[Steve]

Say you are a web designer. Is it okay to charge a 5 employee shop $2500 for one web site and a 100 employee corporation $25,000. In the end the site is the same thing basically.

Both companies are happy in the end and don't feel cheated. Do you guys think this is an ethical thing to do?

[Alex Singh]

Of course its unethical, but when did that every stop anyone?

[Karen]

It's unethical but very common.

I can think of several companies that have two websites. Same products, same features, different pricing.

It is effective.

Karen

[SLA]

Originally posted by Alex Singh
Of course its unethical, but when did that every stop anyone?

I agree with you. It is kind of cheap...but it works! People have to make money.

[Steve]

What about this:

You quote company 1 & 2 $2500 each. Company 2 has 100 employees and thinks they will get a crappy job for $2500 so they turn you down.

Is it sometimes necessary to get the job and make big companies think they are not getting a "crappy" job?

[Alex Singh]

Well thats a major case of ignorance, and I believe that is completely inexcusable. I wouldn't have a problem charging an increased fee if it was the only way to appeal to their limited ideas on quality.

Unfortunate, but hey you do what you have to, don't you?

[Steve]

I can think of tons of examples of the price being too low is an issue.

In one example, a guy I know quoted like $18,000 just happened to be about $200,000 less than the competition. He got the job, but it took two months of legal work.

It'd be frusturating to know that you could of charged 500% more very easily.

[mikewheaton]

A product is worth the amount paid for it.

In the web designer example, if a company is willing to pay $25,000 for their site - it is because, even at this price, they see a benefit. The value is not based on the website itself, but in how it can benefit that business.

How can a $2500 website possibly benefit them as much as a $25,000 website? Their competitors just paid $20,000 - and they need to beat the competition.

Don't charge what you think is fair, but what is fair to them.

Mike

[guitarizt]

This topic sort of came up in the wht forum. It was about some webdesigners charging people say $500, and another charging $5000. The guy posting was the guy charging $5000. He said after the client looked briefly at his price and at his professional looking information book, the client chose him. You get what you pay for, and there's no way the client would have got what they needed for, say even $2500.

I think if you are charging more then they should be getting more, though.

[Arturius]

Its a free market, isnt it?

Shop around till you find the best price, if you cant see a difference, doesnt common sense force you to go with the cheaper?


I think you'll find the big guys offer more secure deadlines though, as well as other extras.

[Onyx]

I'm with Mike completely on this one - it's about benefit! This won't always be the case, but i think it is in the question you asked.

If your site saves a person two hours a day and over a period of time that covers the cost of the site, but continues to save them time, then they are getting benefit from it. If you then sell that same site to company B who have ten times the number of staff doing that job and so save ten times as much money, why shouldn't you make ten times as much money too?

What you need to seperate here is the development costs and the profits you wish to make. You could say it's not ethical to keep charging the development cost each time, but then it's also not fair for the first company to pay all the development costs either. If you know it's gonna be used many times then look at either taking the hit on the costs yourself or split it up into the number of sales you think you can reasonably get. After that think about reducing the cost a little to draw in more customers as you've obviously met your projections. Everything else is a bonus!

So hell yeah - charge on what it's worth to them, not to you!