[torifile]

I've been offered my first freelance chance as a website maker. I'm not nearly as good as a *real* designer, but I've got some cred within my circle of professionals as someone who can do this sort of thing. My current project, www.dbt-u.com was what prompted this offer. Problem is, I have *no* idea how much to ask for. How much do you think is fair to ask for for a site similar to my other one?

nb - I don't know if this is a programmer's nook question or GD, so move it if need be. TIA.

[torifile]

No one has any suggestions for me?

[Brad]

I was wondering the same, actually...

[AsLan^]

Apparently there was a discussion about it once

[Brad]

Yeah, but price structures change pretty regularly for services related to teh intarweb. Half a year is like an eternity online!

It's a good starting place, though.

[AsLan^]

I think one of the important concepts that thread reveals is that some web designers get paid by the hour. I would have thought that people paid a fixed price for an expected product, and the web designer could take the time needed and deliver it before the deadline.

Perhaps thats what you should do torifile, estimate how long it will take you to make, multiply the hours by $40, and quote that price.

If you don't think you're worth $40 an hour... charge $20, whatever you're comfortable with.

[torifile]

Alright. That's a good place to start. It's hard, though - because I'm not a designer or coder - to know how long something *should* take. My above site took me way too long to do, but I think it came out ok. How long would something like that take a REAL coder/designer? There was a fair bit of customization to the project, though I did start with a template and I used some wordpress plugins. Don't worry, I won't be (too) insulted if you tell me it's crap that you could have done it in an hour.

[spotcatbug]

If you quote a flat price, you'd better require that they be very specific about what they want (and will receive) for that, flat amount of money. Otherwise, you'll end up working for free at the end when they finally know what they wanted to begin with.

If you go hourly, it doesn't matter.

[AsLan^]

I don't know... it looks really good to me, but I'm not a web designer, I don't know about such things.

How long exactly did it take you to do ? Ten hours ? Ten hours is a pretty long time and that would only come out to between $200 and $400 using the $20-$40 an hour estimate.

If you go to templatemonster.com you can get an idea for how much a professionally designed template sells for. The regular price is around $60, the unique price is around $2000, that's what it costs to have them take the template off their site.

If you're doing original work for your client, then I think its fair to charge a high price.

[psmith2.0]

He makes a good point, torifile. In my freelancing experience, I try to go hourly in general.

And you log/invoice it and make them comfortable (so you don't appear to be "pulling one on them", or padding your invoice).

But if you settle on a flat price (unless it's severely high), and then you wind up dealing with some serious, hardcore revision monkeys and tweak maniacs...



As the bug said, you'll wind up working for free in the end.

"Sammy, when you get a chance, could you..."

"Oh, one more thing...we all got together and decided we'd like to try another approach..."

"Can you put it back the way it was the time before the last one? But change that color to the one from the fifth version from last week, but make it zingier...."



Been there. Done it. Still do it, from time to time (I pick and choose carefully these days, when something comes my way). I try to weed out and stay away from the people I feel are going to pull the above nonsense over and over...

Hourly is safe, and tends to keep the client a bit in-check and restrained too!

[AsLan^]

What an odd way to do business !

Seriosuly, I hadn't known it worked like this, do you start off with a flat fee for the requested work or at least a time estimate and then go by the hour from there ?

[torifile]

Well, this is something I'd do for a colleague and will actually help MY practice in the long run. It's going to be a website for area psychologists. Right now, they've got nothing but having a good, informative site for people to go to will really help generate business for me (as well as for her). So, I don't necessarily mind doing tweaking after the fact. The site I listed above was for our joint groups and she hasn't said a word about changing colors or anything, so I know she's not too picky...

I'm thinking that at this point, I'm going to for a flat rate of about $200 + some word of mouth advertising. That would be 10 hours of work (slightly less than what I took for dbt-u.com) at $20/hour.

Psychologists are terrible at web stuff. I seem like a god to them sometimes. After this one is done, I'll have 3 sites in my "portfolio" and I can start to market myself some.

[spikeh]

I charge £100 p/h as a consultant on top of any costs incurred through the work. If you want copywriting, SEO / SEM, DNS or anything in PHP / Rails then that's extra, and it's a flat fee.

Get the client to sign off a test design and then don't make any changes to the design. Get a professional to write the content - advise them to spend more on that than they spend on you.

[Oompa Loompa]

$20/hour! Torifile, that's very cheap. Can I hire you?

Make it $40/hour... that is still a great price when you help somebody out! Mostly you still need to spend some extra hours when the site is ready... at least you've got that covered with that nice price.

[FFL]

torifile - your approach sounds about right for this particular case. However - I think you should market it as "$200 for 12 hours (gives you a 2 hour cushion) and $20 per hour for any time thereafter."

In general, I agree with pscates. I only work on an hourly rate, and tech freelancing is my entire livelihood.

