How I Make Money by Investing Online and Offline - John Hok dot Com » Blog Archive

Turning Down Clients

March 4th, 2007 by John Hok

As a wannabe Internet mogul, one of my major goals on the Internet is to make money. Money comes from various sources when you are creating online “businesses”. To simply categorize a couple of the more important ones that are relevant to me, are advertising and services.

One of the major issues I face, as a high school student trying to balance school and online businesses, is that time is very tight. Recently, I had to turn down another client who wanted an IP.Board along with its gallery and blog components skinned, simply because I did not have enough time. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to satisfy the client with a high quality product given my very busy schedule.

This is always a tough decision for web developers and designers because it means a missed opportunity to make more money. But you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture involved here. If you take on too many clients and don’t have enough time, you may end up ruining your reputation permanently. In the online world, your reputation is all you’ve got, so you have to protect it with your life. Once you ruin your reputation, you’ll find it near impossible to make more money in the future through client work, so don’t take the chance at all.

If you, as a web developer, feel that you have too much on your plate, kindly decline the extra work you might receive from potential clients. Make sure to do it courteously though and to keep good relations with the client. You never know, they may appreciate your honesty and come back to you again in the future when you are free to obtain your services.

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Posted in Archive | 11 Comments

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04 Mar 2007 at 2:13 amAjith

I am also finding it hard to balance my online life with college..
What you said is correct if you have too much on the plate it makes a good chance that you are gonna lose your reputation.

Any way I found your photo on about page If you nee a little photoshop work to put your head on John Chows photo please send me a mail with both the photos as attachments.. Ill do the Photoshopping if you want.. My email is aling with the comment
Please be sure that your photo is taken lmost nearly the same angle as John Chows
04 Mar 2007 at 7:52 amJames Gill

Hey John, I’ve just added you to my blogroll,

Please add me, heres the details…

URL: http://www.jamesgill.me.uk
TITLE: James Gill

Thanks John, hope you pop around to my blog again soon
04 Mar 2007 at 9:23 amAjith

John I put a link to yours…
I would like to tell you some thing please decrease the number of posts on the home page to 3 or something like that
It takes a LOTTA …………………………………TIME TO LOAD.
Beside interested people will surely see other posts even if you dont put it on first page
04 Mar 2007 at 11:33 amJosh Buckley

I’m trying to move away from freelancing aswell. I tend to earn more from websites than freelance work, and freelancing brings much more stress.
04 Mar 2007 at 11:40 amJohn Hok

@James: Got yours up! Thanks for linking back.

@Ajith: That’s odd, how long is it taking to load for you? It takes just a couple seconds for me to load entirely. Maybe you caught the server at a bad time and it was slow. It’s been having some little issues with networking I think.

I know though that when I go on a blog I’d like to be able to see a lot of posts at one time. If I just see a couple and have to click another page just to see more that really turns me off from blogs.

@Josh: Yes you do bring a good point. Freelancing can be stressful at times working with clients and having to please them and meet deadlines. I’ve really moved away to “flipping websites” as well and starting new ventures.
04 Mar 2007 at 7:52 pmAjith

John I would like to learn PHP too (inspired from your previous post) which tutorial did you use, please tell me it would be nice
05 Mar 2007 at 2:05 amJohn Hok

@Ajith: It took me years to learn and be good at PHP. There was not one single tutorial I looked at to begin learning. Rather, I just looked over a lot of PHP code and examples to see how it worked. Then I read up and used Google to gather more information. If you want though, I can try to compile a short list of some good resources in my coming posts.
05 Mar 2007 at 5:13 amAjith

If you can compile it it will be great…
Ill also gather something from google
05 Mar 2007 at 5:39 pmXtremgenX

Yeah, I agree with Ajith. It’s a good idea to list them. Best resources always come from those who are “in the field”. Keep it coming, mate!
13 Mar 2007 at 8:05 amNatron

Not many have the insight to do this, good job.

The old adage is correct, “Business would be much better without clients”. Most of the time you can make more money marketing a site and running advertisements than selling a design.
13 Mar 2007 at 9:08 amJohn Hok

@Ajith and XtremegenX: Yes I am working on compiling a list and adding descriptions to the sites.

@Natron: Thanks, I’ve witnessed enough around businesses to know that customer service is crucial in running a business and truthful customer service at that!