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How much do I charge?
MayGodHaveMercy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I recently (yesterday) put up a portfolio website for myself, and I just got a request for a website that reads as follows...
Problem is, I have no clue how much to charge for building/maintaining a site. Upfront fees + monthly charges? Is that how this normally works? Before you ask, this is going to be a very basic website, using the colors and logos, etc that she provides me.... So it won't take long to build, and should be a breeze to maintain. How much do I charge? If you can't tell me a price range, can you tell me where to look? I've only built one professional website in my life, and I charged $500 for it, because that was his budget, and he was a friend of the family. Help please!
Hey ****** - I was referred to you by Bill ******. I am looking for you to create and maintain a website for a elementary charter school. Basically a simple informational website that the parents will use to find out important info regarding our school. Test dates, School Functions, PTA meetings, School's closed dates, email the school link(s), important phone numbers, etc, etc.... Please let me know if this is something you can do as well as the prices you charge.
Problem is, I have no clue how much to charge for building/maintaining a site. Upfront fees + monthly charges? Is that how this normally works? Before you ask, this is going to be a very basic website, using the colors and logos, etc that she provides me.... So it won't take long to build, and should be a breeze to maintain. How much do I charge? If you can't tell me a price range, can you tell me where to look? I've only built one professional website in my life, and I charged $500 for it, because that was his budget, and he was a friend of the family. Help please!
XBL: Mercy XXVI - Steam: Mercy_XXVI - PSN: Mercy XXVI
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As for the rest, I'd say that you should charge an upfront for the original design/layout, and then either charge them a flat monthly rate for as many updates/changes as they want or charge an hourly rate, with min 1/2 hour charges.
Also, I don't think I'll be hosting it. I'll let her know that finding webspace is her job. Actually, I could find the webspace, but i'm not paying for it. haha.
Also, when you do your estimate, make sure you get their expectations IN WRITING, with an authorative signature. That way if they fuck you around and add work, you adjust the bill and get another agreement.
If you just quote them, do the work, plus extra, then bill them extra, they may try to bullshit you with your original estimate.
I have over 30 websites under my belt.
For a simple blog, I charge around $1,500.
For a site like that, It'd be around $3,500 + 100/monthly retainer.
GLHF!
For the site that you're talking about, I'd most likely make it a really basic site with a simple PHP/MySQL Backend so it could be easily updated down-the-road, preferably by the client.
I'd only charge about $500 for it.
Of course this all assumes you know what you are doing and can do a decent/good job of it.
Be ready to negotiate, but don't go too much lower than your initial quote/estimate. You aren't doing freelance work for minimum wage, especially when you need to file a 1099 for taxes.
I agree on documenting the agreed upon work/cost. Even if they are considered in the friendly group, they may still try to get extra work for free (everyone's a cheapskate).
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What you need to do is sit down and work out your operating costs. Make a list of expenses including:
- An annual estimate for hardware and software upgrades.
- An annual utilities estimate (if you work from home, just figure it out as a percentage of your bills), including telephone
- An annual consumables estimate (such as paper and ink, pens, sketchbooks etc. - anything that gets used up during the business process)
- An annual administration estimate, such as paying an accountant to do your tax returns and any banking fees etc.
- An annual travel expenses estimate (may be zero if you work entirely from home, but can be good to estimate a bit just in case you need to go onsite or anything in the future)
- Your desired annual wage
- Your desired annual profits
Depending on where you live and how much all that stuff costs, you'll probably be looking at maybe $30,000 to $40,000 per year. Now you need to break that down into an hourly rate.
To work out your working hours, you first assume 8 hours per day. Then you assume 5 days per week and 48 weeks per year (or less if you fancy more holidays). However, before you calculate your annual working hours, bear in mind that you probably wont find constant work every hour of every day of every week. You need to include down-time into your estimate. Apart from anything else, you'll need to spend some time administering your business, chasing leads, making new contacts and generally doing stuff that you wont be able to bill anyone for. So knock say three hours a day off the total estimate, which assumes you'll spend approximately five hours a day doing client work and three hours a day doing administration etc. So - 5x5x48=1200 billable hours per year.
Now divide your annual total expenses + income by the number of billable hours per year that you've calculated. This is your hourly fee and should be the basis of all estimates.
Now get a detailed brief from the client. Spend some time familiarising yourself with this and draw up a proposal. The proposal should include a brief outline of how you are going to approach the project, an outline of the site structure and an estimate of how long all the work will take - concept, design, implementation etc. Using this estimate, you can calculate a cost estimate using your hourly rate. Don't forget to add any additional expenses such as hosting etc. as a separate cost. You should also include your hourly rate in expenses for additional work should the project run over the estimated and alloted time allocation - NEVER WORK FOR FREE!
In the case of this specific project, you can use this process to estimate a total fee for the initial creation of the site and then simply quote an hourly rate for any future updates, which you will simply time and then bill as and when they happen (if they are only an hour here and there you could agree to bill them when a certain amount is reached such as every five hours of additional work, so you aren't churning out loads of minuscule invoices).
This process ensures that the fee you charge exactely covers your expenses for the amount of hours spent on the job. You wont feel guilty about overcharging so the client can't complain if it's too expensive (it's just that their expectations of what they can get for their money are too optimistic) and you won't feel like an idiot for quoting a fee that is way too low and end up doing months of work for peanuts.
As a matter of priority, get yourself a copy of the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook to Pricing and Ethical Guidelines for more details on this process, plus information on average salaries and prices for all types of design work across the US and example contracts including formal web design estimates.
And this is why I need to take business courses at college..
So, now i'm faced with doing this for free, or close to it, and having my name and a site i've designed profesionally out there.... On the other side of that coin, i'm putting hours and hours into something, and making about $3.00 an hour, if not less. I mean, having your name out there is one thing, but she's seen my work, and was impressed with it. She's got 504 students... is that really going to up my business much? I just don't know. I hate pro bono work. Hate it.
If she was looking to having a web site designed by someone that was not either:
a) one of her students
b) family
c) a dear friend
d) someone that owed her a favor
and didn't expect to pay more than $100 for it, she is sadly mistaken.
It's ultimately your choice, but unless there is some way to work this out for you, you are going to be eating that work and, at best, left with a site you can reference to in a resume.. and honestly, you could make your OWN site with examples of your work on it.
Um, it's an elementary school. In all seriousness, how are 504 K-6th graders going to drum up business for you? Do they need websites done too? Can they afford to pay for them? Do you think their parents will consult their 5-12 year old children on where to get snazzy webdesign?
And not only will you be designing this for free, you'll be maintaining it for free too? Ugh.
My opinion: "Thanks, but no thanks."
those 504 kids have 1008 parents that would be using the website..
That's just 1008 parents who will be told by a teacher that there's this guy who will design websites for next to nothing. Avoid IMO. If you want to have a good reputation, stick to your guns on price.
That is absurd. Does she think it's going to get done in an hour or two? And get free maintenance to boot? Screw that. Stick with whatever price you quoted her and if she really wants it done, she'll get a bigger budget.