Local Company Charging Customers $6500 For Google Map Listing

I do understand this line of thinking completely, however I have a hard time believing that this person will not respect me. What makes me afraid to offend them? Because I'm willing to give her a little bit of my time (10 minutes) for free in return for a job building her a new site and hosting it?

I know this client will be the start of something good for me. Like I said, she's well known in town and spends a lot of money and time with charity. I'm sure now that she knows how much she overpayed, she'll be sure to tell any of her friends who have used the same service or who were planning on using the service not to. I would. And hopefully (wishful thinking?) she will say hey, "This guy knows his stuff, and I'm sure he'd give you a fair deal for the work you're looking for." Seems pretty practical to me, and in my experience the best way to meet potential customers is through a friend or business partner.

Salesman A sells honda civic to customer A for $100,000

Salesman B sells same honda civic to customer B at it's real value for $20,000

customer A will be mighty pissed off when they find out they overpaid $80,000 for something. I think 'ripped off' will be the first thought that pops into their head.

Surely a good sales pitch isn't worth $80,000 to the customer...

I think you should perhaps reconsider that, I feel certain that 85 out of a 100 ( at least ) would tend to agree that it is unethical.

I agree that everyone has choices that can be made HOWEVER, a big personal choice of the service provider ( us ) SHOULD be to always charge fair prices and over deliver, on time, while never claiming something false.

My offline business ( not Internet related ) thrives because of this way of behaving. It has always served me well and is contrary to my competition. This has resulted in my growth in the last 10 years of more than 100% in total clients served and many-many times revenue increase.....all while my competition, all 7 of them, has lost the vast majority to me.

When I am explaining what I do for a possible new client, I explain it in such a way that I educate them of their options and how if they use someone who is less ethical, it will cost them a great deal and they will most likely get inferior work.

Best regards,
Enterpryzman

What is dishonest about it is when she stopped paying for their services they removed the Google Maps listing.

I totally agree with you, nobody forced her to pay that amount, she felt it was worth it at the time & paid for it.

Dishonesty and lack of ethical bahavior do not have to be the same.......you can be telling the truth AND screw someone at the same time., guess will will have to agree to not agree.

I just think that it is completely wrong to grossly overcharge someone due to them not knowing any better and thinking they are getting a deal. What the market will bear IMO is not the best way to live.......FAIR prices are the best policy, you treat customer fair and earn a fair living.

Enterpryzman

You honestly don't see the dishonesty of selling someone a website for a lot of money, hosting it at a monthly price that exceeds most yearly hosting plans, creating a Google Maps listing for $6,500 and then deleting it all when they don't want to get soaked by these "salesmen" any longer?

So what did they actually get for all those thousands of dollars they spent? They should have at least ended up with their Google listing and their website files to be hosted elsewhere, since they did actually pay for that.

Just a heads up if those numbers are correct you did get ripped off. Here in the north east you pay your mechanic by the hour. 80-100 an hour is pretty standard.

Your parts where $245 plus lets say 2 hours of labor that would be an added $200...You looking at around 500 bucks tops...

It's not automatically shady - we don't know the positioning of this service. They might be all suits and ties compared to this kid with the long hair, right?

The Porsche Cayenne starts at $46,700.

The Volkswagen Touareg starts at $40,850.

They're the SAME CAR.

Is the guy selling the Porsche ripping off the people who buy the Cayenne for about $6k off the top? Not at all.

What you charge for something and what I charge for the exact same thing DO NOT have to cost the same amount at all regardless of the eventual result.

The cost can be justifiably different JUST BECAUSE of who executes the service and how they are positioned. I charge 5 figures to write copy, minimum. Lots of guys out there will do it for cheaper.

Maybe some of them are even better.

Doesn't stop people from picking me over them. It's the strength of the brand and the story behind it. It helps that I make my clients more than I charge.

I'll tell you a secret - I've discovered it's a lot easier to write copy for something REALLY EXPENSIVE like $2K a pop than it is to write copy for something that costs the last $200 someone might have.

Sometimes the client doesn't even WANT it until they hear that it costs an arm and a leg. Like some of these people are saying, if I came in and told you that for $200 I can get you on page 1, which is worth $70K in business every year, that sounds dubious.

I come in and look nice, have a tie and a briefcase. I tell you that in order to make you up to $70K more a year in business by getting you on Page 1 of Google, all I need is 10% of whatever increase I get you, or $7K whichever is less.

