Ethics/Pricing/Working with friends startup...looking for advice.

[celticsaddict]

Hi,
My situation:
I've got a friend/contact who has a product he is working on, and he is webdev illiterate.
So - he'd like me to set up his hosting on my shared server (I told him for $5/mo I could hook him up,) and he'd like me to create a simple "Under Construction" page for the company.

The issue is - This is not an expensive task. I would do it for very little (*What would you guys be charging to do something like this?*)

Also - since this is a startup which I feel confident in, what would you do in my place to perhaps grab shares of the company instead of trying to make a couple bucks doing these kind of tasks?

For example - is it common to create the website and get paid in shares of the company, and what's fair pricing?

The pricing issue has always been tough for me.

Thanks for reading - hope to hear some advice from the kind people here.

[Celtboy]

Working with friends...yikes. I avoid that like the Spanish Influenza.

Doing the initial web creation and being paid in shares isn't common. If a majority of the business presence is interweb'd and the designer is also maintaining, then yes. In such case it is usually more of a partnership.

$5 / month hosting is probably reasonable, depending on what services you provide. Backups?

As for site creation, I'd set up an "Under Construction" page for free, most likely, in the interest of getting more business out of him. If you don't think that is a likely scenario, something like $5 - $10 for a simple page isn't unreasonable.

For the entire venture and additional work? Well a price estimate there depends on requirements and amount of work you'd have to put in to it to determine approximate value.

-Celt