Web Designer freelancer rates

paddyjose · 16-01-2012 10:52pm #1

Hey folks,

Made the decision to start freelancing , but Ive absolutely no idea how to price myself myself. Ive done some research and really havent get any definite consensus, so I thought Id throw it out to you guys.
In my first tentative dealing with an agency , I was offered €150/day , which I still haven't stopped laughing at. Given that I've 3 years of a solid portfolio, what sort of daily rates should I be looking at??

Liam Byrne · 17-01-2012 1:11am

paddyjose wrote: »

Hey folks,

Made the decision to start freelancing , but Ive absolutely no idea how to price myself myself. Ive done some research and really havent get any definite consensus, so I thought Id throw it out to you guys.
In my first tentative dealing with an agency , I was offered €150/day , which I still haven't stopped laughing at. Given that I've 3 years of a solid portfolio, what sort of daily rates should I be looking at??

To be quite honest I don't think €150 is a figure to be "laughed at" with only 3 years' experience.

anbrutog · 17-01-2012 11:43am

Liam Byrne wrote: »

To be quite honest I don't think €150 is a figure to be "laughed at" with only 3 years' experience.

I disagree ,sounds a bit low to be honest...taking all into consideration( taxes / holidays etc ) €150/day works out at more or less minimum wage.

What? Oh Rly! · 17-01-2012 11:47am

A basic way of doing it.

You should work out your hourly rate and multiply by 8. My daily rate would be 320 and that's still on the low side.

PCPhoto · 17-01-2012 12:01pm

I dont mean to be rude (to any of you) but how can you charge that much.... what does it involve except your knowledge and willingness to stay in front of a computer ? the amount of websites out there offering WYSIWYG websites and the ease at which people can make a functional website is surely making it more difficult for you to earn a living.

(Pardon my ignorance)

I work as a photographer and cant justify charging more than €200-250 a day, I have been working at this rate for about 8years, I refused to go up or down in price, most of my work is a contract which has me working 5 days a week.

the reason I justify the price is due to the costs involved in maintaining my equipment and purchasing my equipment and various other costs like insurance, etc, I have to spend approx €10-15K a year on equipment, insurance, travel expenses and in recent years there has been an influx of "people with DSLR cameras" thinking its easy to take a picture.....which has driven a lot of professionals to the wall because some part-time photographer can subsidise his/her photography with a full-time job so he/she can charge virtually nothing for covering a wedding.

I'm sure a similar situation occurs in your industry - the amount of people out there with "experience" in creating websites claiming to be professional web designers - I suppose my point is how can you justify what you charge ? what are your costs which you filter into your daily rate.

As for the OP - €150 a day is a decent enough wage - if it can be sustained ! (is the person offering you €150 per day for a minimum of X months?)

Pixelcraft · 17-01-2012 12:10pm

PCPhoto wrote: »

what does it involve except your knowledge and willingness to stay in front of a computer ?

Knowledge is the most important asset you can have as an employee/consultant/contracor, why would you not charge for this?

PCPhoto wrote: »

As for the OP - €150 a day is a decent enough wage - if it can be sustained ! (is the person offering you €150 per day for a minimum of X months?)

Please keep in mind it's not a wage, €150 is the proposed fee. A freelancer is running a business, has expenses and no entitlements, so to compare it with a wage is way off the mark.

There was a recent survey in the UK and the average day rate was about £390, to me €150 sounds very low, most agencies would be used to paying well above that, so it's either indicative of their quality or they're chancing their arm.

paddyjose · 17-01-2012 12:44pm

PCPhoto wrote: »

I dont mean to be rude (to any of you) but how can you charge that much.... what does it involve except your knowledge and willingness to stay in front of a computer ? the amount of websites out there offering WYSIWYG websites and the ease at which people can make a functional website is surely making it more difficult for you to earn a living.

(Pardon my ignorance)

I work as a photographer and cant justify charging more than €200-250 a day, I have been working at this rate for about 8years, I refused to go up or down in price, most of my work is a contract which has me working 5 days a week.

the reason I justify the price is due to the costs involved in maintaining my equipment and purchasing my equipment and various other costs like insurance, etc, I have to spend approx €10-15K a year on equipment, insurance, travel expenses and in recent years there has been an influx of "people with DSLR cameras" thinking its easy to take a picture.....which has driven a lot of professionals to the wall because some part-time photographer can subsidise his/her photography with a full-time job so he/she can charge virtually nothing for covering a wedding.

I'm sure a similar situation occurs in your industry - the amount of people out there with "experience" in creating websites claiming to be professional web designers - I suppose my point is how can you justify what you charge ? what are your costs which you filter into your daily rate.

As for the OP - €150 a day is a decent enough wage - if it can be sustained ! (is the person offering you €150 per day for a minimum of X months?)

