
Why are clients shocked by the price for web development? - rbsn
In my experience as a web developer for the past year, it seems that many clients are shocked by the price for a website where they want specific functionality created just for their business. Why is this?
======
learc83
Because a wordpress[1] site with a $20 template is all most small businesses
need for their brochureware site.

The average small business needs a website with their hours, phone number,
some pictures, and maybe a blog that they'll never actually update, but they
don't really know the difference between paying someone to set up wordpress
and paying someone to build a bespoke web application.

The only reason the majority of small businesses think they need custom
functionality is because they don't know enough to know what they're really
trying to do. Try to listen to _what_ the client wants to accomplish, not
_how_ they want to accomplish it, and see if you can come up with an off the
shelf solution to their problems (or refer them to someone else who can).

Think about all those times someone on stackoverflow asks how to do something
in a really roundabout way that seems wrong. The first question you ask is
"what are you trying to accomplish?" Most of the time there is a simpler way
to do it.

Edit:

[1] When I say wordpress, I mean wordpress/drupal/cushycms not just wordpress.
Basically anything where you're not charging the client to build a custom
blog/CMS engine, or charging $2k for a custom design.

~~~
blindhippo
I cut my teeth building wordpress/drupal brochure sites for small businesses.
I have inherited custom web sites for these customers who got duped by some
punk developer who didn't feel like using an established solution.

I want to punch all developers in the mouth who think a custom application for
this type of situation is a good idea. They give us all a bad name and
exacerbate the cost problem.

~~~
vinceguidry
I want to smack all the developers and designers who think Wordpress is "good
enough". It's not. It's an unmaintainable mess. Every client-run Wordpress
site I touch is disgustingly out of date and everything added since the first
design looks like crayon drawings done by five-year olds with ADD. I don't see
much Drupal in the wild so I can't comment on that.

Web development has not reached the state where non-technical end users can
maintain websites. In theory, sure, in practice, there's tons of money to be
made fixing hacked sites and cleaning up years of technical debt.

I would not recommend Wordpress for anything other than a simple blog. Do
_anything_ else with it, you need a developer on staff. And a simple blog will
never be enough for the needs of a small business.

I'd much rather work on some 90s-era custom-built app than the vast majority
of brutally hacked together Wordpress sites.

~~~
mpclark
WordPress is excellent, and there are some mighty big WP sites out there.
You're barking up the right tree when you say "you need a developer on staff"
though. Web sites are not just "set and forget" deals. They need continuing
care and maintenance. And the whole idea of having a site that the
receptionist can take care of on a Friday afternoon, which I have found
pervasive in small businesses, has just never really worked at all.

~~~
vinceguidry
Wordpress sucks for small business. It's just that simple. It shouldn't, but
it does.

~~~
_mpf
Small business needs an easy CMS whereby staff can do most of the tasks
without present "IT Crowd". AFAIK WordPress gets it done (with some minor
problems - as you wrote fe. updating is a problem for non-technical people and
WordPress haves no MVC, so it`s easy to go spaghetti way with the code).
WordPress devs are trying to resolve problems which are most voted within the
community.

~~~
vinceguidry
They're not minor problems. Please don't underestimate the epidemic of hacked
sites that are a direct result of end-user unwillingness to upgrade and
possibly break their site. This is a problem that can't be solved without
significant architectural changes. Customers are more willing to risk getting
their websites pwned than to risk an upgrade that may take their site down, so
upgrades often aren't done for years.

