What to charge for web development

[sparkeh]

I hae been asked by a school to create a website for them but have no idea what to charge.

 

Can anyone who has done this let me know an idea of what you charged?

 

I was thinking of working out my hourly rate as a guide.

[glennda]

im currently doing one for £22.50 an hour, i have said could take 100/150 hours which they said was fine

[ICT_GUY]

You can check out my side line here DorsetWebDesigns Generally £50 per page with a minimum of £500 for a site.

[torledo]

im currently doing one for £22.50 an hour, i have said could take 100/150 hours which they said was fine

 

do you build by using existing templates ie joomla designs or do you do all the work from scratch ?

 

That would surely make a difference as to how many hours someone would spend on a project ?

[glennda]

this one im starting most from scratch, all tho i do have some stuff that is allready done just needs changed to the other schools design like the PHP contact us form etc. Its only going to be about 13/14 pages. All content is being supplied aswell as pictures etc. I am adding things like a slideshow of the pictures of the building under lettings, but as the school are not going to be paying me to keep it up to date as i dont work for them i am told to keep it user friendly and so they can edit it with dreamweaver.

[SimpleSi]

im currently doing one for £22.50 an hour, i have said could take 100/150 hours which they said was fine

 

Typo somewhere?

 

I just claim 15 hours at my school overtime rate - this costs the school about £225 - I end up with about £130 in my pocket.

 

regards

 

Simon

[glennda]

not my school, its a private contract! i school payed 8K for there website they currently have which i have to say having looked at it, looks like the students could have done better!

but so far i have changed the whole thing 3 times as they keep changing there mines, first of all they wanted the navigation bar at the side, then at the top and now its back to the side, if they had decided the first time it would have been alot less time!!

[sparkeh]

Cheers guys that helps.

I am thinking of charging an overtime rate but having a minimum cost.

[ICT_GUY]

I would think carefully about how you charge. I have done a few sites for the county.

 

Hourly rates have to be accounted for.

 

Bean counters like to know what they are paying for.

 

This equals happy per page (they can count the pages and work the total out) but unhappy for an hourly rate (how do they know when you worked?) . Recently I had to jump through hoops with a load of conditions because I mentioned an hourly rate. Besides you are in it for profit, last biggie I worked on came in at a VERY healthy hourly rate because of the per page cost, got to love CMS.

[CSNM-Carl]

Do you have the relevant skills to design & develop a website? Or is "create a website" just uploading Joomla with a few tweaks to a template?

 

I guess it depends on the functionality they want on the website really, I'm not a fan of per hour rates I'd much prefer a "fixed price".

[somabc]

I would not bother with an Hourly Rate (unless you think it is going to take a really long time). Charge a fixed fee to deliver the website.

[ICT_GUY]

Do you have the relevant skills to design & develop a website? Or is "create a website" just uploading Joomla with a few tweaks to a template?

 

I guess it depends on the functionality they want on the website really, I'm not a fan of per hour rates I'd much prefer a "fixed price".

 

You would be surprised what people will pay a lot of money for. CMS and template tweaking allows for some hefty profit margins and very happy customers. Not to mention some insanely quick turn around times.

[Little-Miss]

When i did my schools one they charged me my overtime rate, but if i do them privately its usually by page..

[sparkeh]

Do you have the relevant skills to design & develop a website? Or is "create a website" just uploading Joomla with a few tweaks to a template?

 

Aren't you missing the point of a CMS there? I could hand crank a website if I really wanted to but why would you do that when a web CMS like Joomla/Drupal will provide the functionality that this school will need on a stable, well documented and supported platform that is easy to use?

 

Anyway, after the comments on hourly pay I have revised my thoughts. I think a fixed fee or page fee does sound like a much better option.

[Little-Miss]

sorry to hijack!

 

This is quite and interesting thread because ive got a guy who wants me to build him a site to show off his fine art collection (ooer!). This is fine, im happy to do it. The guy knows nothing though ("what will happen to my website when i turn my computer off at night?").

 

But then he mentioned that he would like it updated. Now i've never done that before. Ive usually just create "brochure" sites for startup businesses. How shall i handle it...

[sparkeh]

sorry to hijack!

You are welcome

 

But then he mentioned that he would like it updated. Now i've never done that before. Ive usually just create "brochure" sites for startup businesses. How shall i handle it...

 

This was going to be my next question, after the initial setup there might be ongoing updating work. Not sure how to handle this either.

[glennda]

Do you have the relevant skills to design & develop a website? Or is "create a website" just uploading Joomla with a few tweaks to a template?

 

I guess it depends on the functionality they want on the website really, I'm not a fan of per hour rates I'd much prefer a "fixed price".

 

Im not using joomla, doing pretty much all by code and a bit of dreamweaver to save time doing the javascripting stuff like roll over buttons. I am also designing a new logo for the school. They asked me what my hourly rate was and i said that much (just of the top of my head) and they agreed, asked how long it would take so i said at top wack the 150 hours, knowing full well it wouldn't take that long, but i am not going to rip them off, my mate works there, they had a quote from another company which was lots of money more then that ph! She rang me and i said i would do it for 22.50 and they agreed, as was the cheapest option for all of them and they liked the look of websites i had done before, also I could add extra options in there for them like the self submitting Contact form, the other companies they had quotes from would not do it how they wanted it to do.

