy used this idea, I don't know what to think. At the time I wrote the suggestion, I wasn't being serious, but I thought it would be great if you actualy used it.
I do however feel bad because I used one of my worst offers already, that was the tattoos to do a tattoo parlors website. And since I suggested this, I feel like I need to have some of the absolute worst offers.
So, there's this shop around here that customizes cars, mostly imports, and some luxury vehicles. It does pretty good business for Northeast Ohio, and I having an interest in imports and luxuries, it was only a matter of time before I met someone who worked there.
It turned out I ran into the son of the guy who owns the shop, and somehow or another I managed to mention what I do, he said that his dad had been wanting to get a site up for the business. I gave him some sites of mine to check out along, and told him I hope to hear from them.
Two weeks later I get a call, I go in there and have a meeting, show him a bit more of my work. I was in the office for a bit of time, by then I got a good idea of what kind of money this place was making from hearing conversations amongst this guy and the employees, and I was thinking that this could be a good paying job,
We ironed out the details, and what we came up with being fair for what was to be done was $2,500. But before I left, he saw that I was driving a del Sol, and he said something like "Oh, I see you like imports too." We talked about that for a while.
He gets around to saying, "I know we are already settled on the price, but I got something you might be a little more interested in." He takes me behind the shop and begins to show me an Integra in the worst shape I have ever seen.
He called it a "project car with a lot of potential," and to kind of humor him a bit, I popped the hood, and it not only was completely stock under the hood, it was also in as bad of shape as the rest of the car. After looking at that, I was thinking, "what this guy meant to say was, I've seen cars from the projects with more potential."
So there's another story to go along with the tattoo palor ones. I haven't decided which was worse, the unlimited tattoo offer, or the busted ass Integra. I got a couple more bad offers, but I'll save them for later.
Ryan (http://worldoneweb.com)
The worst client I ever had was a pushy business coach. Billed by the hour - and reminded of the fact - he requested change after change to endlessly "tweak" text. After all his reqests, what could have been a very inexpensive website turned into a $3,000 CAD job. This he promptly refused to pay, after saying I didn't warn him (despite resending the archived emails).
Even the $3k was lower than it should have been, but you all know how it goes. In the end, my business partner, managed to mangle all chances I had suing the jerk, since he purged all communication records with him.
Old site too. From my HoTMetaL Pro days... If you do business with with David Sauve, my only suggestion is to use a clear contract, as you should always do.
Justin (http://bluealpha.com/)
Oops.. worst offer... got a little distracted :-)
My worst offer: a box of chocolate. In fact: a small box of chocolate from a chocolate company. Okay... it was actually just 3 hedgehogs in a bag, in return for maintaining his eCommerce site.
Thanks...... but, uh, no.
Justin (http://bluealpha.com/)
A husband and wife wanted me to build a amateur adult website for them in exchange for "services renderd" by the wife.
I {and my friends) was (were) so amused I strung it along for a while and they eventually sent me some pictures of the wife... I still get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about those. ICK!
Chris
Haha, all you guys have me beat it seems. Chris.....Chris....poor Chris.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Doesn't the Coach guy seem to miss the mark with the picture of him in a cube?
What really scares me is that I have yet to receive my worst offer.....I have woefully under-valued/priced jobs before, but the truly egregious bid is waiting in the wings I'm sure.....
patrick (http://insignificantother.com)
How about this:
1 Cheese Shop Frisbee
1 Black T-shirt (with flourescent green/pink jumping frogs)
4 Bars of scented glycerine soap (the hotel bathroom variety)
A friend of mine needed a website for his parents' hotel. I cannot name the site because I took the offer (c'mon -we've all gotta do freebees from time to time). They couldn't pay & sent a box containing these goodies in gratitude.
andrew (http://compooter.org/)
I really do hate grilling.
The smell, the poor food that's never on time. Yuck.
I've done some banners for a Lightning Reaction gadget. Luckily only an hour of work, though :)
Brian Andersen (http://www.brian-andersen.dk)
Hmm. My worst wasn't for a website, it was for some tech support for a company that was having problems getting their network working or smething... I don't even remember anymore. They'd bought a new XP PC and couldn't get it to talk to the NT3 PC or the printer or vice versa or something... I somehow managed to work it out for them...
My reward? A coffee thermos with the company logo. A pen, cheap, with the company logo. A tiny maglite, with battery, with the company logo. And they promised to pay for a meal for one lady who worked there and me... I knew her, and I guess they assumed we were a couple or something. Never did get the meal -- the company quietly closed down and screwed over all their creditors AND the companies they supplied with parts. Not a huge deal for me, I was doing it mostly so she'd stop begging me for help (she couldn't do her job without the network or whatever)... but still, that really sucked.
