I So Suck at What I Do, He Hired Me Again
Today, off-line clients have gotten on my nerves.
Client 1, hired me Feb 2010. He had a 3 year old website that was getting 150-350 hits a month. In 3 years no one bought. I said I'd turn his website into a selling machine and drive traffic to it, so he'll make at least twice the sales he'd been making (I found out later he had none, that he'd lied at first). At any time, after 6 months, if he did not like the results, I'd give his money back, put back up his gorgeous, non-producing site.
Step 1. I turned his took down his gorgeous website, put up a butt-ugly site. He nearly had a fit. Though he did agree, in writing (an email and the original agreement) that I'd change his site; that I'd change it to a wordpress site like one of the sites I owned (gave him the url, so he could look).
Step 2. I got him found in Google and Yahoo and Bing and AOL and some other search engines.
Ever since, every time we meet, he complains that his site is ugly. But he doesn't want his money back, or the old site back. He'd like, though, to know if it's possible for him to hire a web designer to beautify the site without losing anything of what I've done.
He isn't giving me a testimonial. But he's hired me to do what I do with other keywords (i.e., create landing pages and get them found).
But he's only going to give me a testimonial if I do a good job.
By the way, after hiring me, he ran some facebook ads that got him no results and he's advertising on a website to the tune of $100/mont (1 year minimum contract) that sends him some 30-60 visitors a month, none of who buy.
Without me, he gets 20 new clients a month (which is a lot, as this is a residual type of business). With me, he gets 22 to 23. In other words, I get him 10-15% extra income for far less than all his other options, except referrals.
But I'm only good enough to hire and pay not to give a testimonial to.
Just had to get that off my chest.
People are strange in their behavior at the best of times. Perhaps this is a situation of them knowing that you are offering real value t their company but they don't want to verbally admit it because of things they have tried in the past (an ego thing)...and they would rather admit it by paying you.
I also like the idea of the "stupidity tax" of 30%, lol.
On a more serious note, you'll have clients like this all the time. Once I start to see that I'll be having problems I drop the client. I mean if you do horrible work and he fires you, hey whatever, do better next time, but if he thinks your work is good enough to keep hiring, then its your turn to be in control, its much better to lose a little bit of money a month and not have the stress. This is one of the things I learned my first few years in the business.
I didn't tell him I'm charging him more than what I charge other people for the same, didn't tell him it's a stupidity fee.
The last client I got, I proposed to do SEO for 10 keywords (according to Google, they have a combined 2,190 exact match searches a month). I wanted $2,777 for the set up and $973 monthly.
They thought it was expensive. So, we agreed on 2 keywords for $650 set up and $250 a month. They also hired me to do their Google places. I charged $477 for that one, which, I think, was too little: they're #1 in their suburb and several other suburbs (cover area of about 24 square miles) for one keyword, #3-4 for 4 other keywords.
The places gets about 90 visitors a month, about 75 are people who've found them some other way and are looking for direction or extra info, the rest are first timers, coming via keywords.
I'd built them 4 basic wordpress sites for $500 a pop (home page, contact us page, about us page, privacy policy page), including content on one (the others have 2 lines in the about page, a mortgage rate tables that's never been updated and 3 lines on the home page (that say, I thought I'd be able to update this site on a regular basis but I cannot. Visit my main site for regular updates.)
The main wordpress site I created converts 1 in 20. I mean, for every 20 visitors via keywords and direct, 1 calls them or fills the contact us page. (They advertise on a Romanian site that's sending them some 30 visitors a month. None has contacted them in 3 months, according to them.)
A client brings them between $3,000 to $10,200, on average $6,000. And that's if they buy only once (most only buy once, this being mortgages they're buying).
Because of the high client value, I thought they'd go for the $2,777 and $973 a month.
Turns out, I'm quite happy with the $250 a month for 2 keywords.
In about a month, they should be #1 (they're #5 for both right now). At that point, I'll propose to do more keywords, at $150 one, $125 each if 2 or more.
Not this time, not for this guy. I'm not going to make things better for him because they're already good, considering what his paying and what he's getting in return, and what we've agreed upon.
I'm having a problem with him complaining yet hiring me again. In my world, if I hire someone again, I don't complain about them.
Just to be extra clear: he hired me to do exactly what I did the first time.