It's not a small problem, its a huge one, and the primary reason why I can no
longer recommend Wordpress.

~~~
_mpf
I agree with "Security is a process, not a product." AFAIK security is
important for WordPress team. There is a lot of good documentation on a
project site and there are some materials from WordCamps (fe.
<http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress>)

Latest WP "hack" via botnets was because of weak logins and passwords which
are set by the users. Can you blame WP devs for that?

Speaking about upgrading; making updates easier it`s also one of the goals of
the project. Also it isn`t that hard when you develop WP sites using
information from WordPress Codex docs.

I hope it will get better with time, and as i wrote people are working to get
things better. Sorry to hear that you are not going to recommend WordPress any
longer.

------
jiggy2011
I think it's partly because of blurry line between software products and
programming services.

Many of the software products, proprietary or open source offer massive
functionality for very low cost but this is of course because the development
costs have been aggregated across many customers.

For example , I was asked to build an online customer management system for
someone on a budget. So I googled around for open source solutions to the
problem , found a few that fitted their requirements and showed them to the
client.

Once they found one they liked, I FTPd the PHP upto their server, setup mysql
and did the basic configuration for them. I then pointed them to the URL for
the system, gave them some basic instruction and charged them $25 for the
hour.

They were over the moon with that, since it was so quick and cheap.

Of course later they come back and say "hmm, this system is good but I wish
there was an extra field here that did this and this part should work slightly
differently".

So I said "hmm, ok. This is probably 5 hours work so except to pay around
$125". At which point they said "What?! This is just a few small changes, how
come the price is so much higher?! The system is open source, so you can just
make these changes easily". This then puts you on the defensive as you have to
justify that in fact to do these changes will involve reading a ton of someone
elses code , finding the correct places to change things and testing that
everything won't break.

Now , if they had paid $1000 for the original system (probably a fair price
for the amount of actual functionality it enabled for them) then the $125
would look more reasonable.

The amount of value that they gained for the $25 was so high that you have
their expectations have been set unreasonably high.

~~~
droithomme
Just so you know, semiskilled housecleaners charge a lot more than $25 an
hour. Car mechanics $60-$120 an hour. Plumbers $80-$120 an hour. When you
charge $25 total for a trip to his facility, the time to understand his
business problem, and an hour of setting up software for him, you are telling
the client "I have no skills and am not worthy of any respect. Please abuse
me."

~~~
jiggy2011
Well I didn't have to go onsite for this, or I would have definitely charged
more. Though I would say that installing PHP scripts to web hosts is closer to
semi-skilled labour since it can be (and frequently is) done by teenagers.

Plumbing or mechanicing have a higher barrier to entry since you usually need
certifications and a significant outlay for tools/transport/premesis etc.

~~~
reneherse
You'd be much better off basing your billing rate on the _value_ that you're
providing to the customer, rather than the cost/time that it takes you. This
is a very basic business skill, but it's not always apparent to those of us
who just like to build things, whether we get paid or not.

Try to get comfortable with the idea that you deserve to be paid very well for
your work. (It's something I've had to do.) In my case, it was very
uncomfortable to send that first message with my new higher rate. But I
spelled out the value of the work I was proposing (which had obvious benefit
for the client, but also bolstered my own mental fortitude), and the client
happily agreed. And now the client is "educated" as to what this type of thing
is actually worth. :)

Good luck!

------
blindhippo
Clients are ignorant - can't really fault them for it since it's not their
domain.

I've found it's best to let the ones who balk at the true cost walk away. They
will go find some cheap service to build what they want ("oh, can you make it
like facebook?"). They will spend 3x as much as you quoted by the end of it,
but they will learn to pay attention when a developer tells them how much it
will cost.

The second project they ask you to work on to fix the disaster of the first
will be a lot nicer.

Whatever you do, do NOT underbid, ever. I made that mistake a couple times and
it turned into nearly a year of bitter burnout. Hard to like what you do when
you are getting paid about 20% of what you should be due to invoice battles.

------
evdawg
This is an extremely complicated question. I run a UI/UX studio here in
Toronto and we go all up and down the spectrum, with some clients being
shocked at our prices for web design/development but we've also lost jobs from
other prospective clients because our prices were too low (no joke).

It depends on two things:

    
    
      1. Where you get your business
    
      2. Who your competition is
    

For many, #2 depends on #1. We see three main sources of business: Google (we
rank highly for 'Toronto web design'), Dribbble (we have the 2nd most
followers in Toronto, and 8th in Canada), and of course, referrals.

