Who says clients don't pay for modeling?

[architect4stars]

I thought you guys might like to see the following, while thinking Jason is charging too low. The Chinese are ready to run us out of business: lol

RE: Architecture Rendering Outsourcing
Looking for Long-Term Cooperation

Dear Sir or Madam:

Thank you for reading this email. We are a professional architecture rendering company in China, with proven experience internationally. You may never heard us before, it is because before 2005 we only make house plans to middle men and through them sell to real buyers including houseplans.com. In 2004, for houseplans.com only we produced nearly 1,000 plans. We are experienced with any kinds of styles of plans with the fastest efficiency.

Since we are located at the bottom of the supply chain, we could produce a plan for you at the lowest price of $50USD without sacrificing the quality. Please take a minute of your valuable time to visit our web site (link provided below) to examine the quality of our work and then please contact us for more detail.

We guarantee the PREMIUM QUALITY of our product and service, the LOWEST PRICES in the industry and ON TIME DELIVERY.

We are looking for long term business relationship with you to become your rendering factory, so you can concentrate on the most important marketing endeavor. It will be a win-win relationship for both of us.

Thank you for your attention and I am looking forward to hearing from you very soon!

Yours sincerely

Mr. Bob Yang
CEO
Splendo Net Studio
http://www.china-out-sourcing.com/exterior.htm
Email: ceo@china-out-sourcing.com

[louis]

Jason,

As an individual you can set up a paypal account and people can pay you for long distance services. I do online training all over the world and I use paypal for payment.

[Niuoka]

I agree with payment and try to stay paid ahead of e-pay.
My biggest bruns are from people I don t know,
My biggest burn was from a customer that I re-worked plans electronically and never saw a final payment, and he is too far away for me to deal with.. So maybe electronically you can send a tease, a incomplete drawing and say, the compleated set wiill be e-transfered on acceptance of final payment
My second biggest burn was giving a full set of permit ready construction drawings before final payment.Ive given up on that one. still owe me about 800, attorney said get in line
Third biggest burn was finihsing a set of drawings only to have the project cancel and so people dont want to pay for plans they cant build. So never picked them up. SO contract, thatnks to this forum, now says payment due in full within 30 days plans are compleated. so even if job cancels and they dont pick up the plans, payment is still due, of course someone has to enforce it

through all of this , I have had to get an attorney and write a good design contract

so I guess this all fits in also with how much do you charge, because you also need to charge enough to cover you when you get a deadbeat that comes along ( you know a nest egg)

by the way thier is a design magazine like builder, I jsut subscribed to it, Ill look it up and post that here in a few minutes

www.freeconstructionmagazines.com

in this you will see many mags available to people in the trades , FOR FREE
one is a design build business

[mcqueenhomes]

"The IRS frowns on using THEIR money."

It isn't THEIR money, it's MINE. I earned it, not them. They would have precisely JACK if I didn't make it. Or worse, they'd be probably be paying me and then asking what I did with it (which they did because of my eyesight until I got some skills and a decent job). It's that sort of thinking that has made it more difficult to do business in this country the last several years. That's why they raise taxes and impose regulations whenever they want. They use scare taxes to get people to vote for an increase, and it's _______ ________. No wonder the Chinese can render a house for the price of a Coke. I think it's probably about time for another Tea Party in Puget Sound.

I don't have a problem with paying taxes, for which I receive necessary services, or even those services which significantly benefit others, and I do not expect to live on my gross income any more than when I work for someone else (in fact I'll probably also have to pay whatever my employer pays now). We need police, firemen, bus drivers, and such. I just want the government to be as considerate of what I pay and provide good value for the money as would any other reputable business.

Also, Lorin, thanks for the feedback on rates. I've been paid every time so far, but all of my projects have been small. I usually take payment in chunks when a certain amount of work has been done. I also submit dumbed-down renderings for approval before sending the real thing. Also, Lorin, I might like to add that being a woman may be an advantage to you as a designer, since women are typically more detail oriented especially when it comes to the design of the kitchen, which is very important. I can do OK, but as a single guy, kitchen design probably isn't my forte, when my idea of cooking is throwing a Tombstone in the oven.

[gpickren]

That Chinese site has some beautiful work. Especially the interiors. Just to put some perspective in this cost of living thing, I rented a home to a family who had spent the last 9 years as missionaries in China. I asked him what the typical family earned a year. He said in the city he was in a middle class income was, are you ready, $150 per year. So three renderings supports a family for a year. So how well can they live if they did say .... 30 renderings a year. A hundred times better than their neighbors.

Welcome to the global economy. We like it when we can buy stuff made in China for next to nothing. And, have you noticed the quality lately. My HP laptop. My Palm Pilot. Everything is being made in China. The first guys got a competitive edge. Now a manufacturer cannot compete without outsourcing.

So thank you local plan checker for being such a tedious, nit-picking jerk. Without people like him and an inconsistent. arbirtrary planning process all of the plans could be done in China for say ... $500 a house... complete.

However, this illustrates exactly what I was talking about. YOu can live cheaper in the rural areas but it is harder to serve the clients than living next door. So you pass on the savings as an incentive.

Notice this mailer is trying to cut out the middlemen who have probably been paying them $10 per rendering like those on the website. Watch to see the same thing happening as the Chinese OEM manufacturers start making their own brands.

The rendering part of desing is the most vulnerable part to overseas outsourcing. I have seen some out of India that will knock your socks off also. Time to focus on the sales skills. A good salesman can always work.

[Niuoka]

yikes
that china outsourcing site is amazing
Id still rather have Jason do it, or someone else from this forum.

