How do you handle clients asking for a discount?

That's very professional of you root.....I doubt that will do many favours for you.

root, you need some real lessons in tact and manners my friend

If it was a returning client with a prospect of further work i would offer them a discount. If it was someone simply wanting one for no reason i would simply let them know that i can not offer them the discount.

The thing is though bazza, every client i had in my early days "if you do this we'll put more work your way"

The reality is, if they had more work to put my way they could afford to pay the non-discounted rate. You can smell them a mile away man.

isn't the point of it all not to loose good customers. not to give them freebies, not just to be nice, its business and for your own winnings not theirs =)

Originally Posted by Anthony The thing is though bazza, every client i had in my early days "if you do this we'll put more work your way" The reality is, if they had more work to put my way they could afford to pay the non-discounted rate. You can smell them a mile away man.

Good point.

I think it doe's really depend on your situation though. We all know how crowded the market is and if your just starting you really want to hold on to every job you get offered. 3 years ago if someone came upto me and said hey i've had work done by you before would you be able to do me another job but at a discoutned rate i would of more than likely taken it simply because i wouldn't of had many other options available to me.

Now though i can be more selective with my clients, i don't really design much at all anymore so when i am doing work i want it to be for people that don't want a discount

simple, they ask for a discount because they want you to be nice to them, ask for moe per hour because you want them to return the generousity.

I guess if it were for a close friend andhe didnt have the money and I was for sure that he didn't I could give him/her a discount. But for just some random person I would not be willing to take a few dollars off a 30$ item.

Right now I'm willing to do most any work for any amount of money. I'm trying the whole freelance thing.

I never had this problem, and for the time being, I should never have one (I'm not selling anything .) What I would do first however, is just make a little note in the contact form saying that all messages asking for a discount will be ignored.

Originally Posted by Julian You should always consider the possibility of giving discounts, say 10% of a $30 banner is only $3, it's not much to you to lose and could get you a lot more repeat sales if done properly. I know you are operating on low margins with small jobs but you should always consider discounts to the right people.

This man is a genious.