Pricing for old clients

Thomas Hawk - No Frills Price

In the past, I used to have different prices than I have today.

These days, on my hourly rate, for example, I have various rates, based on how long we work together.

At one time in the past, I increased the pricing of my services for a client.

He was very upset with my decision, telling me he doesn’t do so with his own clients.

His way of interpreting things stayed with me, and I tend to do the same with my current clients – if we establish a price per collaboration, I tend not to increase it, as time passes by.

It was a tough lesson, but I hope I learned something from it.

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Modern problems with modern solutions

Modern problems

Modern people today tend not to care about tomorrow. It’s all settled – they have a shelter, some food to eat, and they have their basic (and more) needs met.

But there are many people who live in difficult conditions.

The problem of moderns seems great, but they fade in the face of the hunger of many.

On a human psychology part, sometimes life seems overwhelming.

Ecology, overcrowding, stress.

We live an easy life in a world of stress.

In fact, the studies find that anxiety has increased so much that typical schoolchildren during the 1980’s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients did during the 1950’s. (Source – Studies show normal children today report more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950’s)

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Why you shouldn’t use flags language selection

Adam Y Zhang - Flag and Sacrifice

I don’t advise others to use flags for language selection on a website.

The reason is obvious – I can live in Romania, and although I might speak Romanian, there are some people in Romania that don’t speak Romanian.

Therefore, it’s much better to offer an option to select by language (Romanian, English), as opposed to the flag of a country (Romania, UK).

Thinking about this issue this way might also make you realize that there are other languages spoken in a country – Hungarian and German, in Romania, for example.

Resources on this:

 

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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other – Eric Hoffer

Onasill ~ Bill - Onasill ~ OFF - For The Holidays - Toronto Ontario - Canada - Allan Gardens Botanical Gardens - The Most Unique Cacti

„When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” – Eric Hoffer

There’s a book titled: „Nebunia de a gândi cu mintea ta” (on the madness of thinking with your own mind) by Gabriel Liiceanu.

It’s so hard not to imitate others!

Whenever faced with a choice, the usual solution is „What would another person from the society do?”.

Of course, each person is unique, and on a regular day, most likely people take their own choices, each of them has a unique set of values and acts accordingly.

But, all-in-all, I think it’s rather difficult, due to social pressure and conformity, to constantly try and think with your own mind, as opposed of copying others.

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CDN for WordPress – Cloudflare

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a popular solution for a CDN (content-delivery network).

You might want to know that you can have a free WordPress plugin to help you power up your website.

Do note that this change, once done, might make your website a bit more complicated to manage.

Due to this reason, I didn’t install Cloudflare on any of the websites I manage.

A plugin like Imagify for WebP images and LiteSpeed Cache for powerful caching are great solutions to improve a website’s speed.

Also, choosing a fast WordPress theme.

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Number one criteria for sorting – Top Sales

Dennis Sylvester Hurd - Slow Sales

For me, the top criteria for sorting the products in a category of an online store should be „Top Sales”.

Yes, there are other criteria (best rating, the newest added, alphabetically, by price).

And, of course, people should also be able to filter, not only to sort.

But to go into a category of an online store and not see the option of sorting via top sales is a huge miss for the store.

Imagine going to an actual store. You see three types of milk, with similar pricing. Wouldn’t you want to know which product has the most sales, and which people tend to skip?

If I am to choose a keyboard, I go to an online store’s website, pick a category, and sort by top sales. The top products in the list are likely to have a product I need.

That’s the main difference between an online and a physical store – access to data about customers/sales.

Be a nice company and also give me data like this, it really helps with the process of buying.

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How to memorize a phone number?

Adam Y Zhang - Legendary Number ( 传奇号码 )

Let’s say you’re in a cab, you don’t have your cell phone with you, and you need to memorize a phone number the cab driver gives you.

How to do it?

In Romania, we have some major telecommunication providers, so, for example, 0743- would belong to Orange, while 0724- would belong to Vodafone.

The lines of separation got very blurry once a person can move the phone number to another provider with ease, but, still, there are some general rules (at least in my mind).

So, the first step – associate the phone number with the provider.

Then, for each provider, remember just the final digit – So 0743, the last digit is 3 (it can differ from the same provider, they might have 0741, 0742, and so on).

For the remaining 6 digits, try and form some associations. „1 less than the birthday of”. „Double of a bad luck number”. „The first two and last two digits are similar due to”.

In my opinion, it’s much easier to remember a rule between digits, rather than try and memorize 6 unique digits.

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On telling the truth, bluntly

iezalel williams - Narcissus - The Truth is OUT with NO FEAR IMG_1934-001

I don’t like telling harsh truths.

It’s like this (I don’t know the source):

„I tried being optimistic. Once. I failed”.

Similarly, on the rare occasions when I tried telling the truth, I tend to upset people.

32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32 NIV

Yes, f you have dilemmas, express them, do not dwell on uncertainty.

But do expect burning some bridges and losing some close friends with this.

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Videos for medical professionals’ websites

Thomas Hawk - Doctor Kit

I think that if you are a medical professional, a big part of the equation of „Should I work with this person?”, concerning a website, is related to the video part.

If you are bold, you should create a website that has a small video with you – 30 seconds to two minutes, at most.

At a minimum, put a photo of you, a LinkedIn/CV profile, and some words about you.

But a video can do so much more – people can see how you communicate, can understand you much better than in any other means of communication.

I can’t emphasize this enough – if you’re in the business of serving people, you need to convey trust. And video is a great way to do so.

It might even not matter what you are saying. What it surely matters is how you say things, how confident you are, how much charisma you send out.

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