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What would you do here ?

helloworld

Top Contributor
Wasn't sure where to post this but sure there would be some good advice.

I recently doubled my contract rates for SEO. I had quoted on a job about 3 months ago and the potential client came back to me recently. I advised I had had a price increase since then. He begged me to revert to the old pricing. Without giving it to much thought I agreed on a 20% increase on the original quote as he was giving me 2 sites instead of 1. My reasoning for doubling my price was because it gave me more room to move with web dev.


Now he has given me access to his site. The site is built in Joomla. Essentially the original developers appear to know nothing about SEO and the site is littered with technical issues. It would actually be easier to start over.

How should I (if at all) go back to him and say something like "Hey I know we agreed on $xxx.xx but really your current site is a piece of shit and I want to charge you $xxxx.xx".

Is this bad business? Should I just develop a new site for him? The structure and content is all there for a migration.
 

Shane

Top Contributor
The best thing you can do is just be totally honest and upfront with him.

Even if he doesn't want to spend the extra money, at least you have warned him upfront and hopefully he will appreciate you being straight with him.
 

findtim

Top Contributor
first mistake you made was not getting access before quoting, sorry.
didn't you just check the source code first to find it was joomla?

i have a phone meeting tomorrow with potential new client but last week they wanted a quote and i said " not till i look at your admin "

turns out its a piece of ASP crap ! which has increased my quote to transfer ASP to PHP.

point is, you always have to know what you are getting into before quoting.

probably the reason he came back to you was he went to others and they told him he had crap .

is your $xxx.xx per month? if so think about it like this " your break even point to profit just got further ahead thats all"
if the structure is there then get a joomla to wp plugin and dump the old site as you are only going to be trying to plug a titanic.

i used this once but i do not guarantee it, http://wordpress.org/plugins/joomla-15-importer/

ME: i would "take the hit" redo the site, make it rank fantastic and learn that lesson BUT let him know this is what you are doing and be honest , the end result is next time he is talking to other business people WHO do you think he is going to reccommend? YOU.

as i don't know how big the rebuild is i can't say more, PM me if you want more opinion.

tim
 

helloworld

Top Contributor
Nah that's cool. Appreciate both opinions.

A couple of other factors. I did realise it was Joomla, I just forgot how shit the system was since I haven't built in it for 5 years.

Another issue was his ex-developer who had only given editorial access. I presumed because he used a template and didn't want the client to know. Well that lasted about 5 minutes after I got phpmyadmin access and set up a new super admin.

After effin around, I now think I can use Joomla tho it's still a POS.

TBH it would only be a down a day or so downtime converting it to wordpress, but yanno that's a day I could be watch redtube or something else more enjoyable.

On another note the ex developer set up all the urls like /index.php/about-us, /index.php/contact-us etc, who in there right mind does that???
 

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