I find it so amazing that people offer $2, $3, $5, etc...for domains that are for sale. Granted, alot of the domains that people are selling are worthless, but I also see a good number that actually have some value receiving the same offers. Why is that? Are all you people so poor that you can't afford anymore. Isnt all of your time (both buyer and seller) worth more than the dollar amounts being offered and exchanged??? Are you people just a bunch of teenagers with no more than 20 bucks in your bank accounts?? I actually saw someone on the job board here offering their tech services for 35 bucks a month!!! Please help me understand why everyone in the hosting industry is so CHEAP?????

Is this a complaint? :cartman:

Yes i try offering PHP Services here but its quite hard considering i wont work for .10cents/hour

Moved to a discussion forum ....

Some people are poor
Some people are rich
Some people are white
Some people are black
Some people like cheap things
Some people like expensinve things

Can we change how people are? It's what they want so thats what we need to attempt to give to them. If it's not possible then they won't get many offers.

I often wonder the same thing, and being both a provider of a service (I do programming in PHP, Perl) and a user of a service (I opt for shared web hosting because I do not yet know how to manage my own server), I can understand both sides of the argument.

What I have learned, however, is that most ventures on the internet are risky. There is no "sure thing" on the internet, and, as a result, people will not readily dump hundreds of dollars into a project.

...Especially if the person starting the project is a teenager.

For example, one site I started I dumped $200 into for a custom PHP script, domain, web hosting, etc. The most traffic the site EVER saw was 300 uniques per day. (and I thought it was a relatively good idea, too. But I won't discuss the merits of the idea in this discussion).

On another one of my sites, however, I only dropped down like $50 to get it started, and it became an instant success.

I guess what I am trying to say is (and I know this holds true outside the internet business, as well) that the amount of money you spend on a project != how successful the project will be. That, coupled with a "younger" generation wanting to get into the internet business, is why *I* at least think people are so cheap.

Just my 2¢

After the IT bubble burst a few years back about 50% of IT companies shut down their business. And along with it several hundred thousand of professionals lost their jobs. I have even come across these professionals who have taken up alternative jobs...some even teaching dancing or foreign language classes at home.

The total loss for my family's stock investments in IT sector was about quarter of a million dollars [this was after five years of careful investments of our savings and cash reserves]

From past about three years I cannot say I have made any profit from my work. My work has become more of a hobby and I am more dependent on income from rentals of my property and some income from my farm. This income just meets my needs for a comfortable living at home. It has been years since I have been on a holiday to the seaside or the mountains [which I always visited every year of my life] I use a scooter donated by my kind sister instead of a car [the last vehicles I owned were actually a Suzuki 4wd and a Yamaha twin cylinder motorcycle]

I havent sold a domain in the last couple of months. I gave away one for free recently to a enthusiastic teenager. From some others I have got free hosting for some projects I am trying to develop.

I can see your point in a way, alot of people do sell themselves short in what seems to be an attempt just to make a few dollars, but in regards to people pratically giving away domains, which makes more sense?

1. Somebody parking a domain, that they don't use and don't plan to use, then letting it drop when it expires.

2. Somebody parking a domain that they don't use and don't plan to use, paying the renewal fee when it expires and leaving it parked another year.

or

3. Somebody getting at least a few dollars return on what they paid, for a domain they don't use and don't plan to use.

number three makes more sense to me :)

Well, there's also a lot of students/younger kids. Who are still being supported by mom and dad in one way or another. They are talented programers, and they don't have to worry about living expenses. So it's no sweat off their back to do a job for rates that industry professionals wouldn't dream of.

er, that was in regardes to PHP programing and so on.

Personally I am in agreement with Loon. I have a couple domains that I have sold and will sale for a few bucks. These are domains that I don't need but would rather try to get a few bucks out of them then lose all $10 I payed. I'd much rather lose $5 instead of $10, wouldn't you?

As for buying domain names, I used to give into my whims and buy domains thinking I was going to capitalize on something really hot at that moment.

For Example: Right after Sara Hughes did that nearly flawless performance in ice skating to come out of nowhere to win gold, I have a themed/vanity domain purchased before she made it to the podium for her medal. Later I realized I was either too lazy, didn't know enough about Sara Hughes or ice skating to make it worth my while. I paid for the domain for a year and watched it expire. (I think I paid for hosting for 3 or 4 months too.)

Now I just let my whims go and focus on what I know and enjoy and have a passion for. However, I did recently buy a 3 letter dot com on a whim because it seemed to appeal to me. (T84.com) It was a whooping $2.49 on eBay. Woo Hoo!

As for people giving away their goods and services, I think many are people looking for a few $$$ here and there and are not trying to earn a living from it or even steady part time income. I think it is more like deciding to go out on a street corner today and see how much change I can get from strangers. Once I get enough to get me a 40 ounce, then I'll quit.

I also think there is a fair amount of people like myself that are employed full time and would like a side income from something they also enjoy and are skilled (or think they are skilled) at doing. I am a very good network and systems administrator and can competently manage (and secure) a server in a production environment. I also did manage a business doing DJ and Sound Work when I was younger and managed a small retail store for someone a while back.

Now does all that translate into making it a go as a webhost or some support niche or something? Who knows? I can get my feet wet as a reseller or I can jump in and get a dedicated server from RS and still not be into it for much change and since most of it is monthly, I could just close up anytime if I was doing poorly. I am sure many share my thinking.

