Forum Moderators: buckworks
Does anybody else have this many number of pages in your web?
Or work out how long it took you and then decide how much you want to earn per theoretical hour.
Charge by the job. You need to make selling points that you feel are superior to your competitors. What can you do that others can't? What concerns can you address that others haven't (AND) that will conern the client and the visitors. You have your own coding style, your own methods, and a range of knowledge and wisdom (which hopefully is large or expanding or even better, both).
2.) What should I charge then?
You charge either in full or per item. Itemize a webpage by features but *ONLY* if they are major and would serisouly detract timewise from the design (and in some cases development) of the project at hand.
Remember that you are providing a means between people who are attempting to sell something, be it a product, idea, or otherwise.
You must adapt your price for the product according to the extent your expect a project to take.
That means you must take in to account food, clothing, shelter and BILLS.
Keep in mind that unless you're undertaking a large scale project that you can easily charge in excess of a grand you're probally not going to want to attempt to ask a customer for a sum that will hold you over alone on that project.
If a customer wants several dozens pages with a high end design and a couple indepth features like an intergrated forum and email, you could well charge over 800 (USD / American). While yes you will probally outsource your job is to put it all together. The client has NO clue about HTML (which is why you're the one getting paid to do it).
Smaller jobs which are typically information jobs can be charged by session. I've had clients who wish to sit down and manually edit or email me edits to their site which could be merely a few pages of photos and text. I usually charge every other session for a decent chunk that depending on the amount of work they've had me do creep in to the tripple digits though keep in mind I consider my web design skills to be VERY professional though my development skills are still basic.
3.) Be honest with the customer about the needs of their clients. If someone askes you to do something like put a 600 KB image on their frontpage and want to pay you, you're better off being honest and explaining why they will loose visitors, traffic will go down, and it will look bad on you and thus get you fired. You need to communicate about such issues so that your client understands that you are fulfilling not only a job but a responsability to balance between their desire to publish a site and their visitors desire not to leave because the site was badly designed (hence you didn't do your job by not speaking up).
So speak up when you see a page takes longer then 10 seconds to load. It's only to your benefit to spot these and other errors, make the owner aware, and have them gain your trust.
4.) Don't lie to your customers. They are the ones who will be ultimately allowing you to put bread and water in to your mouth every day.
5.) You don't know enough. You will never know enough because your various customers will all have different needs (in more specific aspects). Keep learning and keep fixing what you mess up.
6.) Always PREVIEW your work before you go live with it (upload it). If they HAD a page that was ok and you upload something that destroys that old page, unless you've backed it up (because we know you did, because you're a pro right? heh) then you've got to fix a page in real time and thats NEVER fun and it diminishes you as a pro in to some amatuer trying to live up to the guy before you.
7.) Charge by your skill. If you can't excite the customer by your promised ability to deliver, don't be surprised if they aren't willing to pay a high or even modest price. If you're not doing things professionally, you won't sell yourself professionally. The only way you can make a living from doing this or anyhting else independently is to do it professionally. Once you build anything and explain legalities and other indepth aspects and ensure the customer that you're willing to take it all on, you've earned their confidence and your ability to earn a paycheck.
I don't worry about if a potential client will choose not to hire me. I worry if I don't find a potential client in the first place. I have yet to be turned down in any interview (in regard to the web that is) but that should be considered rare because I have waited until I could sell myself. I practiced selling my own work to myself. Once I gained enough confindence that I could talk about it blind folded and knowing that I knew what I was talking about, I knew I had it. I still have a ways to go sa far as development and working on a site such as yahoo on the back end but thats moving from the lower end of the 5 digit income to the upper and even in to the six digital yearly income range.
Once you can design anything professionally both clientside and serverside you can break in to the six digit area. Keep in mind though there is a BIG difference between confidence based on professionalism and being just plain cocky. Any kid can whip up some nice looking flash site, but a pro knows that half the net is on dialup..they don't have the patience for a 700kb page of an unknown site to load.
So here is a basic layout of pricing...
$80-200 - Small Updates (between an hour to five hours of updates with the client or via email say a month) assumming you have professional skills.
$400 - 600 - Creation of a modest site of at least a dosen pages and done from scratch.