Dribbble leaves us with clients with the biggest budgets, who aren't afraid of
5-figure prices for web design. This is where we're competing with other high-
end designers and thus our prices are more in-line with theirs.

Referrals are the strongest leads, with clients who when they don't have
larger budgets are more comfortable stretching a bit because of our strong
work for a friend or mutual acquaintance (and we're often happy to mark down a
bit for a referral).

Leads from Google are where the clients who get really shocked come in; they
don't really understand or appreciate the work that needs to go into good,
iterative, considered UI/UX (and the custom development that goes along with
it). The competition here includes a swath of companies who game SEO and
outsource work offshore, and they can charge considerably less. Thus, our
prices look unreasonably higher to the untrained eye.

There's also a phenomenon where cheaper clients expect _more_. If you move up
in terms of positioning yourself as premium, better clients will consider you
and your services-- the types of clients who aren't shocked by "high prices"
for design and/or development.

So, if you find all of your clients are shocked at your prices, you're not
marketing towards the right clients.

I would also highly recommend listening to patio11's podcast #3 about making
more as a consultant: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus-
podcast-3-grow...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus-
podcast-3-growing-consulting-practices-with-brennan-dunn/), and charging more
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-
patrick-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-
mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

~~~
Jhsto
Great comment.

I'am a self entrepreneur and I do some web designing from time to time. I
recently got a lead for a organization which had EU funding of 250'000€. They
wanted me to roll two sites with independent designs and features which's
content had to be editable. I offered them my full consultation in choosing
everything from ground up, but they kept on asking for the price. Once I told
them I never heard anything back.

I offered to do the sites for about 0.5% stake of what they got from EU, but
they apparently thought it was too much.

Recently a friend of mine was observing me coding and he was astonished of the
complexity of it. As he said, 'For me, a button has always been just a button
with no further functionality.' I also let him to change the source code as he
was interested to see what effects it has on the program. He deleted a single
bracket and was amazed to find that the program failed to run. I then
continued to tell him that no matter how big your codebase is, a single
mistake such as that might screw it all.

He now understands my frustration better.

~~~
n0mad01
well, maybe that ~1000€ were far to low.

------
katzgrau
I'd strongly suspect you're working with smaller to mid-sized businesses — or
maybe just individuals.

I've done a _ton_ of work for smaller outfits, and the fact is that whatever
you're billing is coming directly out of their own wallet, or close to it.
Imagine the shock when the mechanic says you need to spend $2,500 on a new
transmission. That's what your clients feel.

That's also why I've turned away smaller projects for the past year.
Everything becomes a never-ending, underpaying project from hell where you end
up doing little tweaks for free because you're a nice guy/gal. You also end up
competing with joker developers with lower rates who will probably do a hack
job (the fight of "doing it cheap" vs "doing it right" is timeless on the
small business front).

My point: If your clients are shocked and opting not to do work with you, find
bigger clients. If bigger clients won't work with you, lower your rate and
find smaller clients.

~~~
_mpf
@katzgrau I also agree with that opinion. I think it could be extrapolated to
making sth for money in general.

~~~
katzgrau
True, but I've also noticed that large companies, where budgets are involved
and the mentality of "it's not my money" prevails, rate never really matters.

Even if they fight back at first, they typically give in, because quality is
more important than expense (since everyone wants to cover their arse).

------
brokentone
I can't think of another good or service with this much variety in price or
opacity in what you get. For small projects, you're talking free or $10ish for
an open CMS + theme to maybe $10K for custom stuff. That's a 1000x difference
(and maybe little discernable difference to the client).

If you want a car, you're paying in the thousands for a used one, in the tens
for a new one, maybe hundreds if you really, really want a nice one. 10-100x,
and there is no "free" entry point here.

Similarly with a house, it's pretty clear why house one costs more than house
two. Using apartments in Manhattan as an example, you're looking 250K for a
studio up to maybe 12.5M for a penthouse. 50x with a very clear reason.

~~~
habosa
This is the best answer I've seen. It's impossible for non-technical people to
see the difference between a custom website where you wrote ever character of
the HTML/CSS/Whatever by hand and a Wordpress.com website with a beautiful
theme for $20. Even more so, it's hard for them to see that once you want to
add a single feature or two that don't fit the Wordpress mold, you're likely
to have to go from-scratch for the entire website and charge 100x what they
were previously paying.

