Good deed gone mad?

golddiggerguy · Mar 21, 2009

My partners car stopped turning over last week when i was forced to use it when she car-napped mine.

I was told by a few wannabe machanics or electrians that it was the Starter motor and rang Sisons and was going to be around £100 +

I use Sissons a local company for anything Alternator or Starter motor related and they have been around for years (1950).

Pushed it off and headed towards the garage. The guy's who were all kicking their heels before I turned up stuck their heads under the bonnet and started sticking things under the hood.

Guy comes over and said it was the battery and NOT the starter Motor "That's just £40 please"!

As i was paying him and chatting I asked if things are ok and keeping busy but he said things have slumped off and looked a bit glum.

This brings me to my 3 sites I offered to use to promote his business totally for free!! (All in total took about an hour to do with a WP template tweaked and 3 reg fee's and will use them as a testing bed for others)

Hand picked to reflect what they actually repair, fit and supply.

I just felt the need top help them as i said about the first place people look nowadays is the internet and got a look as if to say I know I think we got left behind as they had no website.

Enough waffle but a few questions,

Anyone else felt warm, fuzzy and had to do a site for someone they don't know on a day to day basis.?
Any tips if I've missed something or anyone wanting to link exchange to give it a kick.?
Am i mad with what I've done or too nice as I don't actually know the guy's but will go back once traffic starts flowing to ask about any increasing in business (who are all pushing retirment by the look of it.?

dashu1 · Mar 21, 2009

I've just started one for the Brother in Law at www.autoclave.org.uk

He doesn't know about it yet, thought I'd get it ranking & then give it to him.

Needs some work yet, I've just stuck up the basics.

woopwoop · Mar 21, 2009

As long as you get a warm fuzzy feeling for helping them.

When I've helped people in the past sometimes I wish I hadn't - usually if they don't appreciate it or ask me to do more work (for free) for them.

I think it's always nice to do stuff for people that can do stuff (or have done stuff) for you. Not just to get stuff out of it, but because people generally like helping each other out and when help is reciprocated it feels great...

Admin · Mar 21, 2009

I've done this a lot too, and these days people are happy to take advantage.

Now I set some basic terms:

They pay for the annual hosting at cost (yes I have even paid hosting for some people)
It is what it is, if you want to add or change things, then do it yourself (Wordpress) or I charge

At the end of the day if they get your time and expertise for free you shouldn't devalue that. They get a site up for nothing and shouldn't be upset if you lay out at the start some basis under which you are doing it.

It's worse with IT support, I could work day and night for free sorting people's home issues. Now I do that for real friends, but friends-of-friends charge an hourly rate.

Admin

dashu1 · Mar 21, 2009

This is kind of an interesting post because I'm in a bit of a dilemma with a project I've been working on.

I've designed a generic website for a specific professional sector (the general information would remain the same for all websites) & I was debating the best way to promote it.

I've been approached by someone within that sector who wants to "promote & market" the sites for a cut of any sales, but he's convinced that I should put a £999 price tag per site.

My gut feeling is that no one will pay that much for a website in this sector, & my idea is that I should give the website away for free if they pay the hosting, or pay more per month for a managed service (ie changing content etc).

In that way there's very little to stop people from having a site and it more or less sells itself. Plus there is competition already in this sector.

There's potentially around 20,000 websites, so my thoughts are that giving the site to them for free when they pay for hosting should encourage a rapid sign up, & once they're signed up they hopefully stop with us indefinitely.

Even 5% of the available sites at £25 per month hosting will be a significant amount of money, but should I go down this route or should I charge per website?

retired_member32 · Mar 30, 2009

i fitted a gearbox for nothing,on a fiat punto for a young girl who came to my garage and she spent about an hour ringing her friends and relatives trying to find the funds to have the job done and she burst into tears when she couldn't find the cash and i said o.k f**k it had one in stock so i sent her to the local cafe for a cup of tea and when she returned it was done....

i even got a peck on the cheek

golddiggerguy · Mar 30, 2009

You can't beat the feeling of helping people out!

People should do it more.

badger · Mar 30, 2009

Yeah, I fully subscribe to this thread.

Fell out with a mate of mine a while back who helped me construct a lego-style summer house .. Took us about 6hrs from start to finish. Deal, pre construction, was that Id build him a brochure style, optimised mini site for his business. Took me at least 2 days to fart around adding content and setting it up etc etc and making it look sweet and professional. Which I did and was happy to do.

He then tells me he thinks I should pay him something for "this is my livlihood mate".... Durrr, guess what..!?!?!? And there was me thinking I was getting some good karma by helping him out. This should have been my lesson no2.

Same thing happened a few years back when, together with at least 2 of the 1plus technicians, we ended up building this huge monstrosity of a website for a friend who had initially asked me to build him a 1 page lander for his florida villa business.. As soon as we started it was "how do people book", "can we show them a virtual tour", "can we make money from affiliate sites", "can i track the visitors"... yadda yadda..

No payment, just continual edits and frustrated phonecall messages from him saying "Im not seeing my site on page 1 anymore for [enter search term here], whats going on mate, ring me back".. I still to this day renew his domain for him and pay for his hosting.

As annoying as these two events are, nothing comes close as the well intentioned people I meet who, on hearing you do "web stuff", try putting me in touch with "brownie hut" matron (or whatever shes called) here, local garage mate there - who all apparently need a website built .. I'm still trying to learn the art of saying "thanks, but no thanks" without looking like an arrogant w*nker...

Im sure, as a post script, there will be people on here who know me who will testify to the fact that for me attempting to not sound arrogant maybe a bridge too far..

.. Happy dayz