Well...remember the thread "clients don't have a clue" .... lol

I loved the suggestion of $1 per product Charles!

I'll give you all some info and then the way I handled it:

This client is the owner of a small "mom & pop" store here in Kansas that provides engraving for trophies, plaques, glassware, pens, etc. What he has is ACCESS to 300k products through his vendors. He has about 100 products in house at all times with the other items being ordered on an as-needed basis.

With my experience being a label/stamp reseller, I know most promo vendors offer sites available to their resellers, usually at an affordable rate with their entire inventory available, their own payment processors, etc. You just receive a check at the end of the month or after reaching a certain threshold from the vendor.

I basically started asking for info about their most popular vendor, whether they offer the service mentioned above, and what the goal was. The client has this idea that he could get 5 or 6 sales people working on a commission type basis - as well as his web designer - to sell these products and he could grow his business to 400k a year.

Realistically, he doesn't have the support personnel in place to accomodate that many orders, has trouble getting reliable/qualified help, and in my opinion would grow himself right out of an exisiting successful business.

Plus, if I was going to work on a commission basis, this would require Search Engine Optimization like crazy, constant modifications, specials, articles, etc. just to get the site to render results above all the other promo product sites. I couldn't make enough commission for that type of marketing. Let alone, the time invested - I mine as well do it for myself and throw in the towel on my current business.

So, what I did was negotiate a consultation service for contacting his current vendors and determining the best solution offered.
One vendor offers a site with the capability of adding your own additional products for $1295, a $99 set-up fee for the payment processor (plus 2.1% on sales) and $15.95 a month hosting. I couldn't touch that price for a custom site solution with the amount of products they offer.

I also offered a contracted product input for the current products in store. I haven't actually given a price on that yet as I am still feeling out the amount of work - like how much editing will need to be done on each product image (saturation, exposure, etc).

I, personally totally dislike inputing products. I have trained and paid other people needing some extra work to perform this at a rate that I make a little off the actual hours invested. I would rather design the site, install the cart solution and let whomever is interested to input products. Can't stand it and kind of groan whenever I have a call for ecommerce site. lol

The reason I don't do a per product fee is because of exactly what was mentioned, you end up doing a lot of free work making sure everything is configured properly. Not to mention adding product options and shipping charges.
I do offer per hour as I can start my quickbooks timer, and start dedicated work to populate the cart (usually very late at night - lol) and when I have reached the payment limit for hours - I stop.

I tell my clients to figure out what they can afford to spend per month, prioritize as to what they want input first, and require product images, descriptions, prices, options, etc. be provided by them. If they cannot provide the information and it's available from a vendor site - I charge a minimum of $25 per hour just to gather the info. That price is usually a good incentive to receive what I want from them.
I encourage my clients to gather this info for 2 reasons: 1) I can't afford to invest that kind of time into one client, and 2) I want them to understand the time consumed in providing this type of service.

So, in a nutshell - I am contacting the vendor sites to obtain a solution which will fit their budget, will perform contracted product input for an hourly fee, will upsell enewsletter blasts for marketing, and possibly SEO.

btw: If he really had 300k products - I probably would have gracefully declined as I can't afford to fly to Bangalore!

What do you guys think?