That’s either a professional level dad joke, or holy wow, does he not know how much you make?
That said, I’ll build anyone a website for £500, no matter how large. But that’s the base model. It’ll be a template taken from a catalog, and Hugo. My maintenance fees are only £250 per hour.
I’ll build anyone a website. I’ll do it for 450.
No refunds, though. (don’t tell them this, but they won’t be very happy with the product.)
It’s a pretty good racket. My friends boss saw us building ourselves a site one time when he let us use his shop on the weekend and he got intrigued.
So as payment for letting us use the machine shop we took over his business website from some expensive marketing company that charged a ton we got him down to a domain and a basic weebly plan. We took photos of the shop and just used their shop colors for the text and slapped on all the contact info he wanted.
Then his bookkeeper saw his site and wanted one so we did the same for her, then her son saw the site and wanted one for his friend who’s a plumber. Next thing you know we are turning down jobs because everyone and their mother wants a $500 website from us haha. It became a better business than what we borrowed the machine shop for to begin with
Very nice. I don’t think there’s anything better than being your own boss.
Static, low-js, HTML tags used-as-intended, some basic CSS for formatting, responsivity and dark/light. Modern-looking accessible webpage from scratch done in half a day.
Btw, https://github.com/lyoshenka/awesome-motherfucking-website
The irony of some dude trying to prove a point that a website doesn’t need to be bloated and burdened with all the design and fancy scripts, just for other people to incrementally built on top of that idea, one-upping each other in the process, mimicking the exact evolution of the modern bloated website as we know it.
From one of them:
“You’re a fucking moron if you use default browser styles.”
Or just change your browser settings (they shouldn’t be ugly by default).
You have a problem with Mosaic Gray?
Honestly I hate the fact that browsers’ default CSS exists. The person doing the frontend should have to specify their “default” CSS before the website even loads. I say this as both a user and a programmer, the same website shouldn’t look different or break on different browsers unintentionally due to the browser’s CSS, and I as a developer shouldn’t have to rely on reset sheets to try to patch that.
Everything would be better if it were swapped around, instead of picking out a reset sheet for a site you pick out a default style…
The world would also be better if browsers rendered pugjs/slim and scss/sass and those were the default rather than html and css but I digress…
If we assume “half a day” is 4 hours, and 500 pounds. That’s 125 pounds per hour. Which isn’t the worst rate. Assuming it’s actually capped at 4 hours and we all know that if it’s your dad’s friend, this is not going to be a set and forget kind of thing. So that 4 hours quickly becomes 10. And suddenly you’re down to 50 pounds per hour. And then if it’s actually static and simple and good, you still have high odds of getting insane feedback demanding changes to make it worse. A motherfucking website would actually be the best option, but wouldn’t get you paid. At that point youre just doing it for the lols.
But ultimately, this isn’t even about the rate or how much time this will take. this whole scenario depends heavily on the son here. Is the son unemployed and living in dad’s basement for free? Then yeah. Sorry, he should probably take any work he can get for any rate he can get. His dad gets a lot more say in how things work financially if the son is relying on him financially. But if the son is already working a full time job and living in his own house? Then no, I don’t care what the rate is. Don’t commandeer other people’s time. Don’t make deals that people haven’t agreed to. Come to me with opportunities, not demands.
Yeah, sorry, i couldn’t resist to hint on how ridicolously overengineered most professional webpages are.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
You’re not wrong, but a lot of time those webpages aren’t overengineered because the developer wanted it to be, but because the client kept making more and more demands.
It’s one website. How much could it cost, £500?
What website weighs 500 pounds?!
Maybe it had too many cookies.
Damn, now it is bloated
Probably a local gym.
The most important thing is what you’ll get. A few static pages and stock images with the watermark still present, sure. Beyond that the meter starts running.
Here’s some money, go build a JStor
As a freelancer, this can actually be used to your advantage lol. It gets them in the door and you can make it a funny thing that he thought that was your rate. If they’re not serious people, they’ll walk out the door. But if they are, they’ve already invested the time to contact you, so they’re a little easier to land as clients.
You sound like a LinkedIn influencer:
I shat my pants; this is why this is a great opportunity to network!
That’s ridiculous. OP gets a call from someone expecting a rate they never set and it’s the same as caking your pants? I don’t even remotely follow the logic.
I’m saying you can take a misunderstanding and make it a positive thing. The person needs a site - you tell them your real rate and they’re free to say no. But freelancer did absolutely nothing to create this situation. They’ve done nothing wrong.
