Pricing – to Share or Not to Share

May 8, 2019 by MzD

So I wrote this draft so long ago, it’s comical. And it doesn’t really end. But my thoughts remain similar. For giggles, I’m going to publish it, seeing as I’ve just turned comments off and it no longer will be a magnet for all that noise. Instead it will hopefully push me to blog more and start that workshop on pricing I want to do. Cheers.”

Money is a really delicate subject. More so amongst Canadians than Americans, if my personal small sampling counts as an accurate take on the pulse of money. Probably a leftover from our Rule Brittania days, stiff upper lip and all that colonizer madness.

I’ve read blogs and books that strongly advocate to never disclose your pricing in your marketing materials when you’re in the service industry (this obviously would not be the strategy if your business is a restaurant) and also read the exact opposite advice – that showing your prices attracts clients.

We had a pricing blurb up for a while – I think it attracted bottom feeders.

Recently a programmer we work with told me he is going to raise his rates. I was not surprised, in fact, I wondered why he hadn’t done this sooner. On the other hand, when I compare him with another professional we work with, whose rates were triple that of the programmer (on an hourly basis) in fact what I noticed is that overall for the job the rates were the same. That is to say, the chap charging triple rates was definitely not billing for every hour, whereas the one with the lower rates was. So in the end, on a given project, the amount they each billed out came out the same.

What’s important is the value. They both provided us with equal and great value. However they worked out the math is up to them. How we dealt with the unknown is to put milestone and caps in place. ie: when you’ve reached x amount of hours = $1k let us know, before we start piling on more feature requests and then we’ll see if it’s worth it, and then we can translate that to the client. If they have a super small budget, it won’t be worth it. If they have some latitude, but want to control costs, they can be happy knowing the details.

I’ve seen website designers say, well “we can design a site for $2,000 or you can add (insert x amount of zeroes) and we can design that too.” Which, I know really only irritates clients, and yet of course it is truthful. I do wonder however, about such a range. If you’re used to doing sites for less than $10K can you really and truly handle a $100K project just like that? Bring it on!😉 Chances are you don’t immediately have the resources available to scale up to that size. Which doesn’t mean you can’t, just that if you’re honest with yourself, your small company (2-5 employees eg) isn’t really competing with an ad agency that offers services in London, New York and Dubai, and employs 500 people.

If a designer (or coach, or photographer) doesn’t immediately reveal their prices on their website, it might be because the reverse question should be openly asked to potential clients – what is your budget? No beating around the bush, no apology. A knowledgeable designer should not respond to the answer, “About $10K” with a quote that neatly caps out at $9,900 and explains nothing. Add (or subtract) zeroes as you wish. Ultimately the sharing of pricing will come with a list of features attached. You want to save $2K – dump the customized widget that you think is really cool, but ultimately isn’t going to help your business.

Mini update 2021

Reading these thoughts now reminds me that things always shift. I used to see frequent pricing for site-maintenance (specifically WordPress) in the $25 – $99 per month range. Now I see that AI handles the job, and it’s $8/ month. There’s absolutely zero point trying to compete with AI. Unless you’re truly trying to differentiate the hands-on / eyes-on the page service. Most companies would have that sorted in-house though, no?

Recent Work

September 16, 2016 by MzD

Two recent site launches.
David Harding | Violist, Professor, Chamber Musician

SOUTHPIER CAPTIAL INC – A Venture Capital Firm in Toronto/Oakville, Ontario.

End of the Year Lists

December 22, 2015 by MzD

My mother always made lists. I remember seeing them on the glass top of the side table beside the ashtray and coffee cup. They were lists for what you might expect — groceries, chores, events planning— and there were also more obscure lists, that might not have computed in my 6 year old brain, but their quixotic meanings do resonate now, as I make lists about the same mundane things and also more random notes that help me remember things at 4am. They are obscure and yet the writing down of the words —enchantress, mountain, yellow— while meaningless at a casual glance, they will help me remember in the morning to research more about Ada Lovelace, to finish the concept proposal I’m working on and to look for a yellow scarf. I saw a woman with my skin tone wearing a yellow scarf, and the lust for the perfect yellow accessory was born. Perhaps Santa will oblige.

