atw: Re: Off-topic-Are we in the wrong business?

I would say that the client suffered from bad purchasing skills and/or poor management. (They weren't Rio Tinto, were they?) Where's the value in paying five figures if you can get the same result for four figures? Surely they could've found someone who would be able to produce the same result for a lot less. They could've hired someone for a whole week/month to do lots of other work, too.
We supposedly live in a competitive market so that these sorts of things don't happen -- unless there's incompetence or corruption.
Having said that, I managed to score a contract doing a few fixed price documents. I knew the client was typically paying $5k for them. I thought I could do them comfortably at at cost of $3.5k. In the end, the first one took me seven hours, the second one took six hours. We're both happy. 

Cheers,
Terry


Quoting David Godley <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:




There is more to it than just supply and demand.  Value.

 As in.. "what is it worth to the organisation that is paying for the
work to be done?"  While the individual line item may not be cost
effective, the ROI on the project as a whole must be. An extreme
example...A good frient once worked with a crowd who were able to
charge a large 5 figure sum for a small programming task that all up
took maybe one or two person days to complete, test and document.

 Why were we able to charge so much... and why did the client  accept
the quote without the blink of an eye...

 Because it was worth their entire business... without it their
industry regulator could have shut them down in even less time than it
took to do the work.  David



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