As a cinematographer I’ve been in this situation plenty of times. I did a budget friendly job for somebody, they don’t realize the other person has much larger demands and doesn’t have a relationship with me, they give the person an unrealistic range, I clarify the situation and explain that is not my rate, and sometimes they go “well whatever that’s a fair rate/I still need you so let’s do business.” I did absolutely nothing deceptive. I was transparent every step of the way and there is nothing wrong with that.
“Can you come out for $300?”
“No that’s not what this jobs costs. I can do $1200. Yes or no?”
Done
In most industries, that’s considered a bait and switch. Decpetice conduct that can lead to fines.
If you contact them immediately, to rectify an error, then not so much.
What are you taking about, he didn’t bait anyone. You aren’t obligated to honor a quote from someone who isn’t in your company. If I said my son is a mechanic and he can put a new engine in your car for $50, you absolutely should not expect a $50 engine.
OP didn’t do anything. You tell them you don’t work for $500. What are they supposed to do? Ignore the call? I’m just saying it could become a good thing. Nothing deceptive happened here.
They didn’t say it was deceptive,they said it was decpetice.
You tell them you don’t work for $500.
Or you tell them that you do.
Per hour.
But since they’re clearly such great mates with dad, you can cut them a deal.
I’m saying they should not get to the point that they walk in the door. If they call, correct immediately.
It should be corrected, by Dad, prior to a call, rather than used as a sales funnel, which is the suggestion.
Honest mistakes happen, but using an honest mistake to purposefully continue to mislead to get them in the door and then correct them is a bait and switch.
When did I ever say if they call you not to correct it immediately? Show me.
The entire point is that the first time they talk to you you have no idea that they are expecting a ridiculous rate. So you clarify the situation and if you’re lucky it turns into a job anyway. Explain to me how that is deceptive.
How do you get them in the door to tell them without the call? Youre advising using an error to your advantage to massage someone to be a client using a bait and switch tactic.
It may not have been thenolan, being a genuine error, but that’s your plan to take advantage of it. If they purposely gave the wrong amount, would it be bait and switch in your view?
Way to go on the straw man, though.
My dude “get them in the door” is an expression. I am not saying you lie to them on the phone to get them to show up in person.
Also I have repeatedly said not to deceive them. At some point you need to stop telling me what I said and listen to what I’m actually saying.
I am listening to what you are saying. ok, so you did imply this is not the first contact. Just using a phrase to do so. Obviously you meant something different.
Walking out the door, also a phrase. Again, one that’s situational. It means they are on site. For talking on the phone, I’d say hang up. So again, implying its not the first contact.
Look, I also think it can be correctly handled, but your whole post makes it sound like a pushy sales narrative that is deceptive. Youre not outright calling for deception but the implication is there. I’m not the only one noticing it.
Maybe your choice of words is wrong, but when someone tells you who they are, listen.
5000 pages, including e-commerce integration and bespoke search. £500!
I don’t know some of those words, probably ought to say it’s 600 dollary-doos
There isn’t that much money in the universe.
Do you guys have any idea how expensive a website is with a Large Screen size?
goes to website on 47in TV
The price of development is insane
Plugs in HTC Vive and uses WLX-overlay to enlarge the website to 100m virtually.
It’s fine. It’s just 25 pages, but they want 20 unique designs since those are all primary/landing pages. All on a normal sized screen.
And it must work on mobile.
Yeah but how many normal-sized screens do you want it displayed on? Everyone has one these days. That soon adds up.
I mean, if it’s **just ** a normal screen-sized website, that already makes it a lot easier. Not having to deal with responsiveness bullshit would make webdev a lot better experience. That is assuming “normal screen” means 1920*1080, or whatever is the median screen size.
To be fair, using flex box (which is the default in many modern framework) would make responsiveness a breeze these days.
One day I’ll learn flex and be able to make nice responsive displays, but until then Bootstrap it is.
Whichever works for you!
It only needs to look good on whatever screen size the client’s CEO’s favorite administrative director uses, when she checks on it, on a Friday evening, seven weeks after delivery (but still well before I’ll ever see my $500.00…)
Wish me luck guessing the screen size…
Just make it mobile first… and last ;)
Well he did just say designing, so lucky there. I’ll send over some wireframes, sure
500 per pixel is my rate
Dad who? Never heard of him. Wrong number
Found the fatherless!
My dad does this, and I made a few bucks thanks to WordPress. Really, more thanks to Elementor because you can make a pretty snazzy website for cheap and the layman has no it took 2 hours to put together with templates. Lol
500$/hour is so good tho?? smh
The implementation itself? Plausible.
The requirements gathering? Gonna be way more than an hour.
“Works best on Internet Explorer at 800×600”
