MarkPSmith

Jeremy, Mike won a copy of EstiMate Enterprise, our $699 product. EstiMate QuickQuoter is the $199 product we are currently offering free.

Awesome, Mike! It's always great in a giveaway when the recipient is so happy. Congratulations and welcome aboard!!

Good afternoon everyone, We've partnered up with J.D. Iles at the Signs Never Sleeps blog to run a contest for a free copy of EstiMate Enterprise ($699 value). To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment on today's blog entry, and a random winner will be drawn soon after 4-13-09, when the contest closes. You can enter here: Signs Never Sleep EstiMate Contest Have fun, and have an amazing week! I hope the weather where you are is as pretty as it is here!

BannerJohn, Sorry that happened to your desktop! We have a knowledgebase article about that issue here, and it has also been resolved already for the build coming out on April 7. It's a rarity, but can happen sometimes. EstiMate Database Files All Over The Desktop I'm assuming from your comments that you're not using EstiMate anymore, and have probably already cleaned up your desktop and unistalled it. If not, the above knowledgebase article explains how to take care of it, and if you are in your 14 days of free support for QuickQuoter we will even be happy to remote in to your computer with CoPilot and do it for you at no charge.. just email support@estimatesoftware.com to set up a support appointment. As far as "phoning home," there is also an article in our knowledge base about that here: Does EstiMate "Phone Home?" EstiMate checks for a new version online each time you start it up, so you can stay current. Attached to that knowledge base article is a copy of the text file it downloads so you can see exactly what it's doing behind the scenes. We do our best to keep our knowledge base well updated, so if you ever look there and don't find an issue covered you are welcome to email customerservice@estimatesoftware.com and request an article on any topic. We have a queue of articles and try to write several each week.

I'm certainly not going to argue with you, your points are well made and you know what works for you. My own experience has been, however, that shoppers remain shoppers and loyalists remain loyalists. I've never personally gotten a loyalist on a cheap price alone, without (in the long run) always working for them for cheap. I raised my prices about 40-50% at one point and the net result was I lost all my shoppers and only about 10% of the loyalists. My overall bottom line skyrocketed. That's why I'm so passionate about all this.

I totally get how you feel, and having grown up in a family sign shop I know *exactly* what you're talking about. I felt that way for years ("live and die by the telephone" was Mom's phrase). While I agree that the customer remembers the favor, I've found over the years that if you do a customer a favor once, they will want it again. And that if that favor was based on price you stand a strong chance of losing them to the next guy who offers them a "better favor." All I'm really saying is to make the favors revolve around other factors than price. MY .02

Boy, I guess I have to jump in here! You guys are missing the point of EstiMate entirely. EstiMate tailors itself not only to your area, but also to your overhead, your material costs, and your desired profits. It doesn't tell you mythical prices. It tells you what you have to charge to make a profit / living, and then guarantees that you do just that at the same time that it gives you highly polished professional looking quotes. And yes, all that is available in the free QuickQuoter edition. I wrote an article on slashing prices that you may want to read (I totally welcome your comments on the blog). Why You Should Never Slash Your Prices In A Recession Just sayin'.

I just learned about these forums from the comments of some people ordering the free QuickQuoter edition. Thanks for coming over to EstiMate and for teaching me about these forums! I'll be here more often and I'm glad to find a new online community to participate in. I would like to point out (to FireMalt) that this is not a demo but a full-featured working copy of EstiMate that used to retail for $199. Again, how cool to find this place!

Jon, I'm glad you found the e-book useful enough to share. I just got wind of these forums and they seem quite active! How come I didn't know about them before?!? Anyway, thanks for sharing the link and everybody enjoy the e-book. It was fun to write and (as you can tell) I'm pretty passionate about the subject.