I’m a big fan of lists. Written in pen. On anything, the back of an envelope, a bill, recycled, reused, you name it. Digital lists are important (we use basecamp as software of choice for project management) and yet the pen in hand has a kind of transmission to the brain that feels more solid. Not just an illusion, cognitive science studies endorse this perspective.¹

The activity in the North Pole is almost at peak energy, and the nice and naughty lists are no doubt done. But there’s still time for some lists.

Here are 2 of my lists for the end of the year:

Annual Business Planning / Website Maintenance

Domain Names
Check your domain name’s expiry and mark the renewal date in your calendar. I let a domain name go past the expiry date this year (long story – old email address that didn’t send me the renewal) and had to cough up a staggering $250 to renew it. (the average price of a domain is 15 bucks). It was worth it, but a costly lesson. We have a gadzillion domain names, so this year I’m going to make a spreadsheet to keep track. Some will also be let go of. Hopefully not to vultures.
Schedule Back-ups and Updates
Set up a schedule (if you don’t have someone doing this for you – ahem:) to backup your website on a schedule, and to keep plugins updated on a regular basis. We do this on pretty much a weekly basis. Note the qualifier “pretty much” – this year it will be on the calendar scheduled on a specific day and time.
Plan to Blog
Put it on your calendar. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly…. Make a master list of blog topics in advance. I started doing this at the end of November, and it’s been very useful. Also going onto Basecamp to keep track. With reminders!

And to contrast the practical to-dos, here’s a deceptively simple and yet ingenious way to consider planning et al.

Annual Word of the Year.

Christine Kane² is one of several, but I believe the first, to introduce this concept. Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions, which are usually too big and rarely kept, choose one word to guide you for the year. The first time I tried this I chose “balance” and coincidentally ended up with a flu that gave me an inner ear thing and I had dizziness for months. It almost threw me off the pursuit, but in the end the word did help me prioritize my life in ways that felt more in balance. This year (2015) is was Value. Hence I did willingly part with the dough to renew a domain name for my artwork, as I decided it was valuable on so many levels.

Get a fresh blank piece of paper, or nice shiny graphed notebook.
Make a list of words.
Let them dance around in your head. See which ones create “sparks of joy”. Read Marie Kondos’ book on decluttering for more on that concept³.
Choose.
Enjoy

Ada Lovelace – Fare Thee Well!

December 10, 2015 by MzD

I was thinking about women in tech, it being December and as I write this draft, one day post the anniversary of the Montreal massacre at École Polytechnique.¹ 14 women engineering students gone. RIP.
There was also the very recent and unfortunate (to put it mildly) IBM ‘s hairdryer hackathon blunder, ² serving as a reminder that women still ain’t got no respect.

So I thought to write a tribute post to Ada Lovelace, born exactly two hundred years ago on December 10th, 1815. Daughter of poet Lord Byron and arguably, the first computer programmer, she was—in a word—brilliant. Her parents split up when she was a baby, and her mother seems to have not regarded her ex the poet in the best light, and so encouraged Ada to study mathematics, so as to not follow in her father’s romantic (and insane³) footsteps.

She took to it well, eventually collaborating with Charles Babbage (mathematician, philosopher and inventor). In 1842 she translated from French L.F. Menabrea’s paper about Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine (an “early mechanical general-purpose computer”). Her own notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer “The paper ends with the famous “Note G”, in which she analyzes an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers and shows the code for it on the (never built) machine”.⁴

Which is all to say, she was no slouch in the brains department.

If we think that the STEM community (Science, Technology, Engineering , Math) hasn’t yet caught up with the face that woman are essential and critical members of the technosphere and beyond, then one wonders what it must have been like Ada her back in the day. I searched through the Library of Congress American newspaper archives and all I could find was one(!) reference to her. And it’s not about her mathemtical achievement. The Daily Union from 1845, a few years after her collaboration with Charles Babbage, reports her (at 29 years old) as being a “fine, buxom girl, with a good-humoured, but not overly intellectual countenance”.

