3 months since I last posted
I'm going to TRY to update this blog more often, as I find I have more free time these days.
So, what's happened since the last post - not an awful lot.
Here's my rant for the day. People who want stuff for free.
I spend a lot of my time working with osCommerce, which is a "free" script for creating functional e-commerce stores. The only problem with this is that people expect me to render my services for free also. People don't take into account that I sell my coding "skill" just the same as they will be selling their products.
Yesterday I answered a forum post explaining that the time taken to create what the user wants would be about 1 hour of time (in total) - it was in fact 3 or 4 small chunks of code. I gave the guy a clue how to do it and where to look in the hope that he would go ahead and spend some time "having a go".
Today I receive a "private message" along the lines of "I have no money, please code what you were talking about and upload it as a contribution".
I responded along the lines of "I charge for my time".
He responded with "I'm trying to help a friend out, who has no money".
My response "if your friend is serious about going into business, they need to spend money. Tell them to get real".
Duhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..
I cannot understand why you have NO CLUE about how business works and what it takes to become successful. Of course it is possible to start a business on a shoestring, heck I've done that enough times - but every single one of my shoestring businesses has been an online adventure selling digital downloadable products.
The number of people who think that they can start up a business (on a shoestring) selling tangible goods is staggering. Get real, you IDIOTS.
Moral of the Story
Spending money should not always be seen as EXPENDITURE - look at it as an INVESTMENT in your future.
Comment by jared — December 29, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
Along the same lines: let's say that I have a website that brings in $250 a month. If I'm trying to choose between $5/month hosting which has questionable tech support, and $30/month hosting that has excellent tech support, I'm taking a $25/month risk if I choose the cheaper one, hedging that whatever downtime I have will cost me less than $25 in business.
Usually you get what you pay for. Even if it's free.
Comment by Brian — January 2, 2009 @ 8:59 pm
Good to see you posting again!
True, a big reason osCommerce has such a big following is simply because it's free and a lot of pkeople show up expecting EVERYTHING to be free.
I have a canned message I reply to PMs with explaining how long their support request would require to get fixed and how much it would cost, and every now and then someone will respond with, "Ok, let's get started." I've been known to whip up contributions if they might have a mass appeal, looking at it as an investment. For instance the FedEx Freight module was done by request and it's brought me thousands in revenue from related freight-shipping projects. The PayPal Pro module will take another decade before I recoup time spent through donations on that monster, but it's bought me piles upon piles of work.
If someone's looking for something highly customized for free, I won't bother, but if it has a chance to help a large group of people, I find it's worth the time.