Is it just me or does every ID freelancer notice that most/majority of clients looking to hire freelance help are cheapskates and individual inventors?
I often get calls for projects where the client has absolutely no realistic budget. I know of no other profession where people expect you to create, innovative, develop great things every time that can make millions yet only expect to pay peanuts. Worse yet, some even ask for free design in exchange for a promise of a pot of gold that may never happen. The ones who pay the peanuts don’t want to share any more with you later too.
I always get the same type of client…some dude that “has some ideas” but is self-funded so don’t have a lot of money yet want to make millions off their invention. They are genreally super paranoid too that you’ll steal the idea yet ask you to give them the NDA. I would think they would do the work and draft their own NDA terms. Stupid and lazy!
The thing is the invention usually isn’t worked out and would need some serious ID and ME intervention to do right. Yet their budgets are rarely over $8K US if that or even less. Sheesh a patent lawyer easily costs twice that or more and isn’t really helping to innovate on the actual item.
It would be nice if there were some general published standards of a ballpark of what something costs so that here’s some sort of reference for say a phone, a computer mouse, a keyboardish item. What’s a server bezel cost up to 3D CAD and renderings? I know it’s general but at least there’s some general range area / standards to go by. Maybe US$9K on the cheap to get to CAD? I can;'t see any real good ID project costing less than $15K and real firms are in the mid to high 5 figures and beyond I imagine.
Ideally they would just let me go hourly rate but people rarely go for that and want a fixed cost that ends up having you eat a ton of unexpected hours. Account for the expected hours in your quote and bam…they think you’re too high…even though it is realistic in terms of real manhours.
How many have heard this one? “Do some sketches for free so we can see if you’re qualified? Or we’ll put your name on it if you do it for free. Or do it for cheap/free, it’ll be a great portfolio piece. If it doesn’t sell well can we get a refund of the ID fee? How much per sketch, how many sketches do we get for $300?”
This is a tough profession to put into dollars. A grocery clerk has a much easier time cause what it is on the label is what it is.
Do you think it is good practice to start charging some money to meet with clients? Most potential clients just come and talk and then want quotes that then lead nowhere so I think I should get some dough for all the time I waste seeing if their project is any good and doing quotes. If I had a few hundred bucks for every pipedreamer I had to talk to and do a proposal for, I’d be somewhat well off or at least have some lunch money.
Thanks for letting me vent a bit. =)