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indizine

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About indizine

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  1. if suggesting Magento, you need to make the OP aware of the heavy resource requires that Magento requires. Sit down and talk does not equal adding to costs at all. Perhaps to some but then, there are cowboys in many if not all industries. Sit down and talk is about meeting client expectation. if you are a web developer for commercial clients you will know all too well that they don't give all the finite detail of what they expect. They say "can you just...." quite often. Well, "can you just" can range from making a button a darker shade of green (no cost there, fine) or it could be in fact, custom coding (extra cost with ANY decent developer) "so when customers place an order it sends me a form with all components of the item showing their individual costings, with my specific codes at the side and when clicked, they send an email to the supplier who knows to charge an extra £5 delivery for that component". I made that up, but you get my drift. They may not say that to you when they "want a site to sell my products online" but as you get going, disaster could occur if you did not sit down and talk to fully explore the end to end sales/order processes of the cart, etc, and make sure the client knows what they are getting from you, and that you have discussed and will provide exactly what they need (because you talked about it, then you clearly described it in the quote) so they are clear what that website will do when they take ownership. Otherwise, just Google and read all the stories. It's all down to us asking the right questions insofar as we can to understand what the client exactly wants, we then quote for exactly that and make it clear that anything extra WILL COST (unless it's minor amendments of course). However we should advise as best we can, warn in advance where we can, be impartial to making more money when it's not in the clients interest to have something they really do not need, and work to our clients best interests. That does not mean they end up getting lots of free work for nothing, and we also don't work for nothing. But it means their expectations were met for the price they felt fair, and it is for the client to undertake due diligence and compare on LIKE FOR LIKE quotes to ensure that price was indeed, good value for money. The supplier then should make sure they supply to the client, exactly everything they quoted for, and nothing less.
  2. Fair dogmother is relevant to dog walking, but nothing else. Had another thought; your dog walking customers will want you to be very experienced and knowledge with dogs, insured, etc. and i'm not really sure most folk will pay that sort of money unless you are a dedicated dog walking business and not just a dogsbody (pardon the pun!) hired home help type of business. My dog cost £1.5k and I would only let her go with an established, reputable, insured dog walker who came highly recommended. Obviously if she didn't cost me anything i'd still feel as bad if you lost her, or another dog attacked her, etc, but the value of the dogs you are walking has to come into it. What's your experience here? What do you know about dogs and their behaviour? Maybe it depends who your clientele will be as to what they expect and what they expect to pay. They aren't just paying for your time and fuel to get there, they are also paying for your reliability, expertise, knowledge, etc. And don't forget while deciding if there is any mileage in this business idea, we all help people with little jobs here and there and we have people help us just the same....but would we pay for it? Can pensioners afford to pay you the hourly rate? You need to work out who you will target and then research to see if they would buy your services, and how much would they pay you. You don't just try and sell to those who need it.....you sell to those who are willing to pay for it. 2 different things. Example, you will need a website. Will you pay me a few hundred pounds for one or will you knock up a free weebly site instead or pay £4.99 a month to vistaprint? Where will you position yourself in the market? Bottom feeder part of the market who want to pay the least, cause you the most amount of hassle and least profitable, or high end of the market, where you can choose your clients, who pay on time, who let you get on with the job, and you remain profitable.
  3. Goes without saying you will need insurance to cover the different rafts of tasks you will be undertaking.
  4. What about helping people to pack up their stuff when they move house. That is such a mammoth task. It's all the small stuff that takes an age. I can tell you where you can get free boxes (type that apples come in) which have handles to carry them, so great for packing smaller items in and pots n pans, books, etc. PS with dog walking, don't forget to factor in the pick up and return journey. You may well walk for an hour, but it may take yo 20 mins to get there and 20 back. Travel time between your visits has to be paid for plus the cost of the fuel. Some dogs benefit from being off the lead to be able to run as fast as they can around the field to burn off energy and if that's best for your dog then no harm in that. The person still has to stand there and watch them and the owner has decided they don't even have time to stand there for 20 mins to watch their dog run around a field. But walking for a full hour means you won't walk as many dogs in a day by the time you have driven between customers houses.
  5. I think if you are going into a Senior Management position of any industry and have to come onto a forum to ask what all the obvious things are you should be looking for, you will likely fail with at interview. Have you slightly mislead them to get the interview? CV's generally show you have ticked at least all the basic boxes that you can do the job description, including and especially, that you know all the blindingly obvious.... blindfolded! The interview is to then decide who would be best for the job.
  6. He needs to see a business advisor for help with creating a business plan. Go wth him and you can take notes and then help him pull it together. Go to SENTA as a starting point and go from there. They will advise him of what is available to him with regards funding and or loans that could be available to him to apply for. They will want a proper, realistic business plan, there is no way around that, so concentrate on getting the BP done first, get the advice and support of a business advisor, and then see what he can apply for.
  7. Yes I thought about your bride n groom and wondered how that could be expanded, but hey, that's how brainstorming works
  8. a baby doll that looks like your baby. oh the millions this would make!
  9. you can get a free 30 mins with many solicitors. Just ring them up and ask. And ring acas, they're free. I hear you now have to pay a fee to go to tribunal.
  10. You can't just ask a question like that and expect even a rough price. You need to sit down and draft up the specification for exactly how it will work - every page, every function, etc. Most designers won't sit down with someone and do this for free as you are likely to then go out and get more quotes, and go with the cheapest and not the one who put the hard work into working out the best spec for you. Just bear that in mind. If the F word is involved, people also tend to bump up the price. Bear that in mind too. You want quotes from people without mentioning funding, where you provide the spec, or if they draft it for you, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that spec meets your requirements. Use a novice and they will try and give you a basic wordpress install and a couple of plugins which may not actually do what you wanted. You can't say "like ebay" - you do not have hundreds of thousands of pound and neither does your funders. You won't come remotely close. Find out what the grant is likely to pay up to. If you are only getting £1k, forget it for any kind of decent auction site you are looking at a few thousand and more, depending on what you thin you want it to do. And you will always say "and can you just" - well "can you just add this" costs extra money if it wasn't included in the quote. You want to tell someone what you want the site to do, and they can provide a price once they have worked out what you need, without providing you with the breakdown of the spec as such, as I would if I were quoting, saying this is what you would get for XXX pounds. This is better than you trying to drum up a spec or thinking they will do one for free.
  11. If they are on an apprenticeship programme you have to pay them when they are on day release to college.
  12. You just have to remember you are a business and not a charity and don't feel guilty. I empathise with you. I had an A* apprentice that lasted 4 weeks and didn't work half of that. They can have all the A* in the world but if they lack interest and initiative they are not going to do well in the job. College seems to overlook the personal requirements as part of educating and mentoring an apprentice. I know a lot of people who have tried taking on apprentices only to find it a complete waste of their time. I would want paying if someone wanted me to take on an apprentice, not me pay them for diddly squat.
  13. I presumed since it was posted on this section of the forum that the OP wants to advertise his business.
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