A deal is a deal, and sometimes the package IS the deal.

It has everything to do with value. It is a skill set that you have and they do not. That is why we pay others to do work for us...mechanics, plumbers, attorneys, accountants, etc.

I couldn't replace a carburetor to save my life...the mechanic down the street can do it in his sleep...So, because it is easy for him, I should only pay him $10 instead of $75?

Believe me, when my accountant charges me $600 to do my my taxes while I sit there and watch her do it in front of me in about 30 minutes time....it surely doesn't seem like much time and effort on her part. But I pay (apparently I pay $1,200 an hour!)

When an attorney settles a million dollar lawsuit by sending out a simple letter that takes 10 minutes to write and makes a 33% contingency fee for doing so ($330,000), that sure doesn't seem like much effort either, does it?

But that's the way it goes. They have a skill that I don't.

The person charging $6,500 to get that person listed on Google Places values their skill set just like an attorney, accountants, mechanics, etc do.

Paying $1,000 for a piece of paper might seem like a complete rip off...but if that single piece of paper leads you to sunken treasure filled with gold doubloons, it's worth it right?

Don't undervalue what you know. Yes, because many people here on the forum know how do do this does not mean you should be charging peanuts for your services.

Good for you.

There are some people who really charges high from their clients. It depends on the clients and also the clients' responsibility to know if they're paying just right for the service.

You'll just realize if you paid the right amount when you get the result or the outcome.

This was me from late 2000 to early 2002.

This was me from mid 2002 to early 2004.

But here's the problem, Jeremy: until early 2002, I wouldn't have listened to this "load of crap." I would have insisted that it was all money-grubbing garbage and the people telling it to me were just ripping off their clients.

Some people aren't going to listen. And that's fine, because I'm only really concerned about those who will.

It depends on how you think about your relationship with a business and your role in helping them.

Your question highlights the primary reason people have trouble making a serious income both in this niche and in many other niches.

If you want to make serious income you have to deliver serious value and go beyond the employee mentality.

Employee mentality says if I promise to do a job for $X and I do that job I should get paid and the person who hired me should be happy that I did the job for them.

That's fair enough but it consigns you to forever working hours for dollars.



Ethical business mentality says I won't even start doing a project for you at ANY price unless we're fairly certain it will make back more dollars than you pay me for doing it.

And if it doesn't I'm going to keep working at it until I do make you a profit.

When you're focusing on delivering value you get out of the hours for dollars trap because you can now charge based on the value you deliver.

A project might take you a day, you charge $1,000 for it and it makes the business $10,000 in profits...a fantastic bargain for everyone.

Or you might spend an hour outsourcing a project to your team, you might charge the business $5,000 for the project, pay your team $2,500 (a rate they're thrilled to do the work for).

The business makes $15,000 in profits.

Again a fantastic deal for everyone.


Once you start thinking about how you can deliver real value to a business it changes the possibilities for you to make money from your work.

In many cases you may be making serious income for just providing some advice and assistance that's very simple to you.

And that's exactly what consultants do.

As long as the business makes far more from your advice and assistance than they pay you it's a great deal for everyone.



The reverse side of that is that you really do have to focus on delivering results (and working with clients who make it possible for you to deliver results while passing on the others).

If something's not working you need to be committed to delivering the business value which might mean changing your approach, testing new ideas or coming up with another solution for them that does work.

The amount you charge is not important. Delivering results over what you charge is.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Like I said, this isn't enterprise level hosting. This is a 3 page tanning salon website! This isn't a business that relies on it's website to make it's money. The website was put online to generate new customers. Some downtime would not affect this business in such a negative way to have them paying for a 24/7 system admin.

This debate of what's ethical and what's not could go on and on. I know that for ME, I will charge an honest price for my services and not grossly overestimate their value just because someone has the money to pay for it. Call it what you want, I call it good karma and honesty. If you don't see it that way, that's all good. This situation will pay off for me in the long run because I didn't say, "Oh that's terrible, they took away your google maps listing" "Well I can put it back up for you, for $6500 bucks!"

I really hope that's sarcasm.

It was just hilarious that you made a comment and deemed the thread pointless now cause it didn't interest you. It had nothing to do with wasting a post. If it doesn't interest you, just move along. Should I start popping into threads and saying "Guys, I am declaring this thread pointless" and then exit.