I’ve only done preliminary research into her life, but she apparently was following her father’s footsteps in at least one sense — she gives a poetic slant to how the engine might compose music.

“Again, it [the Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine . . . Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”⁵

She died young, at 36, and requested to be buried next to her father.

To Quit Social Media or To Fade Away?

November 25, 2015 by MzD

I bumped into a friend/colleague the other day on the street and had a great chat about public art and whatnot. Later, I received an email from him, but didn’t get it right away because my email forwarding wasn’t working. When I did finally open it, rather than reply right away, I had seen something on twitter he might appreciate, so I immediately jumped on twitter to mention it to him.

And … crickets.

He wasn’t there.

I couldn’t quite grasp this, thinking he must have changed his profile or something. I have known him as an extremely prolific tweeter. So I emailed and he confirmed that he had left twitter. And, even more dramatic, deleted all his social media profiles. Gasp!

I confess, one of my first thoughts was, “Aaack — but you had so many followers (in the thousands) and “you only followed a few hundred” – your follower/followee ratio* was fantastic! “….

I admired his decisive move to cut the ties to the hive mind and lose the what he called “junk language” to focus on his own work and keep critical thinking free from the sometimes banal or trivial tone of these spaces.

He is not alone in his flight from social media. In the last couple of weeks, 2 other people that I know have also dropped off the airwaves. I also deleted that you-know-who app from my phone, and after a few days of withdrawal noticed I hardly ever go there anymore. And generally get a bit of the doldrums when I do. I wrote about social media fatigue in the spring.

What To Do When You Leave The Shoe

So if you’re considering leaving the hive mind, here are some tips for off-roading:

If you’re using social media for professional purposes, it’s a good idea to keep the profile live. You could tweet something simple “Not currently keeping this account active” and change your bio line to emphasize where to reach you (like your website (which should already be there of course) – or linkedin …)
Announce or have a status report on your departure. Although there’s no need to announce if you’re only taking a short break— like a few days, or hours;). Consider if this is a temporary (like 1-3 months ) absence or a longer term. Your profiles should reflect that.
Unless you’re taking the Kurt Vonnegut approach. Then by all means delete and be done with it.
The return. When you come back, you don’t need to say “blowing the dust off this account”. Just start tweeting, posting etc. No one cares about the dust. Unless they are an archivist. Or you’re famous, in which case you have a handler, and probably aren’t even allowed to tweet by yourself.
The return if you went AWOL by a total delete: If you want to start completely fresh, with new friends, new followers then you might want to consider more carefully how many accounts you keep live, how many people you follow / friend etc. It was the overwhelming noise that drove you away in the first place, no? Why go all hustle and bustle right away?

If you want to disappear completely, well good luck with that. It’s a challenge to wipe away all traces, but I’m sure it can be done.

To Sidebar or Not To Sidebar?

November 18, 2015 by MzD

Sidebars—

For a while now the design trend has been to kill the sidebar, present your content lean and mean, no distractions and so on.

That is all wonderful if you’re a writer and you’re telling a story, and the viewer only needs to read that one story, then that minimalist approach probably works for you.

But, if you’re in the situation where your blog might also have a more nefarious purpose … having folks opt-in to your newsletter ; offering something for sale, or a deal (horrors); or even the old chestnut – showing your archives and ~~tag cloud~~ (kill that feature – it’s probably obsolete)—then maybe you do need one, particularly if it is converting well for you.

Mobile Caveat —Keep in mind that it will be pushed down to the bottom of the page when viewed on a mobile device . Provided your design is responsive or mobile friendly – if not…what’s the delay?

Thoughts on what to keep in the sidebar (if you keep it)

Opt-in offers. I love this word offers, it makes me think of offerings to the Gods—you are offering up your newsletter, free e-book, something free and shiny, in exchange for capturing their sacred email.
List of popular posts/recent posts/archives.
Links to resources.

The 2nd one, the list of posts, would be dependent on where you’re at in your blogging volume and what type of blog you have. Obviously, if fairly new, or (ahem) you don’t have a ton of posts, then popular posts doesn’t apply. If there is a lot of content and I really like the blog, I find it irksome if I can’t easily navigate through the archives, so it’s always nice to see a link to them somewhere.

