Client wants my website logo for advertising/marketing

[Peter]

As has been mentioned, printing anything is a lot more complicated than first appears, every printer seems to want a different image in a different format at a different resolution and different offsets. A lot depends on what the image is going to be used on and the limitations of the print material and technology being used.
With fonts you cant assume the font you have used, is available at the printer either.
As has been suggested, give your customer the highest resolution image you have, and explain that it was not designed to be a print grade logo, but it might suffice in certain situations. Some of the better printers will quote for working on the original artwork to bring it up to spec as well.

[GeoffreyYu7]

I just want to weigh in here and ask that you consider providing a higher res version for free. Depending on how much they would normally pay you for such a service, the boost in their impressions of you and the future work they provide can easily outweigh the cost of redoing a single logo in a higher res.

[Gertrude]

Cheers Peter and Geoff for that.

But, in the past year I've designed sites for two different driving schools and given away more than a few freebies along the way. With the first site I designedfor a driving instructor I ended up doing the SEO for him virtually for free with a view to gaining a good rep etc

the boost in their impressions of you and the future work they provide can easily outweigh the cost

I got him half way up page 1 of Google for "Driving Lessons in his town and surrounding area" he is still in the top three pages for this search in Google and Yahoo and is number one on page 1 in Bing right now.
I have had very little in return for doing this favour.

The second driving school site was for a female instructor, she wanted me to re-design her site from scratch and get her business ranked high in the search engines and have a follow up maintenance plan with me. Everything was going well up until I sent her the quote and she backed out of the SEO and maintenence plans and just wanted the re-design work. This was ok by me if that was what she wanted, but in my opinion there was no way that I over priced the quote.
So I went ahead and completed the work, but her domain wasn't even showing up in google if you typed her own business name in, she complained to me. So out of the goodness of my heart I registered her site with the search engines, gave her homepage some meta tag work and keywords and a liitle SEO all for free, again with the view to getting a good reputation etc, she's somehow now on page 3 of Google by shear fluke I guess.

Well here I am again deciding whether to do more favours for the same client and over a year on I don't see me benefitting from any of it TBH.
I suppose some people just aren't interested in 'boosting the impression' of any ones business but their own.

[LD]

Cheers Peter and Geoff for that.

But, in the past year I've designed sites for two different driving schools and given away more than a few freebies along the way. With the first site I designedfor a driving instructor I ended up doing the SEO for him virtually for free with a view to gaining a good rep etc


I got him half way up page 1 of Google for "Driving Lessons in his town and surrounding area" he is still in the top three pages for this search in Google and Yahoo and is number one on page 1 in Bing right now.
I have had very little in return for doing this favour.

The second driving school site was for a female instructor, she wanted me to re-design her site from scratch and get her business ranked high in the search engines and have a follow up maintenance plan with me. Everything was going well up until I sent her the quote and she backed out of the SEO and maintenence plans and just wanted the re-design work. This was ok by me if that was what she wanted, but in my opinion there was no way that I over priced the quote.
So I went ahead and completed the work, but her domain wasn't even showing up in google if you typed her own business name in, she complained to me. So out of the goodness of my heart I registered her site with the search engines, gave her homepage some meta tag work and keywords and a liitle SEO all for free, again with the view to getting a good reputation etc, she's somehow now on page 3 of Google by shear fluke I guess.

Well here I am again deciding whether to do more favours for the same client and over a year on I don't see me benefitting from any of it TBH.
I suppose some people just aren't interested in 'boosting the impression' of any ones business but their own.

I think you've answered your own question.

[Gertrude]

And I've done that too, but mostly with longstanding clients. In fact, I've even supplied the labour in some cases also at n/c - much to my accountant's displeasure.

Maybe it's not such a simple and cold decision even for you to make either LD?

[LD]

Maybe it's not such a simple and cold decision even for you to make either LD?

What are you inferring?

[Gertrude]

Well, that giving our services away for free is lpgffxxffjkkcfnnk,
shit sorry dude just ignore me I'm taking offence where there is none, really it's been a bad day, er week well u know

You've been a big help on this thread LD and I've had too much Guinness

[GeoffreyYu7]

Cheers Peter and Geoff for that.

But, in the past year I've designed sites for two different driving schools and given away more than a few freebies along the way. With the first site I designedfor a driving instructor I ended up doing the SEO for him virtually for free with a view to gaining a good rep etc


I got him half way up page 1 of Google for "Driving Lessons in his town and surrounding area" he is still in the top three pages for this search in Google and Yahoo and is number one on page 1 in Bing right now.
I have had very little in return for doing this favour.

The second driving school site was for a female instructor, she wanted me to re-design her site from scratch and get her business ranked high in the search engines and have a follow up maintenance plan with me. Everything was going well up until I sent her the quote and she backed out of the SEO and maintenence plans and just wanted the re-design work. This was ok by me if that was what she wanted, but in my opinion there was no way that I over priced the quote.
So I went ahead and completed the work, but her domain wasn't even showing up in google if you typed her own business name in, she complained to me. So out of the goodness of my heart I registered her site with the search engines, gave her homepage some meta tag work and keywords and a liitle SEO all for free, again with the view to getting a good reputation etc, she's somehow now on page 3 of Google by shear fluke I guess.

Well here I am again deciding whether to do more favours for the same client and over a year on I don't see me benefitting from any of it TBH.
I suppose some people just aren't interested in 'boosting the impression' of any ones business but their own.

I'm sorry those two didn't work out for you. You can however, still make use of them. For example, ask them for a customer testimonial that you can put on your site to advertise, or list them as references for potential customers so they can give a glowing review if called.

You also have to make a judgement call. First, consider the customer. How big is the business? What is the personality of the customer? How likely is it that they know other companies that could use your services, and how likely is it that they will actually serve as a word-of-mouth piece? What is the actual value of the favor you are doing for them, in time and money? Basically, you should do favors that are just large enough to show how much you value their business, but not enough that you'd actually be taken advantage of. In other words, when you're doing a favor, make sure it will count. Now I'm only speaking from my experience in a B2B situation, so it might be slightly different from yours, but this should still apply.

That said, I urge you not to give up on this because of two bad experiences. I shouldn't have to say that word of mouth can be extremely powerful, and I believe that for every one customer who will take your kindness for granted, there is another who recognizes how hard you've worked on their behalf and will act accordingly. Also, and I apologize if you've already done this, mention how it would help if they could mention your services to others who might need it. Sometimes just the slightest push in the right direction makes all the difference.

Hope that helps.

[Gertrude]

Thanks for those words of encouragement and sound advice Geoffrey,

That said, I urge you not to give up on this because of two bad experiences.

Things aren't all that bad, I have other clients at the moment so I won't be chucking in the towel just yet.