Thats the thing , the work on offer is quite sporadic, a day here and there with no guarantee of any more to come. With expenses , no holiday pay or any other normal entitlements, taxes etc €150/day works out at very little.

J.D.R · 17-01-2012 1:28pm

PCPhoto wrote: »

... in recent years there has been an influx of "people with DSLR cameras" thinking its easy to take a picture.....which has driven a lot of professionals to the wall because some part-time photographer can subsidise his/her photography with a full-time job so he/she can charge virtually nothing for covering a wedding....

Without sounding extremely insulting to your profession, if you give anybody on the street a good camera, chances are they'll take a few nice pictures. If you give them a computer, 99.9999% of the time, they wouldn't have a clue where to start to go about building/designing a website.

OP, what was involved for the €150? Did it require 8 hours of work or was it just a project that may take less time?

pixie_dust · 17-01-2012 2:35pm

Your daily rate should be way higher than €150 in my opinion. You are providing a service which you most likely have earned a qualification in & a good amount of experience/portfolio to prove your capabilities.

The difference between you and most of the websites offering WYSIWYG out there is that you can provide support if problems arise and you know what you are doing. And also don't think WYSIWYG website offerings would provide any real web design - in comparison to a web designer who has worked with photoshop/illustrator & has honed their design skills for years.

I don't think any old joe sobe can just start designing & come up with something worth looking at. It takes years of practice and experience. I really think it is an industry that is completely underestimated in terms of skills needed to do it well.

Liam Byrne · 17-01-2012 2:49pm

PCPhoto wrote:

in recent years there has been an influx of "people with DSLR cameras" thinking its easy to take a picture

......which are the equivalent of those throwing together those sites that you were on about......not at all professional, functional or useful, and killing the true expert and professional.

What makes a good photo ?

And then, what makes a good website, since you stated

the amount of websites out there offering WYSIWYG websites and the ease at which people can make a functional website

It's the same issue in two different industries; you either value the subtleties and expertise of a true professional or you don't.

Part of the reason why I stated that €150 was - although admittedly low - certainly "not to be laughed at" is because the market won't support the proper effort and expertise to create a decent site.

Ideally anything between €200 and €300 would be a fair rate, depending on experience (and adding on whatever overheads are involved) but it can be tough to get people to see the difference between a templated identikit "site" and a proper site.

Trojan · 17-01-2012 4:34pm

A daily rate that someone is guaranteed day-in, day-out is a very different beast from a daily rate earned by a freelancer who may have extremely fallow periods

paddyjose · 17-01-2012 5:28pm

J.D.R wrote: »

Without sounding extremely insulting to your profession, if you give anybody on the street a good camera, chances are they'll take a few nice pictures. If you give them a computer, 99.9999% of the time, they wouldn't have a clue where to start to go about building/designing a website.

OP, what was involved for the €150? Did it require 8 hours of work or was it just a project that may take less time?

It was for a project that would take the guts of a week, a psd chop into a Wordpress template and some custom plugin development.

cormee · 17-01-2012 5:54pm

This is one of those 'how long is a piece of string' type questions, there's no real point asking someone what their going rate is, unless their skills and experience are comparable to yours.

What would take me an hour could take someone else half an hour, or another person two hours.

Are we talking about design projects? If so a person's creative abilities come into play - I'd happily pay a good, creative designer multiples of what I'd pay a poor designer (I wouldn't employ a designer with poor design skills, but that's for another thread).

A good creative designer with a lot of experience could possibly put together an impressive brochure site in four or five hours, on the other end of the scale the same project might take an inexperienced designer 15-20 hours.

Fwiw, I've been working on the web about 14 years. I charge between €60-€100 p/h. €60 for regular customers (I only work part-time/evenings freelance), but if I'm pricing a job for a new client, I'd figure out how long it's going to take, multiply by €100 per hour, and give them the total in the quote.

€100 may sound like a lot, but in the end the customer benefits, because even if the design process goes on longer than I epected (which it ALWAYS does), I'm not going to feel forced to pass on a half-assed job in order to make a profit.

smcelhinney · 17-01-2012 6:11pm

I charge €65 an hour, but Im sh!t hot..

Nah, but in all honesty, someone here said it already. Knowledge is everything. I feel I can charge this much because I've been exposed (careful now!) to most major web technologies for the past 10 years.

Somebody who has specific knowledge acquired over 3 years quite honestly has no right to charge anyone near that rate.

/prepares for backlash

PCPhoto · 17-01-2012 9:09pm

While I understand that knowledge is the key to how you can charge a fair price, the fact remains that like my own profession.... there are people offering their services for cheap..... how can you identify yourself amongst all the people offering a similar service ?

I suppose the best way to put it - how can I (if I was looking for a web designer/programmer) find someone who is good ? I dont know the difference between someone who is good and has experience to someone who can bull$h1t his/her way through a meeting.

Can I sue if they do not perform (in the same way a photographer can be sued if they are unprofessional and do not meet expectations.)