Boy someone could make a killing living like a queen/king living in a deveoloping nation and doing design
and therer probabally are those of you on this forum that are.........

hmmmmmmmmm wonder if my family wants to move to ........hmmmmm

[architect4stars]

Okay... i know I posted the letter from the Chinese outsourcing guy... **BEWARE*** You have to check with State department or something... What may be as simple as just making a paypal payment for work done may be a violation of the law. I don't know the exact law.. But check first, and proceed with caution.

[mcqueenhomes]

Outsourcing has been going on for hundreds of years. The real problem isn't outsourcing itself but the extremely large difference in price.

On the machines I work on at my normal job, the valve opens, and air will rush in to fill the vacuum, and then eventually things will equalize. We just have to make the flow slow enough that we don't break the machine in the process. For that we use a properly sized restrictive orifice in the evacuation line.

We're all vulnerable to outsourcing. Just as the Chinese could render a house they can also make microchips, so I'm really not any more secure in one job than the other. Even builders (who may think 'HA! How can the Chinese build a house here?') are vulerable, because if people making microchips lose their jobs to outsourcing and can't afford to build new homes, then you'll have nothing to build. Even if all Chinese made microchips and forgot about rendering entirely, I'd have nothing to render if builders had nothing to build.

But here's the catch for the Chinese: if they affect the American economy too adversely too quickly, then there will be nobody to buy their stuff! Imagine what would happen in China if jobs flowed out like water and someone in our government shut the valve entirely. A large section of their market would evaporate.

But with all that said, I have actually very little control over any of this so I'm not going to worry about it. God has always taken care of me and not even a billion Chinese can stop Him!

[quickdraw]

This is a very interesting thread.

I am also in Cal and there is just no end to the nit-picky wierd little rules in these local bldg. departments. This will keep us safe from outsourcing for a long time.

I got back into the business last April after a 15 year hiatus. The going rate was $40 an hour so I charged $25 an hour for the first job, $30 an hour for the second and now I charge a flat rate of 3%. Designers who have been here longer make 6%. Architects make 10%.

We are experiencing a building boom here so we can charge fairly high and still have lots of work. I also know what happens when a bldg boom goes bust. Basicly it doesn't matter how little you charge. There still isn't any work. So make hay while the sun shines.

[architect4stars]

Maybe I need to move to Cal.

[quickdraw]

Well lots of people seem to think thats a good idea which is why I have so much work!

[mcqueenhomes]

And then when you get tired of California you'll move to Oregon or Washington.

[gpickren]

The Chinese connection just illustrates the point that the most vulnerable element of design is probably the rendering of someone's completed design and the least vulnerable is the person who can analyze the real estate, physically, aesthetically, legally and financially and point his analysis in a form where the client can understand it , desire and afford it. In between, there are a lot of pieces which have the potential of outsourcing.

General contractors are basically outsourcers. It is permissible for them to do everything themselves but they don't. Some do none of it and only coordinate the work of subs. Others pick and choose what they outsource based on scheduling, capacity, expertise and personal preferance. There is not reason the desing process cannot be conducted the same way.

What if a designer is a good salesman in a hot market? If he had qualified and cooperative people to outsource to then he and his network would benefit by his increased sales. He bakes the pie and everyone gets a piece.

Larez, I have an architect friend who is turning down work because he cannot increase the production of construction documents. Part of this work is doing the Western version of the Gone with the Wind house, exceept they must be done in Santa Barbara, Early California or European farmhouse style and all architectural details must be documented to be hiistorically accurate.

Mark McGuire is building house in this community on two lots which cost $4,000,000 each. My guess is that he will have at least $25 million in his house. Interestingly, one sees two extremes in this project. One, is that the client hires an architect with a recognizeable name and they get 10 to 15%. Thern, there are two firms here in Irvine that are designing 8,000 to 10,000 foot spec houses for about $55,000. I can do five remodels in a fraction of the time they can spend on one 10,000' house, but none of my remodels are going to get published in Architectural Digest.

So fees are all over the map.

Below is a dining room photo of a Western Gone with the Wind house.

[Niuoka]

nit picking california rules ????

get used to them , I design homes in Eugene Oregon and we now have to design/build to california earthquake standards
so as Jason mentioned.......... move up here

might be a good move, since youll be slightly ahead of us on building regulations

why does Oregon build to CA earthquake standards? its called covering your arse, yeah they say a big earth quake will hit someday,
we now build additions on 150 year homes, that are strong enough for nukes,

thank you lawyers

and all the whinny spoiled CA people that move up here after selling there home at $400 sq ft and buying here at 100 sq ft and demanding the same services and attitudes
dont worry ,, the attitudes will be here soon
and so will the gangs and crime and high prices
but because a lot dont want to pay for services( taxes) , services wont be here to help

population and "I want, what about me" attitude does that

kind of like outsourcing, how can they work so cheap ??
how can they build so cheap, design so cheap, live so cheap

Ill take adantage of that
because "what about me"

and what if in China , a worker making shoes makes as much as minimum "US" wages.
shoot well have to go elsewhaere, because who can afford 300 dollar shoes
walmart and nike would be in deep dog doo

boy we might have to rely on some rain forst country to provide, and make our shoes, oh thats right , there burning down the rian forests to raise our mickeydees hamburgers, well have to find someplace else, didnt they just have a disaster in Thailand, hey they will work cheap.

dont worry as you outsource to Oregon, it will get more expensive
and then youll wonder , boy Oregon's so expensive, how did that happen
duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

yep, Im on my 17 hand horse today
to you city slickers , that means a high horse

sorry, sunday supposed to be a day of rest, Im using it as a day to vent !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

little did Louis know he was opening a can of worms

[Niuoka]

gpickeren
now you have me guessing
is that a real photo

or an outsourced rendering from China

dont worry everyone, Im done now, ill let this thread die from my end