Web Design Blog

Okay first, a bit of honesty: I didn’t come up with the idea for this post on my own. It came as the result of a conversation with a good friend of mine (and fellow web guy) Brandon Richards. There, I said it. Now let’s get on with it.

Any freelancer worth their salt will tell you that word-of-mouth is an important form of advertising. I don’t know the statistics, but I’ve talked to numerous business owners who say that word-of-mouth is their main source of advertising. They might put an ad in the paper or the phone book and maybe even have a TV spot, but I’ll bet you money that the majority of their business comes about because someone told someone.

We’ve all heard that “a satisfied customer will tell one person, an angry customer will tell ten.” And though I have no desire to belittle the importance of keeping your clients happy, there may be a bit of a caveat to happy customers - Why are they happy? What are they telling others? You see, we’ve all probably had that opportunity to do “spec” work or a project for next to nothing in order to build the portfolio, gain a client, etc. But that person who gets a heckuva deal from you won’t blab that they got wonderful, trendy work from you - they’ll brag about how they got it for a song. And their friend who comes to you will be looking for the same deal.

How to avoid it: If you must give a discount of some sort, be sure to invoice the client with the standard project fee and list discounts accordingly. It might not look like it will save you much but if you have a valid reason for the discount - and not one that anybody and everybody can apply - then you’ll be justified when you charge this new client your standard rate. This will prevent you from getting more work than you can take on for a whole lot less money because you’ve become known as the “cheap guy”.

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