Re: Ms Access 2003

Hi, Rick.

Well, I've had somewhat more luck making a living at it

I'm glad you've had opportunities to earn an income from Access, because it
appears to be mighty difficult these days.

Over and over again I see people who are not qualified at all to design a
data-based application being given the assignment to do so, simply because
Access makes SOME parts of doing that so easy that an office worker can.

I think a lot of it has to do with unrealistic expectations. For example,
here's a recent request:

"This project will be for:

"- Visual Basic Project for the carpet cleaning industry.

"You can checkout Mistral 2000 (download the free demo) for what I'm trying
to accomplish. I would like this project to be better though. One feature
that I would like that Mistral doesn't have is: if connected to the
internet you can get a map of the address (perhaps a Google map or
Mapquest).

"Visit Cyclone Solutions to download the evaluation of Mistral 2000.
http://www.cyclonesolutions.com/

"I'd like to pay less than $150 for this project."

And you think, "A custom database application that can automatically
retrieve and display a map of an address, among other things, is going to
cost a lot more than $150." One would expect that for such a low price as
this customer wants to pay, it will be just a few, simple forms for data
entry. However, when viewed at the Web site, you find that Mistral 2000 is
about 15 forms (and a few of these are with graphs), 25 customizable
reports, and some custom toolbars. And you wonder, "Where did he get his
target price? Doesn't he know what custom software costs to design, create,
test and implement -- correctly?!!"

And then you look at the prices that Cyclone Solutions is asking for their
application. $149 a month for one license, $249 a month for two licenses,
$90 an hour for tech support, and more for a networked application with more
workstations. In perpetuity. Even though there's no daily or monthly
"updates" provided by some service that the application requires in order to
continue to be useful. Even though there's no promised upgrades. Even
though there's no add-ons to increase profits, increase the customer base,
or improve what-have-you. It's just payment for the user's license to run
the application -- until he doesn't pay for the continued use thereof.

And you think, "Where do they get these ideas that they can sell a rather
simple application -- that probably took them a week to get it right, for
such a large sum of money? In perpetuity?!!" And then you take a closer
look and notice the mistakes in the design and think, "Took 'em a lot longer
than a week because they were still learning how to build a database
application. I suppose they want to be well-compensated for all the hours
they sweated over it."

And then the lightbulb comes on, and you think, "I could build that same
application in a day or so in Access, and if I could sell it to X number of
customers, I'd sell it at a one-time price of $XXX, not as an outrageous
monthly license, and still make a tidy profit."

Even though it's a far more reasonable price than what Cyclone Solutions is
asking, it's higher than the price this customer is willing to pay. So the
customer hires some other developer who believes he can write the
application for the customer's price, only he's a beginner, so he doesn't
know how to build it correctly or how long it will take to figure it out.
After a long time passes, the customer is stuck with an application that
doesn't work like Mistral 2000 does, but at least the switchboard isn't as
ugly.

But even if you haggle and come to an agreement on your one-time price,
you'll find that the customer wants you to throw in any needed tech support,
full written "help & install" manual documentation (color printed on glossy
paper!) and the source code for that same low price. And even if you
finally agree to give an hour or two of free tech support (or whatever it
takes to install the application on his one computer), write the
documentation and give him the source code (but not an exclusionary license,
since you plan to sell the application to others), the price paid won't
begin to cover your time to get the application installed and running on all
of the multiple, "non-networked-computers-but-gotta-be" at each of the
umpteen carpet cleaning businesses that he's already sold the application to
for a tidy profit.

So you expected to sell umpteen copies of the application to recoup your
development, testing, and installation time and costs, but instead you ended
up having sold only a single copy of the application and spent all that time
writing documentation and giving free tech support to the umpteen carpet
cleaning businesses that your one customer cleaned up on. So you'll have to
go way out of the local area to find other carpet cleaning businesses who
might want to automate their business with your application, but you find
that any businesses willing to buy a custom application like yours only want
to buy it from someone who's local, just in case they need tech support.

See what I mean about unrealistic expectations? ;-)

HTH.
Gunny

See http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips and tutorials.
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com/html/expert_contributors2.html for contact
info.


"Rick Wannall" <cwannall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BELcg.77474$F_3.39395@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well, I've had somewhat more luck making a living at it, but I must say
that the description of the situation is perfect.

Over and over again I see people who are not qualified at all to design a
data-based application being given the assignment to do so, simply because
Access makes SOME parts of doing that so easy that an office worker can.
They hit the wall almost immediately, of course, then the blame now falls
on Access rather than the manager who did not understand the task and
therefore assigned it to someone completely unsuited to it.

This accounts in large measure for the widespread opinion that Access is a
"toy" or a lightweight tool. And once that wall is hit, the manager will
not be willing to reassess and realize that the limit is not Access and
that he or she is just going to have to shell out the money for a
competent designer.

Ahh, well...

