Lost a $3k/month client because of incompetent developers

I do a lot of stuff online, and one of my bread-and-butter sources of income is SEO.

I landed a new client a few months ago, built him a site for his business, which was little more than a skin that we were going to use to push visitors to his various sales pages.

As part of his strategy, he hired a company (supposedly the best in the business) to build a dynamic database where customers could get real-time, customized quotes. The company (it seems to me) is managing a bunch of developers who have been missing deadlines for the past couple months...however, he believed he had enough time baked into the build process to launch on time. Well, they missed a crucial deadline, and now the SEO/PPC management retainer is off the table because he's going to buy leads...the site looks great, but it has no engine due to the morons who can't get the database finished in time.

My guess is that the developers are outsourced, possibly salaried, and don't really care about how they affect others. What sucks is that for my client, this is his only source of income. I'm absolutely fine (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't care that I'd lost a revenue stream), but this guy has kids...and the company is putting his whole livelihood on the line by their incompetence.

I absolutely hate working as part of a team for this reason, because this kind of thing has happened before: developer won't get back to the client, previous webmaster won't hand over the site logins, logo designers deliver crap, etc. This is the cost of outsourcing your web-related business...it has a knock-on effect that messes everything up.

I see some people posting stuff on here from time to time like: "I just got a SEO client...what do I do now?" Seriously guys...if you don't know what you're doing don't put people's sites at risk. Your ineptitude will only throw a spanner into the works somewhere down the line, and while you can just move on to the next client, your client can't just move on to the next business.

Moral of the story: if you're doing work for someone...don't take the job unless you plan to follow through, because you are affecting other people's bottom line. </rant>

Your rant markup is invalid ;-)

What you said about salaried developers can be very true though, some just don't give a f***

I would take the following

"..he hired a company (supposedly the best in the business).."

Like a grain of salt if I were you. If they were really "that" good, they would've cared for their customers. You don't get to the top missing deadlines for business.

Tell me about it, everyday people add me on skype asking for SEO advice for their clients....

Its crazy to think these people get clients.

The companies that are the best in the business don't go around saying that they are the best in the business. The companies that are the best in the business are fully aware that there is always room for improvement and are constantly dynamic to changes in the online atmosphere.

Sucks that happened to you. Re-gather and rebuild.

Actually the company in question is publicly traded and would be immediately recognized in this industry as the leader....like Coke/Pepsi level recognition. It is a very specialized, but lucrative, industry. I think they probably got understaffed because this is a very busy time for the industry, so they outsourced part (or all) of my client's build, and then can't get the developers to finish on time.

Meanwhile I'm out nearly $40k/yr after grooming this deal for months and my client is scrambling to stitch something together at the last minute.

I need to go hit the heavy bag for a while.