Re: freelance sysadmining - boxes
On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, ScruLoose wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 03:27:17AM +0100, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:47:41 -0800 (PST),
> > Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com> wrote in message
> > <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.1031113162355.28028A-100000@Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com>:
> >
> > ..sure, but Vikki also plans to sell customized boxes.
> > On these, I would sell Sarge.
> > And charge extra for anything else.
>
> Sounds good.
> Better PR to call it a discount on the Debian ones, though.
>
> Likewise, you could offer a "discount" on the maintenance of the Debian
> boxen.
and yes... people do like discounts ... but be reasonable too
( a discount they say they want ... and if its reasonable... its a deal )
- dont give 50% off ... that'll just make them think your
overpriced to begin with
- after the discounts, you should be still be within your
competitors pricing
and still be able to cover your costs and expenses
- have your price models posted on your website.com/pricing.html
so you can always point at your "normal fee structure" for this
and than and what-have-you[-done-to-the-box-now]
whether you sell debian boxes or not, the customer with a check in
hand will typically tell you what distro they want, what apps they want,
and what its supposed to be and all the other bells and whistles
... and maybe even why they are stuck with that other distro
== if you have the luxury to provide your favorite distro ...
== it'd mostly be on the "appliance" you sell vs a consumer box
- firewalls w/ your modified debian distro is good example too
- spam filters and antivirus filters on your own distro would be a good
example of you can do anything you like ... as that is the
service you're providing for $500/month or whaver you're charging
- lots of debian based spam filters w/ spamassassin
on the market ...
- backup servers ... that can handle windoze and 2TB of data in one box
- fully automated, 3 of um to guarantee no data is lost, ..
- all of those probably need to run off a cdrom so nobody
goes around tinkering with it and break your system and blame
you when the virus gets in and wiped out their data and backups
- the customers will tell you what they want to buy .. !!!
and you're job is to tell um you're widgets is better for
these reasons ... and if they want you to replace their
dead disk drive in 2 hrs, tell um go to dell or compaq
( its amazing the number of people want 24x7 hardware replacement
( and nobody wants to pay for hotswap in 2 hrs
==
== come up with a bigger/better widget for better pricing or better
== performance or whatever tickles your fancy
==
c ya
alvin
--
-- the linux support maket is wide open now that the silly red folks
-- decided to pull support in favor or their new releases
-- and its probably NOT gonna go to india or china that likes
-- going around collecting outsourced support to their homeland
--
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