Should I avoid middle men?

So one of my previous clients wants me to build a site for his "friend"'s business.

However though it might be totally innocent I can't help but feel like I might be getting swindled. I know he'll pay me but that's not it...

First off he's said that I won't talk to the clients ever. He'll act as their voice and sign the paperwork but he says they don't want to get involved beyond handing all the info to Mr. Middleman.

Now I'm doing this job no matter what. I'm short on cash and the Middle Man is a cool guy who I'll trust. But I couldn't help but think (the business side of me, aka the dark side) that someone could easily pull some stuff as a Middle Man.

First off since I could never talk to the real clients who want this website. So maybe they told the Middle Man that they're willing to spend $5000 on a website. The Middle Man then comes to me and offers me like $1000 (pretend numbers here) and keeps $4000 without doing anything but a bit of mediating. There would be no real way to verify without having contract with the cloaked man behind the curtain clients.

I'm okay with a finder's fee as long as it's not very much (I need more clients anyways).


Middle Men make me nervous.

 

Please don't take it this the wrong way but I think you are a being a "pig". "Pigs" won't last long in any industry. Just so you will understand business in general. Gaining a client is MUCH harder then providing a service. If he truely want to , he can outsource this to a country like say India and pay 25% of what he's paying you. This is his client and not yours. You should be thankful that he even consider you for the job. Now if it's a client both you guys deal with then he says " hey i'll handle all the communications" and you're getting screwed then that's different but from what you're telling us, it sounds like greed from my perspective. Again, I'm not trying to be rude but just giving you a straight and honest answer.

 

That's a good point, i would suggest just starting your own site up and do everything your self =/

 

First of all, that's a typical arrangement... nothing suspicious or surprising about that kind of setup. Businesses do that many times, often signing an NDA for such arrangement. That's also called "outsourcing"

Think about it, that "middle man" is actually giving you jobs -- jobs which you wouldn't have been able to find without him.

It would be unethical for you to contact "his client" directly, after your arrangement. That would be "stealing"

If you want to cut out the middle man, then do it from the very start. In other words, you find the clients personally yourself!

 

I'm going against the flow here and saying it sounds terribly suspicious. That and I've seen some of the worst websites out there done where a middleman was between a client and a web developer. Without talking directly to a client, discussing issues, you'll never know if what you build is what they really need or want. Everything the client tries to communicate to the web developer goes through a game of "Telephone", following the rule that the more people there are to pass a message on, the more likely it is to get garbled in transmission. Imagine you're a patient and you need to talk through a nurse to the doctor and back. Imagine you're trying to get your custom house built and you cannot talk directly to the architect. It can be done, but it's something I personally wouldn't care to do. Then again, maybe you suck at dealing with clients? In which case, having a "spokesman" can only help : )

There's also another suspicion: Suppose he's telling this client that he's building this website? You get companies claiming to be web specialists when they actually don't know the first thing about web sites or building them, but can pass it on because they know how to gull designers and coders into giving them the goods. The client doesn't get any discounts, and the graphic designer (if there is one in a case like this) gets his art "stolen" since someone else is claiming to have created it (which can matter more to a developer than simply selling their works).

But whatever, if you're going to do the site anyway, just charge this guy what you usually charge, and if he goes on and makes more money by overcharging his "friend", well, that's actually the friend's problem.

 

As long as nothing is illegal and you get paid the going rate, I say go for it. Put some of your copyright notices on it as well