How to charge for something client thinks is free?

[sootylashes]

How to charge a client when they think something is free?

A small family startup hired me to do media buying and some minor conversion rate optimisation for them for their square space page and a lot of ad hoc related to their online activities. We have meetings twice per week and I’m basically holding together all the strings of the business.

I charge 1500 usd +5% profit on additional sales (aka nothing at the moment) and believe this to be underpaid (lmk what you think?)

Honestly, results have been poor. They are converting 0.4% (up from 0.1%), but it’s barely breaking even.

I convinced them to move to a Shopify solution over time and last night they asked what it will take to move the page to shopify asap.

(60 products)

My answer “a lot of hours and a lot of coffee”

Now, the problem:
My dumb ass got caught off guard in a conversation, and now they think I’m doing this entire webshop build on top of everything else, without any additional cost to them.

Questions:
1) Should I charge for building the webshop, although they are already paying me 1500 for related services?

2) What should I charge?

3) How do I come back to the client with “hey I know you think this was free, but I have to charge X” in a polite way when I myself am not satisfied with the other work I have done for them?

 

[avie]

@sootylashes I’d do the « normal » way, saying I estimated this to x hours, so this will cost around x$, are you ok with that ? Remember you’re selling a service that includes advice.

You advice moving to shopify and tell them how much it will cost, they can accept, shop around, negotiate or refuse. Keep it simple

 

[613jono]

@avie Ya they never said "I will do it" they just said it would take them a bunch of hours. So they can simply "get back" to those hours and tell them as you mentioned.

 

[headheart]

@sootylashes Website builds are not traditionally part of a monthly service retainer.

I'd send them an estimate for your charge to rebuild the shop in Shopify. If you have the products currently in a spread sheet, it may not be as bad as you think to build a Shopify since you can just build the product template, adjust the spreadsheet to conform with Shopify, and then upload the entire product list with one button. The other pages should just be replications of the existing site.

How have you structured your current retainer? Scope, hours? It should be clear what your monthly tasks/time is, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that making a new website is beyond that scope. If you haven't set forth the scope - then that needs to be the first thing you do. When you don't manage your clients expectations - and that goes for what you are doing and for how long just as much as what they should expect in return, you are asking for trouble.

If you don't want to charge extra, then I would ask them which of your services they want to forgo during the time you are building the site, because you can't do both under the current contract.