~~~
nnq
Indeed. Any idea about how to _explain_ to non-technical people what this
difference is? This is the kind of question I'd like answered.

(Otoh, concerning WP, you can, unfortunately, fit almost anything into the WP
mold, or "around" it - at least when you are past the point of having read and
understood most of its source code and you know the db layout by heart...
yeah, it's terrible and the whole thing works against you if you want to write
good, clean, testable code, but it still ends up the cheapest option you can
give to a client if you want to be honest with him)

~~~
mikeash
If you want a road-worthy production car, expect to pay on the order of
$10,000.

If you want a road-worthy production car with design or features that none of
the extant manufacturers have seen fit to build, expect to pay on the order of
$1 billion.

The overall prices are higher, but the difference in cost is similar, and the
principle basically the same.

------
awicklander
It's because most people don't have a point of reference for web development
costs, and their experience with web products is with applications that have
been around for a couple years with millions (or tens or hundreds of millions)
of dollars of development time put into them. Facebook, Twitter, Square,
Basecamp, etc.

When someone walks into a $5 million dollar home they instantly know it's an
expensive home not because they're aware of the materials and craft that went
into building the house. It's because they have a point of reference, their
home, for what something costs and they're able to extrapolate an approximate
cost for something far more expensive.

People don't have this point of reference for web development because most
people haven't ever hired someone to build a web app for them before, and most
people have never tried to build a web app on their own.

A tip: Ask people for a few sites that they like and that they use. Take a
look at them and approximate how much time it would take you and your team to
get that application built from scratch.

Then say - okay to build an approximate version of X, you'd probably be
looking at a team of 3-4 people (or 6-8, etc.) working full time for X months.

So that site likely would cost around X dollars for you to build.

The point isn't to get them to understand our craft and the effort involved.

This exercise helps give them a point of reference for how much the things
they use every day cost, and from there they can start being realistic about
what they can get within their budget.

------
hcho
Because most client can't tell a wordpress installation with a theme from
ThemeForest from a ground up build up. Most actually need the former, but
sound like needing the latter.

------
andyhmltn
Because web development is easy. Why would I pay so much when you sit on the
computer for a few hours pressing buttons. It requires nowhere near as much
skill as say.. A builder. /s

~~~
nuxx
Are you kidding? Web development is not just "pressing buttons". Get back to
your Joomla or Wordpress site and think again before you post.

~~~
andyhmltn
Maybe I was too optimistic in people's ability to notice blatant sarcasm haha

------
DanBC
People don't have any clue about what's involved. They maybe have had some
printwork done on the cheap before, and see this as similar.

And when I say they don't have a clue about what's involved you need to
remember that many people can't plug in a printer. They have no idea about 300
dpi or 75 dpi or low quality jpegs or cross browser ("I click 'the internet'
and there it is") or HTML or CSS or anything else.

But this is perhaps an opportunity! (A painful opportunity that's possibly
full of woe, but still).

You create 5 mini sites of varying levels of complexity. You start with
totally passive, html & css only, no updates, few images. You then build up,
including tiny bits of dynamic content (roll-overs, javascript) all the way up
to full content management. You describe how many hours of work are needed to
create each of these, you show examples of wireframes. You also describe the
design decisions the client would need to make ("Will your content change once
a year? Your best choice is X But if you will add content once a week your
best choice is Y").

You then give tentative costings. You make sure they're labeled as tentative
and subject to change because of work involved.

You invite potential customers to talk to you about what they need.

Hopefully this will filter out people who have wildly wrong ideas about the
costs or times, and will encourage people who want a website but who were too
baffled to ask.

Of course, there are many risks of dealing with totally naive clients and it
could be hellish.

------
jayroh
If you present it as a commodity, they will treat it as such. "A website" is a
thing. "A tailored solution to help your business do X" is not.