What to de-clutter from your sidebar

Still have a default meta log-in widget? (Meta
Log in | Entries | RSSComments|RSS | WordPress.org ) Out the Door It Goes
The tag-cloud
Video that plays automatically
Too many images

Use your own judgement about what should stay and what should-go, but it’s a good idea to remember less is usually more. And…

to b or not to b — Split A/B Testing or even A/B/C

How about an experiment?

Put different sidebars on different post topics
Have some topics with no sidebar
Move the content of your sidebar into the footer

And then track the conversion rate with analytics. And then you’ll know what works for you, which is really what counts.

You may notice we’re not following our basic advice to lead with an opt-in offer on our own (still existing for now) sidebar. Why’s that you say?

Well, in a nutshell, the newsletter, e-book, free monthly nifty calendar design download is on the back-burner as we revise our internal goals. Soon come. Soon come.

Text Neck & Fresh Perspectives

November 10, 2015 by MzD

Everyone time I see a senior citizen who is seriously bent over, I immediately roll my shoulders back, take a deep breath and look up. Now I’m noticing very young people with this same posture. This is anecdotally of course, but on the bus, the skytrain, walking sitting on a bench, in a cafe, restaurant…in short pretty much everywhere.

How will we evolve?

I imagine there has been a rise in massage therapist, physios, chiros, and other practictioners in treating folks with neck issues. I blame it all on the smartphone.

My monitor recently got fried. There was an electrical failure in the building, which is a designated heritage building (code for old and wonky) and right in the middle of a deadline….
[a post about leaving things too close to the deadline is for another moment]

Blink. No Fade. Just Black.

I had to adjust. There was a deadline. So I had to, gasp, use only my laptop.

My programmer tells me that what’s happened in an old and wonky electrical is that there are frequent minor power surges, and that zaps my fancy schmancy power surge protector, and gradually over time, it depletes the protector, until one day, kaput.

I haven’t yet purchased a new monitor.

Why? Besides time, research and all that jazz. Primarily because I’ve enjoyed experimenting with only using the relatively small screen, (a macbook pro retina) and adjusting the position depending on where I’m working. So at the studio it’s perched upon a clear stand, with and external keyboard plugged in, and here, at the pseudo-office, it’s on a bright pink laptop stand.

What I’ve noticed is three things:

My neck feels better. I think it’s the variation of posture that the flexibility of where to sit with a laptop allows, brings more constant micro adjustments. The big monitor is big and usually just sits there in one position.
My mental focus is a bit sharper. With the big screen, I have the luxury of multi-tasking, having many projects open. I can do that on the laptop, but the clutter gets a bit too much, so I start closing tabs down. I’m going to retain this as a habit.
Many websites are designed for big screens, even if they have a mobile friendly site. I was on the phone with a big company getting some support and they kept referring me to look in the upper right hand corner, but I couldn’t find the link they were pointing out. Eventually I realized that was because it was outside the viewport of my screen. And this was a big company, with lots of bucks to spend on mobile responsiveness…

I’m not going to delay the purchase of a big screen forever, it’s pretty much essential for coping with 156 layers in photoshop, etc etc. But for now it’s been a surprisingly welcome shift in my viewpoint. Also, it’s a good reminder to step back, raise my head up high and look at things with a fresh perspective, with less noise.

I’m welcoming fresh perspectives lately, in order to change, to be bored, to be un-bored, to shift, to develop better habits, or even to embrace some bad habits—it’s all about making, not judging.

“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.” —Corita Kent
(also attributed to John Cage, but he has enough press.) From “A List of Rules for Art Students”. Sister Corita Kenta, circa 1968

[P.S. I’ve done it too, texting while walking down the street, being mesmerized by the little screen. It’s a habit I’ve broken. I encourage you to do the same. And, it goes without saying, biking and texting (WTF?). Driving & texting is for _________< /endrant>]

Email overlays how do I loathe thee…

November 3, 2015 by MzD

Let me count the ways.

Daylight Savings Time has rolled around again, and I’m feeling ranty.

