First paying gig, what should I charge

[farrisreelfilms]

I've been designing Flash sites for friends voluntarily. Now I got my first paying gig and I want to charge them fairly. I'll be making the site from scratch, duties including:

graphic design- for logos
monthly maintenance
animations

Am I missing anything?

Thanks for any help.

[Marshall]

Have you considered time for SEO and site submissions?

Marshall

[Essex_boy]

The question is - How much can they pay? Charge to little and youll be seen a kiddie playing at it.

I think your better off working out how much youwant then adding a percentage to the hourly rate to cover unforseens, tax etc isnt an unforeseen.

What ever you do put it all into writing and have them sign to say they understand that youll do XY and Z and no more.

[edited by: Essex_boy at 7:07 pm (utc) on July 8, 2007]

[Marshall]

How much can they pay?

IMHO, this shoulld never be a question because if word ever gets out you'll adjust your prices if you say "we can only afford...", you are going to be taken advantage of financially.

This is a topic with a lot of variables: number of pages, images, is there a DB, are there forms, is SEO included, maybe a shopping cart and if there is, does one page have two items and another have 30 - then charging per page is not equitable, and is there a long term maintenance contract.

Again IMHO, the only question is how much are you worth?

Marshall

[Rosalind]

It's a tough one to answer, because when you start out you won't have a very good idea of how long each job will take you. It's very easy to undercharge on your first job, and end up out of pocket because of the time it takes you to complete it.

[King_Fisher]

I use to work for a contractor preparing bids for construction jobs.

We would spend days pulling together material prices, sub contractors
bids etc,etc.

When we were all through he would say "thats ever thing but 10% for uh oh.*
Being green I had to ask what that was. He replied " thats when your out on
the job and found out you forgot something and go uh oh"

Figure all your cost and profit and add on 10% for uh oh and you will be OK.
Good Luck! KF

[agorare]

and dont forget to take a 25% in front. ALL the times i didnt, the customer give me a lot of problems. for a strange reason they didnt respect you when you garcge a small amount of money

also take a small look there.

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