Indie-Resource.com

Hi guys recently i have been picking up bits of web design work from people in my local area, and i was wondering what the best rate to charge is? Now i just wanna make it plain that i am not after money at all at the moment, mostly i want to do it to pick up a portfolio more than anything.

So what is a good rate? Or kind of pricing structure?

*Also the people i have done work for WANT to pay, they insist, so i can't not charge them. If you get what i mean.

The only thing I've ever done for free was a site for a non-profit, kind of a charitable thing.

Even if you're just working on a portfolio, the last thing you want to do is undersell yourself. If you google around, most people talk about 75-100$ per hour. But that can be unrealistic for early clients, so I would go less than that (don't go too low!), or try to do a good summation of the work you'll probably put into it, and offer them a flat price (but again, don't undersell yourself).

Also, make sure you get everything they want on the site up front, and that they understand they'll be paying monthly for hosting, unless you have a plan like I do for freelance sites (I have a hosting account with unlimited domains and databases that I use for freelance work).

Clients can be pretty stupid sometimes. I had a guy pay me 650 and his site took 6 months to build because he took that long to get me the information he wanted on there. After the first day I had the layout and everything ready, waited the next 6 months for the content. Make it known that you are a programmer and a designer, not a writer. You don't know their company and what they want, so make them be as specific as possible.

Also, if you do a lot of freelance work, sometimes smaller hosting companies and domain sellers will partner with web developers to get them to point their clients to their services. You may want to look into that because I've heard there's good commission in that.

As for pricing: either charge them the full monty, or none at all. If you charge them, then they will expect the same quality of work as if they paid you more. If it's free, then you'll get some more referrals which you can then charge for, and they normally aren't that fussy.

Most charge per page, instead of per hour. The prices vary allot, depending if custom coding is needed. There are 3 'types' of sites:

Brochure sites: normally a few pages with static content such as their address and a brief description. Since no database or scripting is needed, and the updates are rare, I would charge $200 - $300 for the initial site design (including graphic design costs, ask them for any logos/graphics they have), and a recurring fee of $20 a month including hosting (100mb or so), domain registration, support, and two page content updates a month.

CMS sites: These need a CMS, but after you set the CMS up, there is not really much you have to do. Design will mostly be for the stylesheet, you could charge a bit more since it seems like a more complex project, but $300 - $700 for design will be acceptable. As for hosting, since this will probably require databases (depends on the CMS), I would charge a baseline of $40 including 2gb of hosting, unlimited bandwidth, domain registration and support. Additional storage at $5 per gb.

Then you have the actual coding projects where custom PHP and database coding will be needed. These vary a lot depending on the project, so I can't really give you a guideline here.

Email hosting on top of that can vary allot according to customer use. A $30 domain setup cost, $5 per mailbox setup along with usage fees. I normally include the storage and bandwidth under the website hosting costs.

As for managed reselling or referrals to services, most hosts and domain registrars will allow you to resell their services at around 20% commission and rising with volume. However, if you can handle the start-up cost I would just purchase a (virtual) dedicated server and handle everything from that. Media Temple has one starting at $50 a month with 30 Plesk licences and decent specifications.

I hope that's given you a fair view about pricing. I tend to undercharge my customers, but the time I save selling means I have more time designing/coding. Most prospective clients will be happy with the above prices, so no haggling will be necessary, but if you're busy or have too many inquiries, just bump everything up a bit. As long as your customer support for them is good, both you and them will be happy.

pax.