Advise For Web Development Clients

Hi guys,

I've got a bit of a dilemma - I wonder if you can help me.

I've found my first client who wants a website made. He's given me all his requirements and I've gone through and found a few templates on themeforest etc that I think would meet his needs.

Here's the thing though - I need him to take a look and chose which sites he likes most, but I don't want to send him directly to the demo page because then he'll know how much the theme costs. Obviously I want to make as much profit as possible, and if he knows it costs $10 to buy a theme he's going to be a lot more suspicious about handing over hundreds to me...

So what's the best way around this? How do I show him the themes to allow him to chose his favorite without giving him the chance to find the sales pages?

Also worth noting, I cant code myself - I intend to be a middleman finding clients and getting sites made for them by outsourcing it to others. I therefore cant download the themes and set them all up myself...

Pay someone to do it, since you can't, or skip it altogether.

But let me guess, you also don't want to pay money from your pocket?

Not afraid to pay for it, but just seems to be a bit of a waste of time/effort/funds to buy and then install/populate all potential themes, just to allow the client to pick his favorite.

Isn't there another way?

Is there a search term that can be searched in quotation marks or something?

So for instance, I tried searching for ""wp-content/themes/theme name" but that just returns up sites that have got errors, and I dont really want to show the client a site full or errors.

Any thoughts?

Take screenshots of the theme(s) and send them to him. Tell him the content is just example content to fill in the design and the final version will be filled with his content / photos.

Other than that, I'd say you need to just hire someone to do these projects from start to finish, remaining just the middle man, and charge a hell of a lot more than a couple hundred dollars.

Not every dollar of a client sale is profit. Sometimes you need to spend money... to collect $.

Thanks for the tip. Sending image will allow him to see it, but the themes I've picked out are parallax themes, so there's more to it that just how it looks. It's also how it functions too. How the pages scroll, how the images move, etc.

Can you also clarify what you mean by "hiring someone to do the project from start to finish"? I'm trying to have as little a role as possible, but I don't want to put an outsourced developer directly in touch with my client, so I'm having to sort out all requirements, get an upfront payment, then get the freelancer to work on it.

The vision is to one day get a full time employee who can actually code, but for now, while I'm still starting out on a tight budget, I need to get my hands dirty myself (which Im not afraid to do).

Thanks for all the advice so far - really appreciated

Rip the html version of the theme and upload it somewhere. It should preserve basic functionality.
Hope this helps,
D

Here is what I do. I show the theme and tell them how much the theme costs.
Unless the client is dumb he/she will realize that there are other costs labour,images.designing,etc associated with it.

I contemplated doing that (showing them the theme and letting them see the cost) but I just feel much happier with him not knowing the cost at all. If I put myself in the customers shoes, and I saw that they were buying a theme for $10 and then trying to charge me $600+, I'd find it quite hard to swallow.

I think I'm going to rip the site as suggested by dbyrn and him play about with it on there.

Unless anyone has any other methods they care to share?