For websites... I've never had a really bad offer, unless you count donating sites to the PBS auction in hopes of a little publicity. But f the 3 sites I donated, all were bought, only one finished the site, one never contacted me at all, and the other one cut it off after our second conversation because he found out his wife was cheating on him and he was closing the small business they ran together. In all fairness, the one that DID follow through has turned out to be a good client. So that's a plus. :-)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Ok, this one isn't mine, but a friend of mine once told me that he got offered a puppy to design a site. Now I as he is telling me this all I can think of, "dear lord, what is this company thinking?"
Turns out it was for a dog breeder, and the puppy was a full breed spitball. Had he not expanded on that I would have thought it was Microsoft trying to explore different methods of getting richer even faster.
Ryan (http://worldoneweb.com)
A husband and wife wanted me to build a amateur adult website for them in exchange for "services renderd" by the wife.I {and my friends) was (were) so amused I strung it along for a while and they eventually sent me some pictures of the wife... I still get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about those. ICK!
so I take it she was not the most attractive woman in the world? I was gonna say, if you were single and you found her attractive, you should have "hopped" on it, no pun intended.
Seriously though, the husband would of allowed you to bang his wife, or allow her to "service" you in return for the site.
Bryan (http://www.juicedthoughts.com)
Bryan,
I'm thinking that the pun was intended...
Chris,
They were just trying to give you the best bang for your buck.
Hargreaves (http://www.sgdhs.ca/)
Very funny guys, the worst job I got was when studying at university.
One not-for-profit organization contacted me to the website for them. I proposed two designs, first one was rejected, then I worked on the second one and it was accepted at first. Then when some tweaking was done, it was rejected also as being too complicated (it was very simple though).
I did third design in close cooperation with client, she (head of the organization) was very excited about it. I offered simple php news publishing system with it for free - easy adminsitration of articles.
Then I had not heard for her for some time, she had not been answering my phone calls, nor emails... And finally someone else called me just to say he is "taking over" the website and he wanted to meet.
We met, he asked me about the news publishing system and asked whether he could use it (he was such a lamer). When I asked about 5000 Slovak Crowns (about 150 USD) I was supposed to be paid, he told me he had not known about it. As you could guess, I've never seen the money.
The whole "design" process + building of website took about half a year. Half a year they used to be "excited" about the designs offered. **** this approach.
After some time I checked their website and it looked much worse than the design proposed and it was static! No option to add/edit articles online.
dusoft (http://www.ambience.sk/)
A guy who'd invented some new health cracker contacted me to design a full ecommerce site from scratch. Develop the online (and offline) marketing strategy, create a corporate logo and the other graphics, incorporate a shopping cart, blah blah blah. At the first meeting he brought along a tin of the product, assuring me that they were going to be a huge phenomenon because everyone agreed they tasted so delicious in addition to being exceptionally nutritious. He invited me to try one. I took a nibble.
Ugh. Cardboard, if it were the texture of adobe and covered in something bitter. I tried not to gag too obviously, and brought the conversation back to the business issues.
An hour later it emerged that he intended to pay me in crackers. Generously.
Pass.
Ceec
One of my friends gets (partially) paid for his continuing work on a website with condoms. (The client is a condom manufacturer)
amanda (http://www.stroplog.com)
But, hey! Amanda, that could be useful, at least more useful than cardboard crackers .
dusoft (http://www.ambience.sk/)
Can he do balloon animals with them, Amanda?
::grin:: he'd be popular at parties.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I had another client who wanted my company to connect every aspect of his manufacturing business - from materials purchasing, to inventory, to sales (on and offline). I said sure, of course, two plants in different parts of Canada. That's no problem. Big job, but not unreasonable.
Client: "Oh, and can you do it for around $1,000 or less?"
Justin (http://bluealpha.com/)
I was asked to design the front page of this musicians site about 4 weeks ago. I designed one graphic idea for the promoter to show to the musician and upon his liking it, we would discuss price. (I was told $600 would be lowest). Then I recieve email about him loving the graphic, blah blah, talking about maintenance or some shit. Umm ok..
I am currently in Texas, but my travel plans had fallen through to get here. Guess who offered me a plane ticket to Texas (roundtrip) to do his website? Well, I excepted because I was completely desperate, only now I get to do the ENTIRE site for (drumroll please....)
$344.00(US)..[cost of plane ticket]
$100.00(US)..[Monthly maintenance fee]
Yea Id say I got lowballed, but thats the price I pay for being desperate.
Chelle (http://sinful-obsessions.com)
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#1
A few friends of mine were running an online business when I moved into freelancing, but their site was awful, so I offered them a free redesign to add to my portfolio.
Anyway, I went the whole nine yards, eager to try out my newly-aquired PHP skills. I automated as much as I could, created a complete admin back-end, sales tracking system and integrated it into their shopping cart.
It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good and their sales shot up, not something I equate entirely to the new design, but some of at least fell on the more professional image.
So, business is going well, and recently they approached me to make some changes and upgrades as they wanted to increase their stock by about ten times.
I looked at their proposal and it equated to about a months work all told. Then I read their budget, £100 ($170).
Er, no thanks, guys.
Lee (http://www.thedigeratipeninsula.org.uk)