Holding hands is great for lovers, but not for clients. When I am discussing content development, video production or advertising design with a prospective client, I relish delineating the creative possibilities. They are fairly boundless, constrained only by imagination.

Prospects always have questions, particularly if they have little experience and are making their first foray into the realm of creative development. Many client prospects have a world of ideas they convey, and many have very good ideas about what they would like to see developed, either in print, online or on DVD. When we exchange ideas about the creation of their media, the end result is frequently the fruition of powerful visions.

When discussing a project, it is always normal to conclude the conversation with a question about the cost; this is quite expected. However, when the first question out of a prospective client's mouth is, “How much does it cost to …”, I know we are heading for trouble.

The mistake that is made, on my part, is accepting the client anyway. A recent example, which must be made an example, is a client in Florida who operates a business overseas. Without naming the client, of course, let us present an abstract.

Joe Smith has come to use with a website makeover project. Mr. Smith built his site on his own. He used one of those online web-builders, similar to Yahoo! Site Builder, but he was not satisfied with the result. Mr. Smith had come to us to revise the look. We had our first meeting, and the exchange evolved from the following opening statement:

Mr. Smith: “The first thing I want to tell you is I don't want to spend a lot of money redoing my website.”

I should have shown him the door, but I was pleased with the notion of putting another proverbial notch on the wall of developed domains.

Mr. Pryor: “That's alright; I understand. We have a number of package deals we offer and could probably work easily within those guidelines.”

Mr. Smith: “Here's what I want to do. I want to use the content I've already put online, but … “.

At this point I pretty much hear only Charlie Brown's teacher talking because I have heard this banter in the past. I should have shown him the door.

When the last note sounded, I presented to the prospect some sites we had recently developed. I showed him small sites, medium and large projects with a multitude of bells and whistles. Among the sites we recently finished that I was pleased to show was the makeover of the Targeted Traffic site. He was delighted with what he saw, and finally I extended a flat rate fee, knocking a couple of hundred dollars off the high-end template site we offer. We were only talking about a dozen pages of content, plus a contact form and a questionnaire.

The site design was completed, and Mr. Smith appreciated the new, professional look of his website. He just had a couple of issues he wanted to resolve. The copy and the pictures all needed to be replaced because he was not happy with that part of the content. It was his content in the first place!

He told us he would handle the changes, himself. His experience updating his old site online qualified him to handle that. Well, not really. We are designers and coders, and we had designed his new site using a great deal of PHP. There had never been a discussion about making it possible for him to update the site on his own. Oh, perhaps Charlie Brown's teacher knew something. I should have shown him the door at the outset. Now I'm kicking myself.

We requested he forward the changes to us, and we would simply swap out the copy; however, changing pictures would entail a change order because we had already designed the site with the content he asked us to use. Mr. Smith wanted to make the changes, himself. He preferred this because, as he put it, he would not have to bother us with such minor changes. Read between the lines and you hear, “I'm too cheap to pay you $85.00 an hour for another two to three hours of work.”

For a week we have been going back and forth on email and on the telephone as Mr. Smith tries to figure out why he cannot update his site through his old online web-building program. He finally asked to come by our office to use our computers to make the changes. Use our computers? We do not rent computer time.

Finally, for lack of simply sending us the new copy and pictures, Mr. Smith requested his old site design be placed back online until he could change his content. Well, the old content is identical to the content on the new site design. The difference is how it's constructed and presented. The difference for Mr. Smith is he can make all the changes himself, and he will not have to ask, “How much will this cost?”

Thank goodness we were paid, in full, up front.