BarackPyjama · 17-01-2012 9:29pm

PCPhoto wrote: »

how can I (if I was looking for a web designer/programmer) find someone who is good ?

Ask to see their portfolio?

Liam Byrne · 18-01-2012 2:38am

anbrutog wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

To be quite honest I don't think €150 is a figure to be "laughed at" with only 3 years' experience.

I disagree ,sounds a bit low to be honest...taking all into consideration( taxes / holidays etc ) €150/day works out at more or less minimum wage.

How is almost €19 an hour "minimum wage" ?

Even allowing for 20-22 days holidays out of that (knocking off one-twelfth) it's still €135 a day, or €17 an hour, which is almost twice the minimum wage.

And yes, taxes are payable on that as you'll hit €35K, but that's a completely separate issue.

Yes, "non-productive" days need some cover, but all I said was that it wasn't to be "laughed at".

BarackPyjama · 18-01-2012 7:30am

PCPhoto wrote: »

how can you identify yourself amongst all the people offering a similar service?

Produce better work?

I've outsourced work to designers at €1,000 per day. It was worth every penny because:

They were highly experienced and got the job done quicker than an amateur. So, in essence, their daily rate was actually less.
Their skill set and the quality of their work was world class and I've won a lot of new, better paid business with bigger clients as a result.

I've had less experienced design freelancers send me their CV's/portfolios and rates of €150 or €200 per day. 9 times out of 10 I wouldn't use them unless I was looking to do something very remedial for a client on a very tight budget. There's a market for cheap work of course - I just don't want to be in it.

Then there are two other problems that arise in such a young industry:

Most amateur and/or incompetent designers think they're professionals.
Most smaller clients don't know the difference between good design and bad design or indeed what good design should cost. Which is unfortunate because getting it wrong can destroy their businesses.

anbrutog · 18-01-2012 10:26am

Liam Byrne wrote: »

How is almost €19 an hour "minimum wage" ?

Even allowing for 20-22 days holidays out of that (knocking off one-twelfth) it's still €135 a day, or €17 an hour, which is almost twice the minimum wage.

And yes, taxes are payable on that as you'll hit €35K, but that's a completely separate issue.

Yes, "non-productive" days need some cover, but all I said was that it wasn't to be "laughed at".

Liam , its a very low figure and not in keeping with 3 years experience and a solid portfolio in my opinion. A bit of licence with the 'mimimum wage' granted, but its too low in my book.

Liam Byrne · 18-01-2012 11:45am

anbrutog wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

How is almost €19 an hour "minimum wage" ?

Even allowing for 20-22 days holidays out of that (knocking off one-twelfth) it's still €135 a day, or €17 an hour, which is almost twice the minimum wage.

And yes, taxes are payable on that as you'll hit €35K, but that's a completely separate issue.

Yes, "non-productive" days need some cover, but all I said was that it wasn't to be "laughed at".

Liam , its a very low figure and not in keeping with 3 years experience and a solid portfolio in my opinion. A bit of licence with the 'mimimum wage' granted, but its too low in my book.

Well if something is too low or wrong there should be no need to misrepresent or exaggerate, that's all I'm saying.

Seve OB · 26-01-2012 5:07pm

anbrutog wrote: »

I disagree ,sounds a bit low to be honest...taking all into consideration( taxes / holidays etc ) €150/day works out at more or less minimum wage.

on what planet????

150 per day * 5 days * 52 weeks = €39,000 that aint anywhere near minimum wage pal. Dont bring tax into it because we all have to pay tax

lets say it was a busy day, 9 hours, that still works out at €16.66 per hour not accounting for a lunch break!!

BailMeOut · 26-01-2012 5:20pm

walk before you run. Someone has offered you 150 a day and they have no idea at this stage how good or productive you are. Commit to a month with them at this rate while you and they figure out you new venture is working out. As you build up a reputation and experience then increase your rate to whatever clients are willing to pay.

Trojan · 27-01-2012 2:13pm

anbrutog wrote:

I disagree ,sounds a bit low to be honest...taking all into consideration( taxes / holidays etc ) €150/day works out at more or less minimum wage.

stevieob wrote: »

on what planet????

On Earth, where even busy freelancers don't work 5 days * 52 weeks per year.

--

If someone's getting €150/day full-time then it's a very good wage if they don't have a lot of experience.

Freddio · 02-02-2012 12:52am

Trojan wrote: »

On Earth, where even busy freelancers don't work 5 days * 52 weeks per year.

I work 60 hour weeks (or at least 50)

Trojan · 02-02-2012 3:22pm

Freddio wrote: »

I work 60 hour weeks (or at least 50)

Don't get me wrong - I often work 60 hours and sometimes 80 on crazy weeks. What my post above is missing is the word "billable":

"even busy freelancers don't work 5 days * 52 weeks per year of 100% billable time"

Web Designer freelancer rates

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