With big projects, I *estimate* the time required, quote a reduced hourly fee based on the number of hours estimated, and emphasize that the number of hours is an *estimate* and based on the scope of the project as they have detailed to me so far. Often the projects go well over the initial estimate, but that is because the scope of the project goes beyond what was initially outlined.

[InactionMan]

Why not charge a flat fee for an agreed upon amount of work then charge hourly for anything beyond that?

[Oompa Loompa]

FFL has experience! Great advice, IMO... but just 200+ dollars for a website?

I've seen so-called 'professionals' make absolutely shitty websites for 50 times that amount... they looked hip... they didn't work though... Torifiles' DBT-U site does work! Despite if he's still a bit conservative/ or maybe unexperienced with graphic design, he does a pretty decent job, IMO.

[spotcatbug]

Way back (like 10 or 15 years ago), when I first learned HTML, I made a web site for a flat $1500. In the end, that worked out to probably $60/hour. No complaints!

Anyway, I guarantee (because I know what my skill level was at that time), if I could make $60/hour, 10 to 15 years ago (admittedly high, even if I had been the sh1t), just about anybody else should be charging more than $20/hour now.

Up your hourly rate.

[torifile]

Thanks everyone! This has been very helpful. I'm going to go with a pretty low rate for this site mostly because I see it as a good opportunity to build up my cred as a "designer" ( ), will help me get patients when I go into private practice (102 days now....) and will get some good word of mouth advertising for me. As I get more adept at doing this and have more experience, I'll start charging more.

[admactanium]

i rarely flatbid anything. i get paid by the hour otherwise clients will feel free to constantly make changes. people have to have some sort of consequence of not knowing what they want otherwise they'll use you as the experimentation stage rather than figuring out what they want from the get go. i don't do much web design because in graphic design and advertising a charge a much higher rate and i find web design to be frustration and it's not worth it for $40/hr.

tori, that website that you linked to looks fine. it's not an amazing design but it's certainly better than 95% of the stuff you see out there. i would suggest maybe using more contrast in your color selections just to mix things up and give it a richer look.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Been there. Done it. Still do it, from time to time (I pick and choose carefully these days, when something comes my way). I try to weed out and stay away from the people I feel are going to pull the above nonsense over and over...

I've learned to do something called "Firing the Customer", great advice from an article I read in a magazine a few years ago. Very liberating idea. The simple fact is that you are under no obligation to stay with a customer if they're more trouble than their fee.

[alcimedes]

$40 to $50 an hour minimum. If you charge any less they won't think you're any good.

Your work is fine, I'd personally say $50 an hour at the least.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by drewprops I've learned to do something called "Firing the Customer", great advice from an article I read in a magazine a few years ago. Very liberating idea. The simple fact is that you are under no obligation to stay with a customer if they're more trouble than their fee.

Ooh, I can't WAIT to do that sometime!

[dviant]

I'd say $30-40/hour as a "semi-professional" and do it on an estimate/contract flat fee. Figure how many hours you think it will require (including meetings, revisions, research etc) and then multiply it by 1.5 because it'll likely take longer. Anything beyond the scope of your original estimate (due to project expansion, excessive revisions etc) will require an addendum to the estimate or incur a simple hourly rate.

I don't particularly like doing projects on an hourly basis. Invites to much scrutiny. Clients will end up thinking things take too long or you won't feel like you're charging enough. With an set amount everyone knows what to expect up front, and if you get it done faster you make more money.

I would definitely get some kind of signed agreement or confirmation via email for legal purposes and it's not unusual to ask for one-third or half up front.

[curiousuburb]

An alternative way to look at the billing is to ask (yourself or ask around) :
'what would it cost to subcontract this if I got sick of it or something better came up?'

If you have to pay somebody else and ensure they're up to snuff in design terms, deadline compliance, and in not-a-dickhead client relationship skills, what would it cost? How much time and energy would you need to invest to make sure they 'get it' and build not just a code-compliant site, but one that serves your larger communication needs. Your professional competence and industry knowledge are value-added compared to the time and energy it would take to handhold an outsider and make sure they share the vision and tone you require. You should be including this competitive advantage in your billing calculations.

There are plenty of kids out there with some geek chops and low rates (also eager to build portfolio or still living with parents and therefore running on lower overhead) but who are still terribly unprofessional and therefore not worth the stress.

There are also design shops who might be visually and professionally qualified but priced out of your colleagues budget.

Take a few days to farm out a hypothetical project of similar size/complexity to a few of these types of possible subcontractors and see what they'd quote.
Then split the difference.

And make sure you set some finite finish lines based on client-sign-off, or you'll forever be expected to make 'just one more change before it's payday'. Working for friends without a clear set of benchmarks and an agreement up front on what constitutes 'completion' is asking for trouble later which may then impact your friendship.

I'd also say that $20/hr is far too low.

[torifile]

Ah, too little too late, 'burb. Live and learn, I suppose. My rate for seeing patients is $100/hr, so I thought $20/hr was pretty low too. But, again, this is for the experience and advertising, so I'll take it like a man.