Tag: Pricing

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7 Reasons Why I Avoid Estimates

Every time I need to do estimates, I cringe a little. I no longer do estimates for small and medium clients since it creates false expectations and takes a huge amount of time. Estimations, by their very nature, are educated guesses. But the word "guess" doesn't inspire much confidence. Predicting a project's exact amount of time, resources, or costs can be like trying to forecast the weather weeks in advance. Variables change, unexpected challenges arise, and the landscape of a project can shift drastically from inception to completion. [caption id="attachment_11618" align="aligncenter" width="682"] Useless estimates[/caption] Which is why I talk about pricing and… Continue Reading
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Blogging And Helping the WordPress Business Ecosystem

There's been a good amount of WP drama lately for various reasons, but one of the most important ones is struggling. Because that's where many people are in the WordPress community - they struggle. Freelancers work with non-educated customers asking for cheap changes. Agencies have a hard time growing since decent clients tend to avoid WordPress for reasons. Now, I'm amplifying that for a reason. Of course there are some clients who pay good amounts and look for high quality. But the vast majority of customers are not there yet, and the main reason they are after WordPress is low cost. WordPress… Continue Reading
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WordPress Services and My Pricing Strategy

Pricing has always been a painful topic for everyone, both clients and contractors/companies. Clients try to keep it as low as possible (normally) and contractors try to earn more (again, normally). There are quite a few videos, books, tutorials and blog posts on the subject, and not as many people talking about that. Chris Lema is one of the most open people when it comes to pricing, and he's helped me to negotiate on projects and find out the best possible way to discuss projects with serious customers who would like to build a given software and have a clear vision… Continue Reading
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Why Does WordPress Fall Behind In Tech?

What I call a "Community Virus" is a fraction of a community that sets a bad example. You know, when you're a part of the society and there's a small (or larger) number of people doing bad stuff and are loud and annoying at the same time, and you tend to get embarrassed while shopping near them in the supermarket or at the airport. The Manifesto I was reading an email from Curtis with his manifesto - "NO is NOT a Curse Word" (definitely subscribe here and read it) and he's explaining his strategy for working with customers and valuing his services. It's a… Continue Reading
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The Abusement of Open Source

The Free Software Foundation has a clear and concise definition of free software - which is tightly connected to what we refer to "open source" with some verbal modifications: “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software” to show we do not mean it is gratis.… Continue Reading
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How to Determine the Cost of a University Website?

Pricing is never easy. Estimating work is one of the most tedious activities for me when discussing a new project proposal - let alone a migration or something based on an existing code base. This was the reason for me to write Why Are Estimates Challenging For Custom Development Work? and engage in similar discussions every now and then. The main problem is that there’s often a disconnect between a customer’s expectations or budget and the cost of building a solution. Most of the actual development goes into building various layers that don’t expose UI, integrating caching engines, dealing with… Continue Reading
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Envato Or Why Race To the Bottom Is Dangerous?

I have a few friends who are pretty good with WordPress development, have a few decent plugins out there and love the community. They started small and began with playing with some themes and plugins, and then learned development by building their own solutions in the evening and over the weekend. For some of them that adventure happened some 6-7 years ago. They still love WordPress, and they also like the community. They maintain their free plugins and such. But they have to do other 9-to-5 jobs in order to make a living. They've tried to sell their services and products, but within… Continue Reading
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Code Quality And Free Plugins

Update Apr 29, 2015: My friend Emil from ThemeReview.co announced their Plugin Review service which I highly recommend for all plugin authors, business owners and clients - high quality means higher security, better performance and compatibility for your project. We have these regular discussions on Open Source, the future of WordPress and such. I've been discussing the global community aspect and the challenges with the self-made development titles, so let's take a closer look at the community. Growing WordPress As I've said before, I'm all in when it comes to having an Open Source platform for everyone to use and play it. It's… Continue Reading
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On WordPress Talent Shortage

Last week Andy Adams posted a great post - The WordPress Talent Shortage Might Be a Pricing Problem. I hadn't met Andy before, noticed the post through Brian and Jeffro, but I read it three times and I do agree with a lots of his thoughts and conclusions. I’d like to propose that the shortage of developers might actually be a pricing problem. Specifically, WordPress salaries and rates are not high enough to draw talent. What is the level of our experts? WordPress Development Experts If we ignore the Job Title discussion or the issues with the community experts for a bit, the developer community… Continue Reading
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Estimation Is Arbitrary – Risk is Out There

Chris Lema posted about his approach for Estimating Without Requirements and this is one of the most brilliant posts of his that I've ever read. When I started my freelance career, the first thing I encountered was the estimation challenge. Working full-time at a company is often estimation-free - you can give some rough numbers in a matter of weeks or so, but in general the work takes as long as it takes and that's it. Some of the PM resources online suggest that you need to multiply your estimate by 1.5 or even by 3 if you're not too experienced. Then… Continue Reading