$ 800 range - Maybe some advanced stuff but nothing too shabby. You should be able to accomplish a full workload for this in two weeks if you know your stuff, do you? ;-)
$ 1200+ - A one month job, and the higher the price the more variables are involved.
Remember these are just suggestions. Add these up and think of each as an independent job. Can you pay your bills and live life modestly based on the idea that you've got enough clients to fulfill your target budget? Are you adapting your budget and pricing according to the client's needs and your own all balanced together?
Be ethical and work hard. It can pay off. If you've got a major project for a month that pays off your bills, don't worry about getting more clients, or at least any new ones should be made aware that you will be (roughly) available around a target (half of a) week.
Some jobs are conituous, some aren't. You've got to balance it all out. And until you have clients throwing themselves off bridges to get you to work for them don't expect to quit that part time job you've been doing (you know, for that just in case things dry up reason in the back of your head).
All the luck! :-)
1) *NEVER* for any reason charge by the hour! This not only robs of us the hard earned money we deserve (assumming we're doing what we're doing professionally) but to associate an hourly wage with a skilled job is not something we should do.
Hehe - great point... which you then completely undermine with...
$80-200 - Small Updates (between an hour to five hours of updates with the client or via email say a month) assumming you have professional skills.
$400 - 600 - Creation of a modest site of at least a dosen pages and done from scratch.
You'd be better off working a bar job in the states, you'd get more in tips alone.
Charge what you feel you're worth, if they won't pay then they think you are worth less than that and you have to decide if you'll do the work at that rate.
For the record - working by the hour is often a good idea - especially in projects or with clients that have a history of changing plans. Just charge high.
to associate an hourly wage with a skilled job is not something we should do.
I cannot agree with that at all - lawyers, doctors, vets etc almost all charge by the hour (or minute). I have seen many consultants/designers/contractors comtemplate penury because they quote per job and grossly underestimate the time involved, or have no idea what an hour of actual work must earn to cover overheads.
$ 800 range - Maybe some advanced stuff but nothing too shabby. You should be able to accomplish a full workload for this in two weeks
I cannot imagine that two weeks work at that money would do much more than cover the overheads of anyone outside a very low cost economy. If you charge that in the first world you are on the road to poverty.
If a customer wants several dozens pages with a high end design and a couple indepth features like an intergrated forum and email, you could well charge over 800 (USD / American).
Uh, I sure hope you have a trust fund that you live off or something because if you are doing work that cheap, you are going to be poor :)
$ 1200+ - A one month job, and the higher the price the more variables are involved.
$1200 for a months worth of work? No offense but a busy developer can make that in a day...
My comments about man hours were not forcharging on or outsourcing, but if you've made a website in your spare time, or as part of other business commintments (I run a b+m shop as well) then you have to have a way of quantifying what you've done. Most of the cost is hours, not your hosting or software.
I was talking about theoretical man hours. If I read about a guy in the paper and he says 'I spent only 50GBP on my website and now I'm a millionaire!' Then I take that with a pinch of salt. The 50 might be the hosting, but its his hours of work, making a good website or a lucky website or advertising his website - that has made him that money. You can't just sling something up there and expect that kind of cash to roll in.
I will creating my next website in my spare time, not for love, but for money. When I work out my break even point I'll take into account the time I spent on it.
When it comes to charging for your web design / writing skill then I agree the charges are very different. You are charging out your ability to do the job, the fact that it will make the client money, the time you spent learning how to the job and the time you spend keeping your skills up to date. That's why you should be expensive.
But theoretically I will stand by my opnion that man hours are useful.
As a great VC told me once, "I care. I really do. Just not that much."
What a buyer is willing to pay for is parts, or future value.
Parts is clear - how much can I hock the PR, domain name, web pages, database of clients, in parts or whole etc.
Future value becomes very tricky from industry to industry and sector to sector.
As previously stated, web sites, unless they are the behemoths of the Web (Amazon, eBay, Google, Y! , et al.), you are looking at less then a year of income/gross/net or whatever the buyer prefers.
There are, literally thousands of valuation methods. I could dwell into it, but you would be bored out of your website... and slash your wrists by the second method's description...