 

Toby

[somabc]

Do you have the relevant skills to design & develop a website? Or is "create a website" just uploading Joomla with a few tweaks to a template?

 

Do you have the skills to develop software? Are you going to design your programming language from scratch or are you just going to use an off the shelf solution like Visual Studio?

[torledo]

Do you have the skills to develop software? Are you going to design your programming language from scratch or are you just going to use an off the shelf solution like Visual Studio?

 

i don't think that's a fair comparison.

 

IF someone is tweaking an existing template, then that often shows up in the quality of the site. Not always, but a lot of the time.

 

Whereas someone who really knows their stuff, to create their own CSS templates, to incorporate into their own CMS, or a commercial CMS, or even an open source CMS....may have a better time in justifying their premiums when you look closely at the finished product. the advantage of using an open source CMS and focusing it's use on old fashioned content updating is that it can save the client money in licensing fees and consultancy costs.

 

However there are many who see the CMS advantage in quick and dirty turnaround of web projects, and then charging quite high fixed prices, for effectively assembling something rather than creating. It's in the creation where the value is in my view.....nothing wrong with saving yourself time, but then that should be reflected in the price. I mean, c'mon, it's not as if there's a dearth of people out there capable of reusing existing templates for quick delivery of projects. Because of that i think some of the prices some people charge is just pie in the sky. [i'm not saying that is the case with the posters on this thread]

 

the only way is to compare and contrast between sites which use the mentioned routes. And it's all about opinions at the end of the day.

[powdarrmonkey]

Do you have the skills to develop software? Are you going to design your programming language from scratch or are you just going to use an off the shelf solution like Visual Studio?

 

whut?

 

 

 

.

[somabc]

i don't think that's a fair comparison.

 

IF someone is tweaking an existing template, then that often shows up in the quality of the site. Not always, but a lot of the time.

 

Whereas someone who really knows their stuff, to create their own CSS templates, to incorporate into their own CMS, or a commercial CMS, or even an open source CMS....may have a better time in justifying their premiums when you look closely at the finished product. the advantage of using an open source CMS and focusing it's use on old fashioned content updating is that it can save the client money in licensing fees and consultancy costs.

 

However there are many who see the CMS advantage in quick and dirty turnaround of web projects, and then charging quite high fixed prices, for effectively assembling something rather than creating. It's in the creation where the value is in my view.....nothing wrong with saving yourself time, but then that should be reflected in the price. I mean, c'mon, it's not as if there's a dearth of people out there capable of reusing existing templates for quick delivery of projects. Because of that i think some of the prices some people charge is just pie in the sky. [i'm not saying that is the case with the posters on this thread]

 

the only way is to compare and contrast between sites which use the mentioned routes. And it's all about opinions at the end of the day.

 

OK it was a bit harsh but it is the market that should decide the going rate after all, I don't think it is helpful to say that using CMS is 'cheating' or intending to rip people off. They sign up for a website not the method of assembling the website and unless they put in the contract that want everything designed from scratch it is perfectly reasonable to adapt a template.

[ICT_GUY]

Justifying premiums? I justify my premium by the fact that I get well paid and my customers are happy

 

Work smart not hard.

[torledo]

OK it was a bit harsh but it is the market that should decide the going rate after all, I don't think it is helpful to say that using CMS is 'cheating' or intending to rip people off. They sign up for a website not the method of assembling the website and unless they put in the contract that want everything designed from scratch it is perfectly reasonable to adapt a template.

 

oh yeah, for sure it's reasonalbe if you can a) get away with not being very original OR b) the client is happy with the end product regardless. I don't want to sneer at the methods chosen, just that the client maybe needs to wise up in a lot of cases.....and understand in what cases what they are getting can or can't be easily replicated, and at what cost.

 

But as i say, it's not as if there isn't a great deal of competition out there. And i'm not sure about the idea of identifiable market rates for small web projects. I've seen such variances in the past for relatively small project quotes..., and as for the idea of charging by the hour.....if a designer/developer is effectively doing minor tweaking of existing designs/templates and then packaging them as a 'new' website, then that doesn't strike me as it take's much imagination or man hours - not at some of the rates and fixed prices that i've seen quoted.... ofcourse there's potentially the margins in support work and further tweaks down the road.....kerching!!

[glennda]

sorry to hijack!

 

This is quite and interesting thread because ive got a guy who wants me to build him a site to show off his fine art collection (ooer!). This is fine, im happy to do it. The guy knows nothing though ("what will happen to my website when i turn my computer off at night?").

 

But then he mentioned that he would like it updated. Now i've never done that before. Ive usually just create "brochure" sites for startup businesses. How shall i handle it...

 

When I worked in a pub a few years ago, they had a website that was run by a guy kind of like what you have said above, he used to do for minor changes minimum of £20 which was first hours work then £10 per half hour after that. but was never more then 40 quid charge for the guy who did it in his evenings. nice for 2 hours work!

 

Toby

[somabc]

The same thing happens in other areas thought take solicitors they often use standard letters just changing the details around but still charge the same as if they prepared everything from scratch.