In this world, there are two types of customer extremes. There are wonderful customers and there are terrible customers. I've come across both... and I can guarantee that you want the wonderful customers. I guess a better term would be clients. I haven't been in the retailing business enough to notice much of a difference with customers there. I'm talking about the ones that pay you to do something... such as to make a website, a logo, etc.

Terrible clients are the ones that want to control everything. Like with a website, for example, they want to control the look and layout completely. And the worst part is they continually change their mind! With one client I had, after redesigning the template three times to match his requests, I finally told him that if he wanted to change it again, I would have to charge more. He stuck with that design (although he later got someone else to modify the template again). And to be honest, I liked the first and second templates best.

Terrible clients will also want to squeeze as much out of you as they can. It doesn't matter what's in the contract, they will ask you to do thing after thing. Best antidote for that is to just say, "Sorry, but this isn't in the contract! We can do it for an additional price." Chances are, they won't bring it up again.

Wonderful clients on the other hand, are... wonderful! I have an ongoing contract with one such customer... and I don't see it ending any time soon. All wonderful clients have one thing in common, they like what ever you do when it's good! They appreciate your work! They will say something along the lines of, "It's wonderful! Thank you sooooooo much!" or "Make it look how you think looks good." Wonderful clients realize that you know more about what they are paying you to do than they do. They let you work. They give you more time if you need it. They also tend to pay more.

And here is the best part of wonderful clients... when you do a good job, they tell their friends about you with a glowing report. You will be surprised by how many jobs you get from wonderful clients referring their friends.

Sooner or later you will run into a terrible customer... it's unpreventable. But there are ways to get more wonderful customers and less terrible ones.

One good way to avoid terrible customers is: Don't advertise your services as cheap! That is a big magnet for terrible customers. And wonderful ones will usually be scared off by that. You might also want to consider not listing prices at all... have them contact you for that. Often times, it's actually better to not advertise your services on the Internet, have your services referral only. A good way to get a business going is to contact local businesses and ask them if they need work done. Then get them to get customers for you.

Good customers know other good customers. Give your current customers incentive to tell their friends. They will likely do it on their own a little... encourage them to do it more! Ask them if they know any one that would be as good as client as them and that they think would want your services.

A lot of independent web designers say that the best way to get more customers is through referral... and that's so true. Do good work and your customers will talk. Good web designers are in high demand. Actually, good services period are in high demand. Like down here in Chile, all the business have one thing in common... they suck. Terrible, incapable companies that try to cheat you as much as they can. It's really bad. But hey, that just makes my job easier!! lol!

One such company is called Telephonica. They provide (sometimes) phone and high speed internet through out all of Chile. We have been trying to get internet from them... but it's been an entire month and they finally admit to us that they are maxing out the bandwidth, so we can't buy services from them (we are on their waiting list though). Then we went to MovieStar (a cellphone company) to get internet from them (slower than high speed... but existent just the same)... and the day they are supposed to come out and install it, they say, "Oh, sorry! You ain't a preferred customer! So that means we can't sell you our services! So hah!" Ok, so they didn't say it like that (they spoke in Spanish too), but it just goes to show that alot of these companies down here treat their customers like dirt. They don't even _try_ to help you. They have more of the attitude of, "We don't need you, you need us! So come to us begging for our services!"

So if anyone has a few billion to spare, they could start a high speed ISP down here and take every single customer away from their competition. Simply applying honesty to a business down here will make it thrive.