Okay – so I gather some studies suggest that email overlays (a pop-up box that takes over the content, which darkens to help focus on pop up area) are effective in generating more leads.

I’m not a statistician, though I love statistics, so I don’t know how accurate said studies are. What I do know, is what Mark Twain said “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”…

It would seem that pop-up overlays have become a go-to marketing feature on numerous websites, where you want users to subscribe to your newsletter, gather emails, give them a “Free Gift” and so on.

Top irritating factors with pop-up overlays.

Le pop-up itself.

Thought these died off years ago.
Timing.

If you must use them, are you seriously thinking 1.5 seconds is enough time to “engage” me as a viewer and thus want to subscribe to your newsletter/offer? At least let me read a few sentences, if not a few paragraphs—then you might, perhaps—just perhaps, infer I’m interested and then you can let your pop-up hi-jack my screen.
Re-asking for what you already have.

If I’ve clicked on a link from within your e-blast, (which is tracked up the yin-yang by whatever opt-in software you use), why, oh why, must you insist on asking me for my email address again? I’ve seen this way too often. Just stop. It has a repellent effect, not an attracting one.
Mobile First!

Non mobile-friendly overlays are a sure sign that not only will I go running in the opposite direction, but I will think of you with daggers in my eyes, especially if you are witholding content until I click that “x” in the corner, which if it isn’t mobile friendly, I can’t. So I leave your site, and if you’re lucky I don’t say anything bad about you on ye old social media.

Note, you might think your pop-up is mobile friendly because the fonts shrink down and all seems to behave nicely, but if you leave only the teeniest margin between the overlay and the frame of the smartphone, that little close “x” in the corner is exceedingly difficult to click, and my even with long, slender fingers (ahem) I’m still suffering from fat finger syndrome when it comes to clicking.
Lose the Attitude.

If I decide I don’t want to give you my email address (either for the first or the 20th time) or that I’m not interested in your “Free gift” that will magically explode my business, my career, or make my hair really shiny, please don’t insult me with some cutesy, kooky askance negative comment like “No, I really don’t want to grow by business” or “No I really don’t want to succeed” etc. Keep it in your pants.

If I Could Save Time in A Bottle…

April 21, 2015 by MzD

One of the biggest obstacles I face with blogging is wrestling with time. Perhaps quantum physicists or master yogis have figured out that time is an illusion, and even have wonderful equations or quotes to relay this concept, but for the rest of us mere mortals, time pretty much goes by the clock, and lately, it seems like it zips by at the speed of light.

Getting around to blogging, as important as everyone knows it is – to growing your website presence, conveying your expertise and values…:) – can be tough in that it’s hard to carve out the time.

In X-Men Days of Future Past, in arguably the best scene of the film, Quicksilver is shown running through the kitchen of the Pentagon in uber slow-mo motion. Jim Croce’s “If I Could Save Time in Bottle” song plays at normal speed as Quicksilver dashes about. It was brilliant, funny and sad at the same time.

It inspired me to re-consider time and some techniques for putting it in a bottle.

Relax. Take Some Time. Have Fun.

Even though the heat is on, bullets are firing, Quicksilver is taking time to do kooky, goofy things, like taste a spoon of sauce.Instead of thinking of blogging as a must-do, high-pressure, homework kind of task, start re-framing it as time to brainstorm a few ideas, be a little goofy, have a little fun.
Put on the Big Girl Goggles.

Peter (Quicksilver) wears (swimming?) goggles as he prances around the kitchen to protect his eyes from debris. I like the the gesture. Donning these goggles signfies he’s about to take action. Lesson – put on the goggles, keep yourself protected from distractions and get going.
Once in the rhythm, pay attention to the details.

The details are important – Peter makes sure to cross the arms of the security guards in just the right way so that the bullets fall away harmlessly.
Set a Time Limit.

I agree and must write for 30/45/60minutes, or 3 minutes, if you’re Quicksilver and can get the job done—micro-blogging anyone? Then I can go do all that other “important stuff.”

