Carrie Dils is a WordPress developer and business consultant, a recommended Genesis developer by StudioPress, and an author of WordPress training courses at Lynda.com. Personally, she is a lover of rescue dogs and a craft beer connoisseur.
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Getting Started in Web Development
- What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
- Every time she has raised her rates, she has increased the quality of her customers.
- By charging higher rates, she attracts a different kind of customer – one who values her as a consultant, not just a technologist.
- People who are at lower price points tend to not value the business side.
- They are not looking for a business solution; they are looking for the lowest price to execute a specific task.
- Can an NDA have a negative impact on the customer relationship?
- An NDA can start off with an adversarial relationship with the customer.
- Requiring an NDA demonstrates a lack of trust.
- You cannot create high value if there is not trust.
- The spirit behind asking for an upfront NDA is the equivalent to asking for a prenup before you go on a first date.
- How did you get started as a web developer?
- After college, she only knew graphic design and a little HTML.
- She was a freelancer and worked on banner ads for KLTY in the late 90s.
- Carrie did not like cubicles and left the corporate world behind, thinking she would start her own coffee shop.
- She learned she did not want to open a coffee shop after working as a barista at Starbucks.
- From there, she started freelancing as a web developer.
Pricing for the Web Developer
- How did you price projects when you were getting started?
- Initially, she was at a loss for how to charge.
- She threw a number out there – $50/hour.
- If no one tells you that you are too expensive, then you are not charging enough.
- She pushed her hourly rate upward until people said she was too expensive.
- The frustration of running out of time inspired her to search for another possibility rather than billing by the hour.
- She moved to a flat-fee quote.
- She is dipping her toes into the area of value pricing.
- What were the advantages and disadvantages of quoting a fixed price?
- “Scope” can be a scary word.
- If you guess what a project will take and quote based on that, without digging into the scope, you can lose.
- When you scope a project up front (discovery, road mapping, needs analysis), your customer can invest at a lower dollar amount.
- At the end, the customer gets a document of what the core issues are and what the goals/outcomes need to be.
- The document is educational and enlightening to the customer.
- There is a comfort factor by starting that way so that the customer trusts you.
- What is the difference between recommending a solution vs. technology?
- If you are talking about what to develop, they will tend to go toward technology.
- If you are talking about why, they will tend to go toward a solution.
- Curtis McCale shared his initial prospect email with Carrie, that has three simple questions:
- Why now?
- What does success look like?
- What is your budget?
- Those three questions allow your customer to think more critically about his project.
- From a comfort standpoint, it is a benefit to your customer to believe that they are not locked into the entire process with the consultant.
- Due to purchasing requirements, the customer has to send out an RFP and can use your road mapping document to do so.
- The IT Smile Curve by Ed Kless demonstrates that road mapping and delivery are where the value of a project is.
- Where are you succeeding in your value pricing journey?
- She is doing a good job with consulting:
- Asking good questions.
- Engaging in great conversations.
- She is struggling with connecting the dots between the value from the consulting and the price being charged for the product.
- She has pushed her numbers on the fixed price, but she is not basing her price on what value the project delivers.
- She sees her journey as an evolution and appreciates that it does not have to be all-or-nothing.
- Curtis used a weekly billing rate for a while and Carrie tried it out. It caused unnecessary anxiety for the customer.
- You have to try things out, experiment and see what works.
- Ed Gandia was also value pricing and did not realize it.
- The History of the Billable Hour is an eye-opening episode, to realize from where the practice came.
- She is doing a good job with consulting:
Adding Value Through Accessibility
- How did you land your training gig with Lynda.com?
- When she left Starbucks, her dad bought her a subscription to Lynda.com for her birthday.
- She learned WordPress from Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
- In 2013, she was at WordCamp (community event for WordPress “nerds”) and met Morten.
- Several months later, Morten recommended her to Lynda.com.
- What is the value of accessibility to a website owner?
- Web accessibility is the idea that your content is accessible to anyone, regardless of the device being used to access the content.
- You enable more people to consume your content and provide a greater opportunity to reach the customer.
- Some people believe that web content should be more accessible because it is the right thing to do.
- However, the business case for web accessibility is that you have a more cutting-edge website.
- A website that looks good on a mobile device is given priority over sites that are not on Google.
- US government sites, as well as other countries, require accessibility.
- For example, inserting the image ALT tag for screen readers provides an alternate description of the image.
- Podcasts without transcripts prohibit the deaf from getting your content.
- The business benefit is that Google likes transcriptions.
- What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
- Carrie enjoys maximizing impact by doing something that can be used repetitively to be helpful, like her episodes on Lynda.com.
- They continue to deliver value to people's lives, despite being a one-time investment on her part.
- The lasting value has been personally fulfilling to Carrie.
About Carrie Dils
- Website: CarrieDils.com
- Podcast: OfficeHours.FM (Thursdays at 2pm EST)
- Twitter: @cdils
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