"Mell via AccessMonster.com" <u18304@uwe> wrote in message
news:60b1155dc1814@xxxxxx
Yea, you are not alone with your experience in this or perseption. I hear
the
same from others as well.
I find that some businesses will pay (not alot), but just want a basic
tracking system with some bells. The bigger companies, I would think they
would not want to just use Access with native jet unless BE on SQL, etc?
I must say that the real experts are the ones that originally created
this
software. Ms Access has so many things that it can do that it's hard to
know
it from head to toe. Nevertheless, I feel if an application has been
created
for the customers needs and it is functional, it has served it's purpose
and
A BIG THANK YOU to those SMART SOFTWARE ENGINEERS. I just love this
program,
I use this board for questions alot, I am no expert, but I don't give up
either, if I don't know, it's certainly not hard to ask or look up.



'69 Camaro wrote:
Hi, Mell.

Tell me, is the below link your site/business/individual?

Access.QBuilt.com is one of five commercial and non-commercial subdomains
for Q-Built Solutions, a small business which employs five consultants.
I'm
one of these consultants.

People tell me that most indivual owners/developers - Ms Access usually
own
there own business as a second job b/c not reliable enough for steady
income
(keep in mind) individual not big boys............... Is this true?

That's been my experience, too. The market is so flooded with people who
aren't yet competent in Access -- but pass themselves off as expert
Access
developers because they can use the built-in wizards to create forms and
reports to dazzle computer-challenged business owners and managers --
that
many of the ones who are competent Access developers work in other
technologies or industries for their main income. Businesses just aren't
willing to pay money for what's widely percieved as "so easy that any
monkey
can do it," and "tinker toy" applications that cause a wide range of
problems, when, in fact, it's the lack of competence of the Access
developers (hired 'em "real cheap!") and occasionally the network
administrators who have caused the vast majority of the problems being
blamed on Access.

The only money I've ever made from working with Access was several years
ago
when I was a corporate Access developer for a little more than a year.
I'm
an Oracle DBA consultant now for larger businesses, but I also do
computer
networking/administration and occasional database-driven Web sites
powered
by MySQL for small businesses (only because MySQL is free with their Web
hosting packages).

I've seen the tremendous need in small- and medium-sized businesses for
small, stable database applications that Access would be perfect for, but
almost none of these business owners are willing to pay for that database
application, even when they know the computer automation will save
thousands
of man-hours per year. Well, some are willing to pay a high school
student
(who has no interest in computers or databases) to spend thousands of
hours
to build Access applications that don't work very well -- because these
students work for minimum wage, which is a whole lot cheaper (at least in
these business owners' minds) than spending hundreds of dollars for an
expert to build it correctly in a matter of a few hours.

You want to help these people, but you can't convince them that they need
a
competent Access developer because they firmly believe that they've got a
bargain database application, and it works just fine -- except for the
long
list of things that don't, including the safeguarding of data integrity.
But it's "good enough" for them.

But I've seen worse. Some business owners think that they can't afford
to
hire IT people, so they spend thousands of hours foregoing business
opportunities worth many tens of thousands of dollars (or possibly
hundreds
of thousands of dollars per year) while they learn to build their own
computer network with disparate, outdated equipment -- picked it up "real
cheap!" -- and build a mission-critical Access database application that
they intend to run their entire business with, but it just doesn't work.

You want to help these people, too, but you can't afford to pay for the
minimum equipment required (they aren't willing to pay to replace their
bargain equipment that doesn't work together), and you can't afford to
spend
two weeks or more fixing their multiple computer, network, virus, and
spam
problems before even starting on a database application, and the $100 for
your time doesn't even begin to cover the gasoline bill for the daily
trips
to their office for an entire month. ("Hey, it took me more than 2,000
hours and I still can't get it to work, but this is easy for you experts.
You can finish my application in a few days, because it's more than 95%
done! If you don't want the job, I can hire a high school dropout for
half
that price!") And they require you to come to their office daily to do
the
software development on your own laptop, even after you've fixed their
computer and network problems (at no charge, because the owner isn't
willing
to pay you to fix the problems he doesn't believe he created that prevent
Microsoft Office from being installed on each of his computers and a
database from being networked). This is because even though they can't
spare one of their own computers and desks for you to work on, they
refuse
to pay you for all the hours you'd be wasting in front of the T.V. or on
the
phone talking to your kids instead of working on their application if the
manager wasn't there watching you like a hawk. And you try to explain to
the owner that this working arrangement means that, for tax purposes, you
are a temporary employee of his and he's required by law to pay half the
Social Security taxes on the money you earn from him, but he refuses
because
you're a "professional consultant," not one of his employees.

So it's rather difficult to make a steady income if you're a consultant
looking for customers, and you only work with Access. But perhaps others
have had more favorable business experiences working with Access in their
geographical locations.

HTH.
Gunny

See http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips and tutorials.
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com/html/expert_contributors2.html for contact
info.

Hey that was great information.........

[quoted text clipped - 94 lines]
mdb
created on Access 2003 (default 2000)...

--
Message posted via http://www.accessmonster.com




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