However, I don't want to jump in and close and I don't want to harm the industry nor others that are trying to make an honest living as a webhost. They have families to feed and bills to pay like me. They don't deserve to have someone come in and unrealistically offer goods and services at below market value. That isn't to say that they also deserve the corner on the market which is expanding and has niche services maybe left untapped.

A good example of an industry that suffers from a lack of public education and understanding in fair pricing is woodworking. That was my main career for 17 years before switching over to IT full-time. (Yeah, I got lucky in the IT boom but worked damn hard to stay on top when it went bust.) Let's face it, I can make $12 an hour driving around in my car, listening to tunes, dropping off pizzas and occasionally meeting hotties at the door. Now why would I open a small one man woodworking shop with the overhead of equipment, risk of injury to my digits, and break my back for less than delivering pizzas?

The problem is the public wants custom work at mass retail prices or for less since they don’t really think the 2 car garage you built is business overhead but just part of your house that you pay for anyway. And they don’t want to know you are making money for vacations and sick days. To them they want it cheap.

To add a rub to the problem, there are many, many woodworkers willing to offer it cheap. Many times, they might be some retired from a nice paying factory job and have enough income and just want to pay for their shop toys and keep the spouse from complaining about all the money being spent on tools. They go to craft shows and sell things that are poorly made and will never be heirlooms but throw away items instead. To them, they don’t need to make a certain level on income so a few $$$ here and there are good enough.

Then you have the guy who really wants to be a woodworker in his own shop and does know his trade but he has to undercut his price to just pay the bills. Sure, the good paying commissions do come around but usually not as often as the mortgage payment or gas bill. So it is a vicious circle that seems to have no end; hence the circle. Usually they just quit or never really make it and do it for the love and freedom as much as anything else.

Webhosting looks very, very similar. People want it cheap and there are people thinking they can offer it cheap and still make a buck or two. Sure, some make it and other adapt once they realize the cold fact about actual costs and decide their time is worth something more than a few $$$ here and there.

As an industry, we know that webhosts will come and go and there will always be some willing to do it cheaper. There will even some that will do it better and raise the bar for everyone and for me personally, I don’t want to enter into being a webhost or some tangent supporting others if I really don’t have anything to contribute on raising the bar.

Well, I spent another lunch hour at WHT. Wheeeee… Maybe I will be inspired this afternoon with my next great idea.

DCM

I just figure that everyone knows what they are worth. It's not up to me to decide what you should charge, I don't know anything about you. Maybe you are only worth $1.00/month. I do know what I am worth though. And that is what my price is predicated on.

I will tell you this, we sell hosting plans all day long to customers who are already hosted at much cheaper companies. We sell value, not price. What good is a $5/month hosting plan if it's not doing what you need it to and you can't get help. This is one of the easiest sales we make.

Well said, DCM.
Nice ad Dale.

Yeah. I actually use it in my sales pitch.:D

It depends on your sector and demand. Just make sure you are flexible enough to the changing economy.

I work on an hourly rate (but I usually workout how long projects will take and quote based on that).

$30/month sounds cheap but really it depends on how much work they expect to actually have to do for $30/month (I suspect either not much, or it's not his full time job).

Most IT programming contractors I know charge in the area of $65-$85 an hour. But to be honest it depends on the quality of the company. You aren't going to find top notch web design firms that design things for compaq working at $35/hour.

To be honest you get what you pay for... I've not found "great" people to work for free. Sorry to say that, but if you pay someone 10 cents per hour to do a job, then you will get a 10 cents per hour job. If you get a 20 cent job for 10 cent then you got over. If you buy 0o7.com for $5.00 then it is really worth just that $5.00. Cheap things are just that: CHEAP. Every now and again you will find a deal or a steal, but most of the time you will get what you pay for...

The problem when you start is that you might not know what you are worth, especially if you already have a full time job, and just looks for that little bit of extra so you can afford to get a car or service your bike, instead of just paying your bills and eat. How do you put a price on talent? How do you put a price on the dedication on doing a good job? You look at what other offers, and you go from there. You look at their work. Does your work look better, worse, or the same? Should you ask more or less for your own work?

I don't want to be cheap, I don't want cheap things, but sometimes that is all I can afford.

Originally posted by hekwu
To be honest you get what you pay for... If only that was true, the world would be a simpler place!
Price can in no way can guarantee quality.

Hosts are people. Some give it away and others charge a very high price for their services. :) The reasons vary.

A lot of people have trouble accepting that they can actually grow a decent business if they're more expensive than any given competitor. At the end of the day, most people don't realize that it comes down to more than just price.

As for domains, like somebody above I've sold a couple of domains for next to nothing simply so that I could lose a little less than if they'd expired. :)

A big issue at this site is the average age. A 15 year old kid will work for next to nothing.

Overselling is the key. Cheap thing would not last long.

Overselling (Massively), Kids trying to pick up some extra money, and other things have lead to "cheapness" ;) However, some of this has come from the fact that prices are coming down for many things on the web. PHP is widely know by alot of people now, and when alot know it, things become competitive, same with website design. There are many designers, but the days of a couple hundred dollars for good designs on average are gone.

Webhosting has become the same way. With companies offering massive amounts of space and bandwidth (overselling) kids and the normal joe now have access to cheap space and no longer have to invest a huge amount in order to start a business. You can honestly take $10 for a domain, $10 for a hosting plan(monthly), and design your own website and start a hosting business.