Every few months I ask my clients a question that makes me nervous.
Do you want to carry on?
It would be easier not to ask. Let it roll on. Keep the invoice quiet and hope nobody looks too closely at it. Plenty of monthly website arrangements work exactly like that.
But a fee somebody forgot to cancel is not a relationship. It is an accident that pays, right up until the day someone checks their spending.
What came back last time
"Your maintenance services are incredible. You work very efficiently and you optimized the website to be as clean and responsive as possible. We like speed and we like the premium service you provide. Having you on our team is extremely important to us."
That was the fourth time they had said yes.
I rebuilt their shop, got it back when their hosting company locked them out, moved their web address, and I keep it updated, copied and watched every month.
The work that earns a yes is boring
It is almost never the exciting work. It is:
- the update done before it broke something
- the spare copy nobody needed
- the warning at 2am that turned out to be nothing
- the add-on removed before somebody used it to get in
None of that is visible. A good month looks exactly like a month where nothing happened. That is the whole problem with selling it, and the whole point of buying it.
Which is why I send a short report. If you pay me every month, you should be able to see what that bought, even when the honest answer is "a quiet month, and here is what was updated."
If you pay somebody monthly
Ask what you got this quarter. Not as an accusation. Just ask.
If they can tell you, you have a partner. If nobody can answer, that is worth a conversation, and it is the conversation most people avoid for years.
And if you are the one being paid: ask the question. The answer tells you what you are really worth to them, and there is no other way to find that out.