5. Publish or Perish and Don’t Forget to Smile.

I love the last bit is him picking the bullets out of the air and moving them methodically to the right or left, and then he grins.
This task is blogging, I’m sitting in a chair (oh – Terra standing desk, wherefore art thou?), my feet planted on the ground, I’m not in a high-adrenaline, sci-fi scene, so if Peter can smile, I can smile too.

OTHER

Anchor

I was feeling the (self-imposed) pressure to blog and rather than choose from a list of “7 Tips for ……” subjects, I thought about what had recently left an impression on me. Netflix (Canada’s) release of the X-Men film and that scene had done just that. I decided to use that scene to frame or anchor this post.

What inspires you?

Set goals and deadlines

Be ambitious but realistic.
eg: 2 x / month – not 2 x week. My last post was in March 2015, so twice a month is already double the volume. Once every 2 weeks is a stretch goal. Once I get there, I can revisit the goal.

Bullet Points

Begin with draft posts that lay out ideas in bullet points. This is less overwhelming than having to flush out a full idea in whole sentences and long paragraphs.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Social Media Fatigue

March 9, 2015 by MzD

Social Media Overwhelm — (with apologies to the master Mr. Schulz)

Or the incessant nagging of social media and how to resist its petulant demands.

A few days ago, the news spread that Google+ is on its last legs, as the G giant re-structures and puts ‘Google’s Photos and Stream products’ on the front burner. I will not miss the product, as my primary interactions were half-hearted attempts to engage in a space that I couldn’t quite figure out how public it was. FB is clearly for “friends”, Twitter is public (sure you can make it private, but what’s the point?) and G+ was a too many options with confusing circles type of place. I helped set up a number of client’s business pages and that was about the size of it.

And yet even as its passing is widely pronounced there are pundits who are still assured of its G for giant status.

This leads me to let out a big sigh and slump my shoulders.
I’ve developed social media fatigue —keeping up with the tweets— how much to tune in, how much to tune out, this new product, that new app. It’s a jungle out there.

I’ve noticed symptoms of social media fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, anxious or just plain ol’ bored.

When Twitter first came online in 2008, I started to notice all my favourite bloggers using this new platform. It seemed fun , but I held out till 2009;) opening two accounts, one for business one for personal needs.

At first it was always fun. Everyone was so pithy and content so curated I felt like I as at the office water-cooler and the latest greatest conference at the same time. After a while it became a kind of chore. Then, something might happen — this news event, that conference, this conference, and I was hooked in again.

It’s a see saw.

I totally see the value of social media and yet I see its tendency to be a beautiful countryside road overblown with billboards. Yuck.

So what’s a poor girl to do in the face of a behemoth.

Breathe – Dr. Andrew Weil recommends the 4-7-8 relaxing breath exercise. Briefly, (because hey you’re busy:) inhale slowly for 4, hold for 7, and exhale with a whoosh sound for 8.
Focus – How many social media accounts do you really need? Pick one or two accounts to keep active. (unless of course you’re a big company and you have staff handling this for you in which case why are you reading this?) If you must have several accounts, but are truly only active on one, then let your readers where to find you. ie: I have this FB page, but I’m really active on pinterest. Join me there (with link).
Prep – your content – (which is definitely not only about you!) in advance. Articles, fun stuff, etc. And yet remember that timing is relevant. Careful with those pre-tweet strategies when something big is happening in the news and you’re tweeting rainbows and unicorns.
Know – your audience. Which is the same as #2. If you’re speaking to twitter, use #hashtags, @replies, learn the lingo and, again, don’t spew out links to me-me-me every two minutes.
Be Nice – social media makes it so easy to get caught up in the moment in a not such nice way. Bad service at X department store (@BIGbigstore – hey I ……***&&&%%%$$(((!!!) – that’s really noise and isn’t helping you and your brand. (I speak from experience – ahem) Of course if you’ve got a real complaint and have already tried being nice, go ahead and leverage the social media angle. But try to be polite. (I’m Canadian;)

You can find me on twitter @diamedia or @deanneachong. There’s a whole bunch of other accounts that are wasteland and I’ll follow my own advice soon and update them with where to find me. Soon come. Soon come.