You built a site for someone, and registered a domain that includes there name without asking?

Firstly, I think she would have a good legal case for getting the domain handed over two her. Your site is currently using that domain to masquerade as her business, right?

Secondly, can you tell me why she should buy the site from you, when

1) She clearly does not want to spend a lot on a site, and,
2) Even if she did, she could get a tailor made site, made to her stated requirements rather than your guesses about what she wants?

Unless I was Madonna, Sting, Cher, Bono, or some other one-name wonder, firstname.tld or even firstname.com would have no value to me in business. Possibly FirstName-LastName.com if I was just using my personal name as the DBA for my realtor business. But for SEO purposes, I would more likely want a location component in the domain name.

Do you think it's reasonable to ask for $10K for a nice, well designed and coded realtor site; that includes the domain?

If the potential client is interested in paying for a website, then proposing that amount IN ADVANCE (of any work being done and getting approval from the potential client) is certainly reasonable.

Coming to someone and saying "Without your knowledge or permission, I registered a domain name based on your name, built a web site without asking your specifications, and decided on a price without knowing your budget" is not very reasonable.

$10k for a real estate website kind of sounds on the high side. I'm just saying that because nowadays one can do a lot of things with WordPress. Yeah, there are issues with WP but that's the same with virtually anything. A WP Plugin is free, just to get started.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/placester/ [wordpress.org]

I was thinking it was a bit expensive too. I charged a client significantly less for a fairly complex sales plus holiday rentals site, done from scratch to his spec using Django.

Perhaps I am undercharging, but one way or another (use a CMS plus plugins, use a framework...) these days it does not take very long to do a simple website.

To clarify my post, if you can show that a new $10,000 site is going to bring in more than $10,000 in commissions that wouldn't have come in through the old site (or other channels)- in other words, new revenue the client would not have otherwise received- then you would have a case for asking $10,000. So in your case, maybe the SEO work would have much of that value, over and above the web site itself.

But you would have to convince the client of that. And if the client is happy with her existing site, I think it would be a very uphill battle.

Thank you guys for your feedback. And thanks for the WP plugin. I wasn't aware of that specific plugin. I may give it a try on my next projects.

show that a new $10,000 site is going to bring in more than $10,000 in commissions that wouldn't have come in through the old site

Very good point. I did mention that she would be owning a very good site at the cost of one condo sale/commission. I also mentioned that this site would be similar to owning "real-estate" online and that it is necessary nowadays to appear online and on Social Network sites in order to compete with other realtors. She is an active facebook user and posts recent sales and real estate news and updates on her facebook page. I figured she could use a good domain and a luxury and well designed website.

Without your knowledge or permission, I registered a domain name based on your name, built a web site without asking your specifications,

Well her first name is a very common and popular foreign name and there are lots of other realtors with the same name that I could sell the domain to.

1) She clearly does not want to spend a lot on a site, and,
2) Even if she did, she could get a tailor made site, made to her stated requirements rather than your guesses about what she wants?

1. I agree but she seems interested in all my other sites and always comments on the beautiful design via social networks etc.
2. She could never purchase such a site in the US at this price + I didn't guess but rather did lots of research ... however, if she were to purchase the site I would offer changes/modifications for free.

Obviously, I have questioned many things before I decided to build a site for someone who never asked for it anyway, but I wanted to test out this strategy and see if it works.

In regards to legal issues: I purchased over $1 million dollars worth of condos from her so I don't think she would sue me especially considering that we still keep in touch every time I visit the US and she always mentions that we were one of her best clients.

After she said that she is not interested in the website, I mentioned that I still plan to finish the project in order to sell the site to other realtors and she said that it was fine with her. I also said that at any time that she doesn't feel comfortable I would remove the site off the server.

Now since the site ranks well for her name I figured I would contact her again mentioning that now she has control over the testimonials and feedback people write online since most visitors would click on this site anyway once her name is Googled.

I plan to email her and ask her to pay whatever she thinks is reasonable and that she can afford. Do you think it would be a good strategy? I am guessing and hoping she may offer >50%of the original price I quoted before.

it sounds like cyber-squatting to me -- you're trying to pass off your site as her business.

I would be extremely careful with what you are doing. This sounds like it would violate the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

[en.wikipedia.org...]

it sounds like cyber-squatting to me -- you're trying to pass off your site as her business.

Hello all,

Just wanted to update you guys that as you guys had guessed it was not a good idea! ;(

I emailed my realtor yesterday saying that the site ranks #1 (on Google, Yahoo, Bing) for her full name and that she could pay whatever she thought was reasonable and affordable.

She responded back this morning saying that she loves her current website (which is horrible in my opinion) and asked me to remove the site immediately!

So I did!.

It was a crappy experience cause we put lots of time and money into this project and I really thought she would be excited to see such a site. But oh well! It was just another experience! ;(

I will probably use the website and template for some other realtor. But I will contact them before building or uploading this time :)

500.00 per page is hard to get excited over, not to mention updates, content and at 500.00 a page I would tell ya the same thing. Hard to fathom spending that much were I can build a 20 page website in a day using a template design.

#1 You overestimated the value other people see in a website. Rightly or wrongly, $10,000 is a lot of money for people, especially many realtors.

#2 Designing the site and showing her what the site could look like is great. However, when you start using her name (and maybe photos?) it starts to have a certain 'creepy' factor. And then we you start ranking for her name, it almost starts to feel like extortion lol.

But alas, live and learn!

I had a few strong backlinks and she ranked #1 on Google, Bing and Yahoo within 2 months.

$10,000 dollars is a lot of money however, purchasing over $1 million dollar condos I figured she probably made over $10,000 in commission from me alone.

Yes I agree. What I did was a bit creepy seeing it from her end. Oh well I had no bad intentions and learned my lesson. I removed the site off the server immediately.