charging?

[starglow]

generally I do websites as my hobby, sites for myself, etc... but if someone wanted to pay me to make a small business site for them and ask how much I charge, how much SHOULD I charge?! Should I do it hourly or by page/content? and if hourly, about how much per hour and if by page about how much per page? and I'm talking average to cheap rates here, I'm not looking for a lot of money, its a small simple site and its through friends and family so i don't wanna charge a lot... but I really have no idea what average rates are.... can anyone tell me what some decent standard rates are thesedays for a small simple site?

[Spookster]

The only person that can really answer that question is you.

Just ask yourself:

How much is my time worth?

Will it be beneficial to me or my client to charge an hourly rate or one flat rate?

How much can the cllient afford to pay?


You can ask a 100 different web developers and get a 100 different answers on how much they charge. There is not real "standard" charge.

[artsygal]

hi there!

Someone put it to me this way once: what would YOU be willing to pay for your services? I bet you have a general idea of what you think you should charge. If you have a regular day-job, think about what you make hourly there, and go up or down depending on the difficulty of the project, then tac on extra to cover your additional tax expenses. Another thing to do is look around at other small web designers' sites and see what they charge. Some do list their prices on their sites. Or call a few and say that you are considering web services and are looking to get an idea of what a particular project would cost. I also charge varying rates for varying degrees of difficulty among projects. (Also be aware that discussing prices for this type of work on a public forum can be considered price fixing and can get the list owners in trouble, which is why I'm not listing specifics - sorry!)

[joh6nn]

hourly. always hourly.

you get into a project you're running along fine, and then, all of a sudden, something changes. client wants a new color scheme, there's a server change, whatever. you have to start all over again. you charge by the job, and not by the hour, and you've just been shafted. always charge by the hour.

a good, well trained, experienced web designer can charge upwards of $25 an hour for their work. if you're charging more than $60 an hour, you're either a god, or an arrogant *******.

i'm in college, and don't regularly work as a web developer, but when i do, i charge $12 an hour. it's more than i deserve, and less than what a professional competitor would charge, so both the client and i are happy.

a teacher of mine once told me that when you give someone an estimate for a job, you take the amount of time that it would take you to accomplish the task, if you had only the most basic, most horrible tools, and you encountered a problem every step of the way. then, you take that, double it, and tell your client that this is the shortest amount of time that it could possibly take for you to accomplish the task, assuming you have no problems.

if you do work for family or friends, don't treat them like family & friends; treat them like clients. if you go out of your way, and do things for them that you wouldn't do for other people, you'll only be shafting yourself in the end.

[Nightfire]

I have a set estimate price, but it all depends on what the person wants and how long I estimate it will cost. I chare £150 for a personal site, and then £250+ for a business site. As I said before, they're only estimate prices and all based on time.

[starglow]

thanks everyone :D

[webmarkart]

I would just like to point out a one things not previously mentioned.

The concept of charging by the hour is the best conceptually, but this has not been my experience. If for example you are designing a site and half way through the customer changes their mind and you have to redo several things, the price per hour will quickly add up and the customer obviously doesn't understand how long any given part of the project takes... you can get some very unhappy customers when they get the unexpected bill! If you tell them what it is going to cost up front there are no surprises. When I come up with a proposal, within my own mind I figure several such changes will need to be made. I make sure I am very clear on what the customer wants so my estimate is very accurate for the end product that I am producing.

[starglow]

Originally posted by webmarkart
I would just like to point out a one things not previously mentioned.

The concept of charging by the hour is the best conceptually, but this has not been my experience. If for example you are designing a site and half way through the customer changes their mind and you have to redo several things, the price per hour will quickly add up and the customer obviously doesn't understand how long any given part of the project takes... you can get some very unhappy customers when they get the unexpected bill! If you tell them what it is going to cost up front there are no surprises. When I come up with a proposal, within my own mind I figure several such changes will need to be made. I make sure I am very clear on what the customer wants so my estimate is very accurate for the end product that I am producing.

it's a good point... but the person paying me had assumed it would be done hourly anyways, I just wanted to be sure what the best way was... and also its a very simple site and the guy doesn't seem to fussy about it, he didn't even want a website until someone convinced him he needed one. so I dont think there will be a prob with changing things mid-way or redoing things :) but I will keep that in mind for the future