Where's the line to draw...

[prepress_brillance_43]

So, where is the line you draw to say no to a job? I recently turned down a job due to them wanting to only pay $300 tops for 20/hrs of work(quoted her only 16 hrs, realistically 20 though), and not even see what a disc of their collected pictures and support consists of? ummm... no ma'am I REALLY WANT the job, but I honestly cannot do it for that price, and I really need the money and $300 IS alot of money to me and it would help alot, ... however I cannot. I wanted $650.
What about you guys?...

btw > it doesnt have to necessarily be about the price, just where do you draw the line with a potential client and turning down a job?

TIA to all who contribute to this thread.

[pix3lphr3ak]

I do freelance design and IT work. I have to very ferm firm and upfront about costs. I have had a few stiffs and it really made me sour. We have a similar policy at work for customer provided files...

Although I do this not for profit but for exta ca$h here and there. If i really needed the money i'd look into whether the customer would be coming back again or not and giving them a one time introductory type price. If you impress the first time they keep calling

[DCurry]

I would have quoted $800 for 16 hours of work - I figure if they don't want to pay for my professional abilities, then the job is simply not worth it. If you work cheap for them now, it's much harder to ever get a better rate from them. Actually, I probably would have quoted more like $1000, since you said it was more like 20 hours of work. It's rare that a job takes a lot less time than you think, and if it does, you can always bill them less than you estimated, and they get a pleasant surprise. I've learned to always pad the estimate a bit to allow for the changes that we all know are coming.

I used to take every freelance job that came along, but now I'm a lot more discerning. If the job (or the client, for that matter) sounds like it is going to be a PIA, I'll pass.

[bprint]

DCurry is right-
I have found - almost 100% of the time - that the cheap people are not only the bigest PIAs, but the ones most likely to give you the runaround when the bill is due.

[JoePixel]

I once turned down a client when she gave me pasted up artwork. She wanted a mockup for some book covers and she took printed photos of herself that were taken outside at night with a black background (she had blonde hair) and she did a wicked scissors hack job on the photos to simulate how she wanted them clipped, then pasted them onto some construction paper and wanted me to make it look like a professional book - and I quote her here "Like Dr. Phil's books or Oprah's". It would have taken hours and hours of Photoshop work to even make it look somewhat acceptable.

I told her that with what she has given me, I can't create great artwork with the pasted up work she has given me.

I told her that I won't create something that I can't use in my portfolio. That thing would have looked like crap.

Turned it down, and wasn't too disappointed.

I've had clients call me and say that they will pay me $200 for some business cards and letters or a 2 sided brochure or whatever. I say OK, and then give them $200 worth of service of designing a logo, typesetting and printouts. Once my time is getting over the 4-5 hours worth of revisions and such, I let them know that they are getting close to their $200 worth and ask them to start thinking about a final product.

Yeah, I figure that my time estimates are normally shorter than what I spend, but honestly, it's not like it's hard labor. An extra few hundred dollars is cool and I would rather have that and have to spend a little more time than not have the job at all.

I tend to turn down the really small jobs. Take this logo and typeset it into a business card and I'll pay $40. No thanks, not worth my time for that. I tend to only take the $200 to $2000. Any less than $200 is probably not worth my time, any more than $2000 and I probably won't have time to finish it. (I have a little jr. pixel running around at home)

[prepress_brillance_43]

definately some good points being made here, and I appreciate you all. I am very interested in everyone's opinion or experience on this. I guess at this point I should mention my job discribed above was being shuffled to me from Kinkos, and their customer was the school., so Of course they were going to need to be able to markup my price 40%, kinkos wont take it unless they can get 40%, so $650, put her at more like $900-1000 with their markup, hence they COULD NOT pay me that amount....

Printer who printed last years book, "threw in" design for FREE!! 8O OK PRINT PROS out there... what does that tell you?... hmmm. sounds like a shop on its way out to me.....

[seetomtype]

Originally Posted by prepress_brillance_43

Printer who printed last years book, "threw in" design for FREE!! 8O OK PRINT PROS out there... what does that tell you?... hmmm. sounds like a shop on its way out to me.....

Sounds to me like it's a shop that gets it's money out of the account in other ways
throughout the year. Nobody REALLY gets something for nothing, not even in printing.

[prepress_brillance_43]

its just a high school, with a very little budget they dont have that much print...

i thought of it more as the print shop doing it free just to get the print part of the job because they NEED the work.

but yea you could be right Tom....

here's another thing, the print shop wont release the previous year's art to the school. I've heard of shops doing this in an attempt to keep the account and I think it is WRONG. The art is the property of the CLIENT.
what do you guys think?

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by JoePixel

Take this logo and typeset it into a business card and I'll pay $40. No thanks, not worth my time for that.

Send those my way - they are the best kind of jobs! Every now and then, I want something brainless, and that is an easy $40!

Our shop will give out files but only a PDF. Customer pays us to create the file, not for the file itself. If its a logo, its theirs no argument. This flexibility allows us to keep that customer happy by giving them a copy of the file but generally keeps them with us because they dont have the actual native file.

Our competitor across town tells customers it will take them 2 weeks to e-mail a logo, pdf or native file. Since it's a small town this leads to issues and discrepencies because logos have to be re-created and each shop may have its own recreated version of x customers logo.

In the end by not giving out atleast a PDF, not only does the customer loose but the shops loose by incosistencies and multiple version of the same print job floating around.