[thelist] Creating Clients

Bev Corwin bev at enso-company.com
Thu Aug 23 10:44:44 CDT 2001


Hmm... very interesting,  but seems a bit unethical to me, and sounds a bit
messy as far as intellectual property, copyrights, etc... However, in cases
where the client has limited or no technical knowledge or technical staff,
it may be a creative solution, would be interesting to see out it played
out.  In any case,  we have had a few clients who did not have the money to
invest in their web development.  We usually offer some kind of cost benefit
analysis to determine if a web development project would be any real benefit
to the business.  Usually, there is some degree of cost benefit that can be
demonstrated, and in such a case, the clients decide that the Internet
presence will end up saving them money, and they are more likely to dig into
their pockets to find some way to pay for the development.   In some other
cases, when it involved an ecommerce project,  that was pretty straight
forward,  they usually offered some kind of stock equity or profit sharing
on the sales generated by the website.  The equity was usually equivalent to
whatever discount on services that we offered them.   Of course, this can be
messy and involved a lot of documentation and requires building a site that
can support the additional reporting necessary.  You can also end up with a
lot of equity in businesses that don't have a lot of real value in the short
term,  especially.   As a business owner,  I would not be comfortable giving
up the Internet rights to another company unless that company had some kind
of partnership or vested interest in the success of the overall business.
In addition,  why would a web design company want to own all of these other
Internet business interests, especially if they were successful and then
generated a lot of work that someone would have to sustain and manage?  That
also brings up questions of conflict of interest, and all kinds of problems
that could eventually develop if this were done as a regular plan for many
different clients.   Its seems like opening a new business,  or many new
businesses if the plan were to do this model for all the clients.   I would
keep them very separate, at least as independent projects or subsidiaries to
avoid a big mess, and I would prepare a good cost benefit analysis to
convince the client that a good web development investment will cut overall
costs and benefit the company in the long run.

BC
------------------------------------
Bev Corwin, President          Enso Company Ltd.
The Westin Building             2001 Sixth Avenue
Penthouse Suite 3403          Seattle WA 98121 USA
Telephone: 206.728.2232     Facsimile: 206.728.2262


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hershel Robinson" <hershelsr at yahoo.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: [thelist] Creating Clients


> On another web professionals mailing list (not unfamiliar to some of you
> Evolters) someone recently suggested an interesting method to secure new
> clients.
>
> He offers to design a web site for them for fee, but retain all copyright
> priveleges to his pages.  The client signs a document to this effect.  He
> then gives the pages to the client for the first month for free--he
probably
> would also create a domain name and find a host for them as well.  Then,
if
> the site actually produces revenue or leads or whatever the client wants,
he
> then allows the client to lease the pages from him for a certain monthly
> fee.  The client is saved from making an initial large (and potentially
> prohibitive) investment, and the designer has created a (small) ongoing
> income.
>
> This method is new to me and I find it very interesting.  I have a
question,
> however, regarding this copyright retention idea.  Would it not be
possible
> for the client to make some small change (like changing the background
color
> of all the pages from blue to green) and thus create 'new' pages which
would
> not be copyrighted by the designer?  A devious and smart client could end
up
> with a whole site for free.  Even a non-devious client might want to make
> certain more significant changes a month down the road and if he hires his
> cousin Vinny (instead of the original designer) to make those changes,
then
> at that point, the pages would certainly be new and not covered by the
> copyright.
>
> I suppose the other option would be to design a site for free with the
> stipulation that the designer then is entitled to a certain portion of any
> revenue generated by the web site.  This would be profit-sharing and would
> not really be a new concept, although I've never tried it myself--I was
> always a bit nervous I would end up sharing a net revenue of zero!
>
> Does anyone have any experience with these ideas and can share some advice
> or ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Hershel
>
>
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