~~~
marcloney
I remember early on in my web development career to make sure you are selling
a service not a product. You aern't building a website - you are providing a
marketing service, requiring expert advice and a component of that service is
building a website. As people have said, websites are easy - Wordpress + theme
+ hour of time and you are done.

Sell your knowledge of digital marketing - SEO, Adwords, etc in order to drive
sales for your client, which is ultimately the reason they want a website in
the first place.

------
alexdowad
Just to throw in my 10 cents, if I've learned one thing in my own web dev
consulting, it is...

WORK FOR PEOPLE WITH MONEY. LOTS OF IT.

It makes all the difference in the world.

------
proxwell
Essentially, you're shocking your client with price because you haven't
adequately explored and quantified the value of the benefits you're providing
to their business.

Anytime you are building a web application, you are actually solving a
business problem for your client. For example, that problem may be more
driving sales or reducing staff time spend on a particular task.

You need to spend time diving into this with them to figure out what your
project is really about. Then you can ask targeted questions to the client.
For example:

"So, right now you're telling me that Jan and Ella are spending 20 hours a
week processing the proposals. If we could reduce that to 5 hours per week,
how much would that save you?"

"If we could improve the conversion rate on your flagship product by 10%, how
much would that be worth annually in new revenue"

Once you've asked some questions like this, you can then position your price
relative to these other values that the client has affirmed for you.

All of a sudden, it makes it much harder for them to feign shock at paying
$25k for a system which increases revenue by $250k in the first year.

If you're not working with clients who have valuable problems to solve, find
clients who do.

------
r0s
Consider that dissonance: a website is a magic black box from the outside.

That will work to your advantage, you can skip the technical details and make
it as efficient as possible. This means you should focus on selling the site
as a solution to a business problem. Working out what that is, is the hard
part. Many times the client has no idea and no goals.

Another advantage is the visual nature of the web. Details of what a site
actually _does_ are mostly visual elements. This means the Designer and Coder
will be one in the eyes of the client, if the coder exists at all. I recently
learned this lesson the hard way: I as a developer, brought on a designer
friend to help with a contract. Introduced them to the client and we put in a
bid. Soon, a design firm came in and took the contract, selling a design and
insisting on bundling all development.

My mistake was the disconnection between designer and developer. The client
doesn't know or care. Bad client? Maybe, but it seems like a common theme to
me.

------
SandB0x
Isn't this the simplest thing if you want a no-fuss brochureware site?

* Go to Wordpress.com

* Choose a custom address ($18.00 / year for youraddress.com)

* Pick a pleasant theme

* Type in your content

Job done, right?

------
devb0x
I wrote my own CMS that can do a few things really well and was marketing it.
Found a client and I'd been charging a client a few South African Rand every
month to host a website for their business. Really low cost, in my error.

Then i started getting asked to do more work on the site.

Then they wanted a site design and they were complaining they needed more
business from the site so I didnt charge. I went out of my way to redo their
design, meet with them, find the correct demasque background, logo redesign
and content updates.

Then another small site I was running for them at a lower cost suddenly needed
changes. So I barked a bit and they backed off.

Then they came back and said that on the first website they needed more
business because another channel was failing them. someone had suggested they
setup a blog to get new clients. Would I help?

I replied back and said for the monthly fee I was being paid i couldnt support
more work or blog integration, not at that rate. We could discuss a retainer
for that kind of work...

They turfed me on both websites - Gone to someone cheaper they say that also
allows them to update the website as they choose and setup a blog.. So can I
give them a backup of the sites? Sure cuz it was in my terms of service.

So I thought I was doing them a favour- low costs, possibility of self
maintaining the site, a new theme design, managed hosting and email.

Turfed. My wife is pissed at the time I put into them.

I on the other hand have realized this - 1\. Small business dont want to pay a
lot of money for anything 2\. Small business dont want to pay anything for
services. If you ask for payment they will balk and possibly not enter an
engagement 3\. Small business will want everything done, plus the clothes off
your back. And when you cant anymore they'll say you suck and move on.

