FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
All prices I show are either the average price I charge for that service, or the price they start at. They can go up or down depending on your needs, and they include revisions, depending on the type of service. I'll give you a flat price once I know what you want. More complex = higher price. Less complex = it might even go lower than shown. To get you an exact price, we need to have a 15-30 minute call, and maybe some emails or a screen share too. During that, we'd go over very specific details, and it will create a map to make sure you're satisfied. It will also show you the amount of revisions you'll get, etc. For example, lets say you wanted a logo: I would talk to you on the phone for a bit, ask you about your goals, learn about your target audience and what your logo should say to people, ask for examples you like, and email you a PDF with ideas to help me come up with designs for you. You'd also find out you'll get X number of revisions at that price. If you wanted more revisions, then the price would go up, but everything is clear and straight forward. So to keep the price down, I must ask you very detailed questions to not waste each others time or money. If we don't do that, anything you ask me is like saying: "How long is a piece of string?". When I hear that, I think: "do you need an inch, or a mile?", etc. I don't play games, and I don't waste time. I hope you'll respect mine just as much as I will yours.
- What is your typical process for working with a new customer?
1. We talk about your project in detail: your problem(s), your goal(s), and create the scope of what you need. 2. Once I know the details, I'll give you a flat price for your project either on the spot, or within 12-24 hours. Payments are generally split into 1/2's or 1/3's... 1/3 to start, 1/3 on first draft, 1/3 when it's complete. 3. THAT’S IT... But I also offer a road mapping service to help determine if your project will be worth your time and money. That goes like this: ROAD MAPPING SERVICE This is an exaggeration, but let's say you come to me with what I know is most likely a terrible idea: you want a website where you sell your superior underwater basket weaving skills to the super rich for 100k a pop. Your goal is to be an overnight millionaire. I won't be rude about your project, but let's be real: no one will buy it if it doesn’t solve their problem(s). Expectations like that are also very unrealistic. But if you found something that solves an actual problem, or at least fills a void that people want filled, then I also offer to sell you a road mapping service to see if you’re likely to make money on it. With it, you'd get a brutally honest report on how to make your project succeed from every angle, or a warning that going further is a high risk gamble for you. The price depends on the size of the project. Just ask. REAL LIFE EXAMPLE I've been making Kefir from Kefir grains since 2005. Long story short, I used to sell my excess grains on eBay. Resellers from Amazon would buy them all out on the spot and sell them for 4x more on Amazon... "Why not just cut out the middleman?" I asked... So I did, and now I make 4x more for the same thing, but to get there wasn't easy because: (1) There's very little profit margin in the kefir grains niche. (2) The competition in the kefir grains market is as saturated as it can get. It can't get any worse. I wouldn't make sales even if I had the best deal among thousands of competitors, the best instructions, and the prettiest website. For a short bit, I even set my price low enough to make ZERO from it. The goal was to just collect data, and break even. Tons of people would click my ad, but I only got about 3 sales (about $60), out of about $200 in ad spend, which is terrible. I know how to use Google Ads too, and I wasn’t running bad keywords. (3) I had to start over from nothing: no reviews, no sales, nothing, even though I sold thousands before. Once I figured out these people were reselling them for more on Amazon, I started selling them there from about 2015-2020. The problem I got then was something called “listing hijacking”. That means that other people sold my product while pretending to be me, and when they screwed up: I’d take the blame for it. A few other sellers ruined MY 4.0+/5 star PRODUCT reviews by doing that. So I had to delete it and start over. I complained to Amazon for it about 30-50 times too, and they'd ignore me every time. (4) When I ran google ads so I could sell them directly from my site, nobody would buy them. The only thing I’d get were bots, scammers, and people who didn't buy even though I gave the cheapest and best deal, with the fastest shipping. All of that led me down a rabbit hole to figure out how to sell them again from ZERO, among TONS of competitors that I helped build up. I now make about 4x more selling them than I used to, and it is profitable as long as you have the right strategy. Now imagine that you have a similar circumstance with a project that might cost you a lot. Would you be willing to risk it all on something that was doomed to fail from the beginning? That's why I offer this road mapping service.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I graduated from an actual coding bootcamp back in 2019 called RMOTR (with actual instructors we met with multiple times a week... Not some pre-recorded videos, and hoping for the best). They have since sold their company to some video platform, so they're not around anymore. The last time I checked, it wasn't even close to what me and the others did when we were there. But, it was very hard, and I'll go into those details in the next question because it fits better there. Long story short, to pass, each of us had to make a complex project, and the teachers had to approve it first. No hand holding, no copy / pasting code, etc. Instead, we were required to use a 3rd party API, the project had to be unique, and it had to solve a real world problem. Again, no hand holding, and it must solve a complex, real world problem. I came up with the idea that I'd make a GoFundMe alternative, so people could crowdfund whatever project they have. I made it specifically to get around gatekeepers like those at Apple and Google, particularly their app stores, and various banks, and merchant accounts who like to ban people for minor disagreements. Not for anything illegal, just minor disagreements in politics, religion, etc. In case you didn't know, those 2 companies have basically ruined the internet. Others have too, but I'd say Google is responsible for the most part... Let's say you have some minor political disagreement with someone in a position of petty power at those places. If you get someone with a bad attitude, then they will: ban your apps, make it so you never show up in the search results because of it, and encourage 3rd parties to ban you everywhere else too (like the merchant account, banks, etc). I'm not sure about Apple, but as of 2024-2025, Google is being sued by many people for that very reason. I am not making any of this up. So I made that project as a way to get around those gatekeepers, while still allowing push notifications, etc. You can test it on my site, and see the code on my GitHub. You can even use it for your benefit. It's free. You'll have to know the programming languages, and framework I used though. The main reason I never made it a competitor to places like GoFundMe, is because I don't want to deal with other people's taxes. Getting people to use it is another hassle too, and my life experiences have proven to me that most people don't want a solution to their problems. They just want to complain, and blame others... That's exactly what happened when I started promoting it too. Therefore, I decided not to make it a competitor, but you or anyone else can set it up and use it yourselves for free. As for video stuff: I have plenty of examples on my site. I show some pictures on Thumbtack from those projects too. I learned the majority of that stuff from an online film school called Tomorrows Film Makers. Then I just worked hard at it, because they didn't teach everything I wanted to know.