How true is this.. 60% of the forums are these people. Im glad others realize this as well. Like sifting for gold.

I totally agree with you on that point. Once the service is paid for it should not be removed. But that goes to the point I made about (unless it doesn't deliver what was promised.)

After reading through most of this thread, I do / don't agree.

I do totally agree with the posts above (and many others)... the fact of the matter is, everyone has different budgets, and the bigger companies *can* afford to pay the higher fees. And, as someone else mentioned, some companies won't even *look* at a "solution" that is less than a certain amount of money.

They perceive that it costs higher, it must be worth it. (Not that it's always true, but that is the reason for higher cost).

There will always be people who barter and price shop around looking for the best deal they can have, (even so much so as to compare walmart vs any other related store) for example, and they'll go to that one store because its $1 less than the other place... never mind the fact that they just spent probably MORE than that $1 in gas getting there LOL

(Yes, that was an offline analogy, but it is still true.)

On the other side of the coin, there will always be people who refuse to buy at Walmart, just on principle - even if they can buy the same product there for say 20% less than it would at a Sears or other major department store... they refuse to even consider walking into Walmart because THEY don't want to be perceived as being "cheap".

To them its status to say that they bought it at the "fancier" store.

Thinking of it from the aspect of this person's charge of $6500 and $200 for the site... personally I think it's a little much and I would never charge it, BUT again, what did they offer FOR that cost?

Anyone can get cheap hosting. But I have a few clients who pay me close to a hundred a month for hosting - rather than choosing the cheap $10 a month hosting that my associate charges.

What's the difference? Value. Whenever those hosting customers need anything, they have access to us at like *any* time of the day pretty much, but even if we're offline, they know that the minute we're there we'll handle any issue they have. (Hasn't happened, we gave them direct access to us )

Funny, those clients actually cost us much less in time than ones who HAVE paid $15 a month hosting... perceived value. The cheaper clients seem to want everything they can for that cheap cost. (And no, I don't host many, just a few exclusive clients - my choice). The ones who pay more, have said "sorry to bother you when I know you're busy" - which of course we stress its never a bother, no matter how busy we are.

It's totally true - perceived value.

AND knowledge.

That person was willing to pay the $6500 because the company's knowledge and ability was obviously sold, regardless of whether we may feel it was a huge charge.

I've seen people charge $100 for SEO, and others charge $10,000.

I've paid $1000 for hosting, and I've paid $100 for hosting. (Dedicated servers I'm talking here). The cheaper you go, honestly the cheaper you do get.

Paul Lemberg said last year in some of the stompernet courses (which I never finished due to time ) was that even in a recession, you CAN raise prices - rather than the first knee-jerk reaction of lowering them. Depends on the offer, the value you create to the person.

The person may not have even bothered to try to figure out how to get on the google maps system - the knowledge had its value.

My husband is an MCSE/MCDBA. He builds networks and systems. When he was at a major hotel in Niagara Falls a while ago building a new network for them, after a short while, any time they called for support, he'd go in. The accountant started looking over his shoulder and asked him how to do it so she could from then on. (And no, it wasn't a simple fix that anyone could do without screwing up).

He finally sat back and asked her about her job. How long did she go to school for Accounting? If he saw her and asked her to show him how to do his books, would she for free?

Of course not, she said.

He agreed. He reminded her that he paid for his education (AND has 15 years of experience) - why would he hand out his knowledge to someone who just didn't want to pay, but honestly had no clue what they were doing?

The fact is, he charged them half of what past guys did hourly (but still an amount he was more than happy with). They DID value what he did, and he did fix it properly.

It's all in the value. So obviously as I said, the company probably said what they were getting (she maybe only remembers $6500 for google maps... but perhaps there was more in a contract?)


As for this...

I would say for her to read her contract (hopefully she had one!).

If she paid for *ongoing* to have this done, then yes - the company had the right to pull it.

But, if she paid a "one time $6500 fee" for the map to be done, then they should have left it, and if she wanted to, she COULD fight them for loss of business for wrongfully pulling it.

All depends on the docs. Ask her if you could see if if she's willing to show you, perhaps you could help advise her on that, or direct her to the right place.

For the most part, you eat it as a cost of business when you overpay, and move on to someone more reasonable.

They lost a client... you gained one (and hopefully more).

But absolutely do NOT undercut yourself THAT much.

Amber