Hi All,

Something which I do in my own spare time is making websites. Over the years, I have had a string of clients who I’ve built websites for. These have mainly been for their businesses and a few of them have had some amazing success.

One client of mine is a cosmetic surgeon based around the world famous Harley Street area who owns his own practice. Over the years, I’ve improved and revamped their website, put them on Google Adwords and tried built them a blog. Now, their webpage brings in 70% of new business so he is dead pleased and happy. This is great and they are happily still chugging along and I charge them a maintenance fee every year. It’s been relatively pain free and easy to run.

Anyway, when people here that you do websites then a lot of people get very excited. A family relation owns a business and wanted me to build the website. I said that it wouldn’t be a problem but I can’t give him a definative date for completion… I’ll do it in my spare time as and when I can.

Anyway, he started calling me up frequently asking me about the website and saying that he needed it online by the end of the month. I said that I would only be able to do it in my spare time.. I’m not asking for any money or anything. People don’t understand how long it can take to build a website (those who do build websites of course would know). I’m not a web designer by trade, it’s a hobby that I’ve picked up and I’m constantly learning about it.

Ok, here’s the rant… if they are setting up a business and require a webpage for it then find a professional to make it for you. As a paying customer you have the right to shout and curse if the web designer doesn’t conform. Give them some abuse, some crap, whatever to get it done. The problem with family and friends is that you can’t really ask for money and to be honest, I wouldn’t accept money from them. At least if there is a paying customer you can tell them goodbye by pricing yourself out… if they want a small change made, tell them that it’s going to cost them £300 and you want an upfront 50% deposit… that’ll put them off! However, as you’re not being paid to do it, you’re helping them out then you can’t do it. The thing is, you’re out of pocket also as you have to do the hosting and domain registration. For myself, this is so cheap that it’s embarrassing to ask for the cost of a packet of chips and beer.

The other thing is ongoing support and updates to the website. What do you do about that? Answers on a postcard!