Im now not even marketing the web dev side of my skills anymore.

------
jroseattle
I've found that most of the confusion comes from a mis-understanding of the
service that is being provided.

My clients understand they're not buying a blog, or an e-commerce shopping
cart, or a newsletter system, or {insert some feature here}. Rather, they're
paying for my time and expertise -- and to provide that in context of what
they want.

Any time I've encountered a customer who has sticker shock, I've always
focused on making sure they knew what they were buying. More often than not,
that always made customers much more comfortable. And, in a few cases, I
explained that they should look for someone to provide their requested service
at a lower cost. (Surprisingly, several customers freaked out and then pleaded
with me to take their project. Go figure.)

------
_mpf
@rbsn I don`t know how much do you charge hourly, but i`ll assume that it`s
fair price for a job done. If it is so, maybe your clients are cheapskates?
There is a trend in thinking (especially within small business owners or
managers) that good "website" is easy to make and there is a lot of people who
can do it. I would agree with the second, but not the first. Usually after one
or two bigger failed projects wise firms learn price to quality ratio. There
rest are cheapskates that must be avoided ;)

------
inovator
Because they thought web development is just hacking together html and css;
and you dont need any logic but just sitting down and hacking it away! To be
honest, I used to have that mindset until I got a front end developer job. It
is a nightmare to get pixel perfect style on every single browsers and
devices. Not to mention, when we do a simple google search we can see so much
websites and people offering to do "web developing" for such a low cost.

------
swayvil
Even more amazing is when you aren't dealing with a client (who is by
definition clueless) but a manager (who really should know what it is that he
is managing).

Ex : "This client's site is all fucked up. A simple upgrade isn't possible
because it was written 3 version back and the formats for everything changed.
Rewrite it from scratch using this hideously complex tool which you've never
touched before. It'll take you only 40 hours, right?".

------
michaelpinto
Because you're talking to inexperienced clients! So if your client owns a
small store and wants a site like amazon.com that client will have sticker
shock pretty quickly. On the other hand if your client is an IT manager who is
looking for a specific widget that client will have a very good idea what
things cost. In fact that IT manager may even assume that costs will go higher
than your estimate.

------
enrolly
I was looking for a company to build a website for me in the UK the prices
were not realistic like $1000 a day and most of them needed a 50 working days
to build version 1.

As a business owner I know it will cost money but not in this rate. Now I am
in Morocco with a great team, they are working 12 hours a day to finish this
project for much much cheaper cost same quality. ++ Marrakesh weather is a
bonus.

------
piotr_krzyzek
A good chunk of my core business is web development and have been doing this
for quite some time now. There are many factors that go into the buyers
decision making process.

A large part of that is perception. Most buyers do not see websites as a high
ticket items. Many see it as either just another business expense they have to
make or they do not think it's worth investing into because it will not give
them much of a return on their investment.

If your clients are shocked by the prices you give them, then there is
miscommunication between your value & message and what they think their are
getting. It's all about managing expectations.

When talking with the prospect about their future goals, and they mention they
just need a website that (and I quote from a client here): "is very simple and
just lists my name, my companies name and an address." That is NOT a client
who will pay any sort of real money for a website. That type of client is best
lead to the $10 website services. ... at least for me. I do not want to be
dealing with such a low end client.

Though, one follow-up to such a client request that I've used to great success
is:

Me: Just to make sure I'm understanding your correctly, you're looking for a
ultra simple website that is essentially a business card but online right?

most of the time they will answer:

Them: Well, no not a business card. I'd want to be able to put some article on
there, pictures, and there really should be a way for people to contact me
through the site.

Me: Ah, so it's not something so 'simple' is it? Let's talk about what your
business goals are. Where do you see your company being in 3 months? 6 months?
1 yr? Do you know to use the website at all for any sort of lead generation,
information gathering and in-bound marketing?

