Website Pricing

Adam

So how much are we talking? Is there a "standard" for pricing website creation, what are the going rates?

How much does one charge for say a 25-30 page site, largely interactive, with 2/3 purchased programs installed, and to write an elaborate login system to include a sort of points system based on certain activities. Also to be included is a large database driven blog style posting section. And all this from a photoshop template?

How is one to know?

mneylon

This has come up here many times in the past. I'd recommend you search this boards archives ....

Adam

Just did a bit of searching there and came across a couple of threads, but nothing that serves as good guide really.

DJB

Are you buying or selling?

Adam

I'm selling

fintan

The site you described could cost anything from 1k to infinity it all really depends on how good you are and how much your customer is willing to pay.

But to help you decide on a price

Ask yourself these questions:
How much is one hour of your time worth?
How many hours will it take to create product?
Cost of Expenses incurred
What profit margin would you like to make?

TA DA - you should have your price.

There are other factors such as - will there be on-going from customer, extra support offered after site set up, relationship with customer, what have you charged in the past etc etc

Adam

Cheers for that fintan. Any guides on what an hour of my time should be worth?

fintan

Mirror wrote:

Cheers for that fintan. Any guides on what an hour of my time should be worth?

How long is a piece of string ?

Well start all over again

Add up all your bills

Mortgage / Rent
Gas / Electric
Food
Entertainment
Telephone / broadband
Training (books etc )
Savings
Plus what ever else I have missed

Divide that by the number of hours in a week and thats what you need to earn per hour.

Adam

Fair point! Thanks for your help!

Rollo Tamasi

fintan wrote:

But to help you decide on a price

Ask yourself these questions:
How much is one hour of your time worth?
How many hours will it take to create product?
Cost of Expenses incurred
What profit margin would you like to make?

mmm

Mortgage / Rent
Gas / Electric
Food
Entertainment
Telephone / broadband
Training (books etc )
Savings
Plus what ever else I have missed

erm!

anyway...there is no guide to pricing.

Just skimming thru your post Fintan...are you honestly going to charge a client with your electricty bill in mind?

I find this hourly rate thing crazy. How can you prove how many hours you worked on the project? Are you going to clock in and out? Are you paying PAYE? It's all very much up in the air if you're not a professional web designer working for a company, which i doubt Mirror is.

If I was making sites professionally or for profit or whatever else, I would decide on a set fee at the begining. Outline what it will cost and when to pay. Find out if the client knows how much things cost and how complicated some things he may take for granted actually are.

If you go off and design a site and then hit the client with a bill which could be anything from 100euro to 1,500 what do you think is going to happen?

Recently enough i got quoted 25euro an hour from a designer to design a logo. Fair enough. Untill the person said it would take approx 12hours to deisgn it! Is that standard? Did i accept the offer? **** no!

Adam

Thanks for the input Rollo. Obviously I'm taking each opinion with a pinch of salt, I wasn't too sure how my savings come into pricing either But of course I appreciate everyones thoughts.

You're correct in saying I'm not working professionally at the moment, though I am considering joining the industry professionally in the near future.

What would your opinion be on the price bracket of the job I described in my original post?

Rollo Tamasi

Mirror wrote:

What would your opinion be on the price bracket of the job I described in my original post?

$free

Expierence is the key. And Portfolio is what you should be concentrating on.

Potential employers don't want to know about how much your work is 'worth'.
It should speak for itself.

This is personal opinion. Others will come on here and will provide you with more information. It's up to you to listen and decide for yourself what is best for yourself. Just because someone says stuff does not make it gospel. Especially in relation to webmasterin'.

Adam

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

$free

Duly noted though, I'm aware you're right about the matter. I'm not too experienced, and as such am keeping my prices to the minimum I feel I can afford to do the jobs. Idea being that once I get the jobs under my belt and build my portfolio, I can start demanding a higher price for my work.

Really I'm just wondering what the bottom line is, where to start, and how low is too low, so that while I go about it the right way I don't do myself out of too much money

heggie

whoever this designer was rollo, that doesnt sound unreasonable, I saw on another forum you were looking for a logo for 100 euro, thats just not a goer for people that want to make ends meet

yeraulone

I always quote an hourly rate to a client, and it works perfectly for me.

After a brief from the client, I'll figure out how long each step will take, give the client an accurate time-frame and my costing based on that (before I start so theres no confusion later on). No problem.

Adam

Hi John,

Um, you do realise all the text on your website is invisible in Firefox right? The black background only shows up in IE.

fintan

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

mmm



Just skimming thru your post Fintan...are you honestly going to charge a client with your electricty bill in mind?

I find this hourly rate thing crazy. How can you prove how many hours you worked on the project? Are you going to clock in and out? Are you paying PAYE? It's all very much up in the air if you're not a professional web designer working for a company, which i doubt Mirror is.

If I was making sites professionally or for profit or whatever else, I would decide on a set fee at the begining. Outline what it will cost and when to pay. Find out if the client knows how much things cost and how complicated some things he may take for granted actually are.

If you go off and design a site and then hit the client with a bill which could be anything from 100euro to 1,500 what do you think is going to happen?

Hi

You raise some interesting points but I think you are confusing the woods from the trees.

If he is running a business of course his electricity bill is important, if its a nixer or he lives at home of course it isnt important. I was just trying to give him an idea of where to start.

Of course there are a whole range of variables to take into account.

At the end of the day his service is selling man hours, so of course he has to estimate how many hours it will take him in order to price the job accuratley. However he doesnt have to present it in man hours, he could just give lump sum amount with a provision for extra cost if certian criteria are not met.

Anyway, its a system that works for me, but if you have a better way of pricing I would love to see it.


Cheers

Fintan

Serbian

Mirror wrote:

Hi John,

Um, you do realise all the text on your website is invisible in Firefox right? The black background only shows up in IE.

In relation to this, I'd say the reason for the text being invisible is the style tags are in the CSS document:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
[...]
-->
</style>

You don't need these.

yeraulone

Heh! cheers Mirror and thanks Serbian.

That site is work in progress and also a result of my first attempt of using css as opposed to tables. As you can see I have a long way to go.

Adam

No problem John.

Can I ask, do you make a living from webdesign?

yeraulone

Mirror wrote:

No problem John.

Can I ask, do you make a living from webdesign?

I used to freelance a lot, but recently I haven't been looking or taken on new work, as I'm busy with other projects. Just as well cause my site is a state. Plus I work fulltime as a webmaster for an online gaming company. But there is a lot of work out there.

Rollo Tamasi

heggie wrote:

whoever this designer was rollo, that doesnt sound unreasonable, I saw on another forum you were looking for a logo for 100 euro, thats just not a goer for people that want to make ends meet

The designer in question is far from pro, a student in fact. I got some ridicilious quotes which varied a lot from an argentin student with a great porfolio who quoted 150dollars to a pro design firm with a lot of clients but their portfolio wasn't half as good as the other designer. They were looking for 700euro for the logo.

heggie

fair enough I wasnt saying he was good quality, obviously how would i know!, but his work wasnt commented on, so i presumed it was the price that threw you, dont be so outraged that a logo can take 12 hours work though...