I’ve been dealing with this company for about a week now and they keep on asking me what my budget is. I gave them three exact examples of what I want. I asked them how much, they are the professionals shouldn’t they know how much to charge? What do you think is going on here. Why should I give them a price, for example if I tell them that my budget is 30K I don’t know if I’m low balling them or or high balling them. Why the game. Btw I can learn how to do this myself I have enough money to focus on this and nothing else for five years. Should I just learn to do it myself? I can speak six languages fluently. It took me 6 months each, the grammar took me nine months. I feel that programming in a new language is akin to learning how to speak in a new language along with the grammar. Any help on this would be appreciated.
If you have the time and interest to learn this yourself, it’s well worth it. It’s alot easier to learn how to build a website than to learn a spoken language (I’ve tried both!)
In terms of their quote, think of it like this. You go to a builder and say—“Build me a house”. Wouldn’t you expect them to ask you what your budget is? A house can be a simple, one-room box or a gigantic mansion. What you get depends on your budget. There’s no point in them offering something you can’t pay for. They will probably have an hourly rate, and if they know how much you can pay, that will help them make an appropriate offer. What they probably should do is just offer you a range of options with prices indicated. In your case—and to extend the analogy—you’ve perhaps said how many rooms you want on the house, but not how many bay windows, what materials you want used and so on.
I appreciate your reply, but I gave them three examples of what I want to the letter, with no furniture moving shouldn’t that be enough? Here’s some more questions for you. If my site is success-full how can I stop them from ripping my idea off? The examples I gave them is for another product but the layout is the same. The programming requirements for this job would be php,CSS and html. I can afford more then 30K but I don’t want to over pay. Maybe I should ask them for there hourly rate. What do you think? I can do the graphics myself. Btw I found another company to do SEO as well. I had a company design a political site to sell campaign buttons caps sweat shirts and tea shirts. It generated a lot of money, a month later the company that designed my website started doing the same-thing. I hired an attorney and got a TRO and tied them up in court. I out spent them in court. I have money, that was time sensitive so I had to move quickly. Who knows these guys may have greater resources then I and open up an offshore office under a different corporate ID and screw me that way. I’m not saying that all people are bad but how do I protect myself? What language did you learn?
Do you mean the web designers? You could perhaps set up something in the contract, but you’d need your lawyer’s help on that.
Maybe I should ask them for there hourly rate.
Perhaps you should get a few quotes from other providers to get a sense of what the going rate is. There is no “right price” for any service. It’s more about supply/demand/competition etc., as well as how much/little people are prepared to work for.
I am not a website designer, but currently manage a website. To be honest, you can’t stop people imitating each other, and things in the world are becoming more and more similar, take Social network for example, after facebook, there are many other similar websites emerged, but no one could compared with Facebook, why is that ? I rembered that line which says:“been imitated all the time , but never have been surpassed”.
Designers/developers often ask for a budget regardless of specs to know how much time they can invest, how much time can go into the various elements that need to be designed, from backend to frontend, whether time (and thus money) allows them to do lots of custom work or whether a budget forces them to use off-the-shelf products for some tasks to speed up the process.
If someone, for example asks for a design with illustrations and icons (just to illustrate my point), then the budget will determine whether or not these illustrations and icons are bought from stock sites or whether the company creates custom illustrations and icons for you specifically.
These and other factors might be the reason for them asking you for a budget. However, I don’t know their motives, and I’d ask them flat out why it makes a difference to specify a budget on your part. If they’re trustful and sincere, they’ll tell you. If not, then perhaps it’s better to move to a different company.
By the way, I always ask for a budget in interviews with the client because I need to know how much they’re willing to invest and how much time I can spend on the project. Even if a client tells me their budget is 20k, that doesn’t mean that I’ll charge 20k, it simply means I know that I can do custom illustrations, icons, hire professional programmers, a copywriter, a marketing expert, and so on and so forth and still not get anywhere close to client’s budget. If the budget were to be 2k, then I’d obviously would not be able to do those things.
As for wanting to do it yourself instead. Why not? If you have the time, the drive, and the energy, go for it. We don’t know what it is you’d like to do, but whatever it is, be aware that creating a website is not about learning a language or two. The factors involved are manifold and it goes from usability to security, to marketing, to accessibility, and a few more topics in between. So, if you have no experience in web design, it’ll be quite a task. If you are not pressed for time, however, then that shouldn’t be an issue.
Sounds to me they want to know your budget so they can hike up the price.
If you are specifying what you want so precisely then coming up with figures should be easy enough.
Protecting ideas you need I think a “Non Disclosure” agreement and getting a TM or perhaps even a patent might apply though obviously only if something fits the bill for that course
But a price should not require you come up with what your budget might be if you are being as specific as it seems you have been at least IMHO!