At this point, they will usually start realizing that there is a lot of high
value items to do done. Their needs and actual budget will now dictate which
you and they will be able to take.

If you're unsure of what they can afford, you can always say something like:

"A project like this usually start around $15,000. Do you have a budjet
allocated for a project like this? .... No? Ok, what do you believe it is
worth and there are ways we can reduce this price by removing some items of
value, so what value would you like to remove so that we can fit it into your
budget?"

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cajuntrep
Because non-technical people have no idea what you do. If I were to freelance
or do web development I would position myself on the high end, and only target
those customers. When you have customers that appreciate your work and don't
think price is an issue, then you have the choice to choose who you want to
work with.

ie. Raise your rates! :)

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gte910h
Why they're shocked isn't worth getting into really at first: The first
question is, are they even able to get that sort of budget together. Then the
second question is, what sorts of things are available for budgets they can
muster up, and what are the constraints on said things.

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n0mad01
perhaps it is an overlap of several psychological phenomena.

1) from the look wise, a webservice indistinguishable from a page in a
magazine.

2) functionality is a button, slider, or an input field, the result in the
normal case, a table and often it is even for experts difficult to see the
effort behind.

3) the construction of a car / bridge etc. is still somewhat understandable
for outsiders, materials such as work processes are visible and
understandable, programming is different here, people that never dealt with it
can not see the difference between static html and data from a e.g. graph db.

4) the real effort have computers or was it servers?

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dave_sullivan
Because they have no experience working with developers, nor respect for the
skill. But when they find out you make more money than they do, they start to
wonder if they maybe got into the wrong business.

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wyck
History. There was a time when web sites where not dynamic and build with
WYSIWYG editors, this "type" of creating still exists and gets lumped in with
everything else due to sheer ignorance.

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toddan
<irony> because web developers are not real programmers/developers </irony>

No but most of the time, clients compare it to the css theme a 15year old did
for their wordpress install.

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artumi-richard
Aren't we all shocked by the prices of things occasionally. Don't we sometimes
think a thing should be cheaper than it is, especially when it's a new thing
to us.

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level09
Because of lack of knowledge about software development and how complex it is.

They usually associate complex work with physical products (laptops, phones,
cars .. )

~~~
rbsn
So how can we get across that it is that much more complex than many people
think? I considered explaining that it is like asking an interior designer to
design your kitchen, or any other room in your house so that it is completely
unique to you and that you're not buying Ikea flat pack furniture and putting
it sporadically around your house.

~~~
blindhippo
Prototypical freelance gig: please use Ikea furniture, our budget is not
large. Just change the height of that table from 3ft to 2.75ft. Also, please
make it fit in this room that's too small for it. Stack this Ikea couch on top
of it, but leave room for another chair that my uncle built in the 80s.

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epo
What are you quoting them? If it's too high they might be right to be shocked.

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Jleagle
Because those stupid 1&1 adverts where you get a custom site for like £10

~~~
sokoloff
Yes, but an awful lot of small businesses (plumber, dog walker, restaurant,
transmission shop, barber, etc) just need a basic brochure-ware site with some
text, a few photos, an address, phone number and hours and maybe a contact
form or hosted email. 1&1, Wix, Webs, Weebly, Wordpress.com, GoDaddy,
Homestead/Intuit, Vistaprint, and probably 100 other places offer that
DIY/lightly configured site offering. If that's the thing your (non-)client
needs, why should they pay 100x that for something no functionally better for
them? They don't want a website. They want more revenue, and they want their
customers to be able to find, learn about, and choose them; a website is just
a means to that end...

Disclaimer: I work for Vistaprint, who also owns Webs, and I always speak only
for myself on news.yc, never for my employer.

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peterchon
craigslist.

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aparajayah
Aparajayah is providing best Web Development Services, Software Development,
Opensource development and Cms Development Services with latest industrial
standards.

<http://www.aparajayah.com/web_development>

~~~
saddestcatever
HackerNews: Step 1: Contribute to conversation Step 2: Link to your own
business as an example.

I think you forgot step 1

