I am successful at what I do not because I work “hard” but because I know the right kind of thing to do with my job.
Lets cut to the chase, money is the main issue with any service now a days. Often times I get asked the following:
Q: “I want to add in this new feature, is that hard? It seems easy to do, can you just do that?”
A: Yes I can. What is your budget and deadline?
Here we have a common misconception, specifically this thought: “If its hard the price will increase, I will try to have my developer only do easy things because it will be cheaper!” – That is totally false.
What I think is really being asked here is “Can you do it for free because its easy?” The answer is no.
Cost is almost always based on a clients budget and time limitation. Multimedia, Web design, and programming is easy for me, I find it enjoyable, and although that does not effect price in any way it does make all the difference in the world when it comes to quality!
Attitude is very important. I find that because I truly enjoy my job in the multimedia field that things tend to work out, I usually know from experience how to handle a situation.
I think it’s important to embrace saying “I don’t know, but I will find out for you!“.
The wrong kind of thing to do:
Cutting corners to satisfy a demand.
For example, lets install some CMS software on the client’s web server and they could have a social network paid membership website for about $900 in about 2 days. That’s right, a social network for $900 in 24 hours. Would it be as good as Facebook or Twitter? Not at all, in fact it would be a total lemon, it would break down, be abused by spam bots that would steal peoples info, hackers would use it for identity fraud (and the client might get sued). Not at all worth $900.
The right kind of thing to do:
Being honest about delivery and scope.
To elaborate a bit more if we were to build something awesome for a much more realistic price and time frame, lets say the client wants to rebuild a social network like LinkedIn but specifically for a niche industry. They might be looking at a 6 digit budget and 9 months of labor. Complete with security, support, and working well on mobile devices. By doubling the price it might get done in 1/2 the time because a whole team could be put togather!
So there you have it, time a budget are the only limitations. The answer is always YES, I CAN DO THAT FOR YOU! (However, I like to ask: Is this right kind of thing to do for you?)