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need help w/ pricing

anamznazn

anamznazn

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 10, 2005
211
0
Philadelphia, PA
i'm currently a college student and was offered a job to do a web site for a veterinarian who breeds dogs. i don't have much info on what she needs yet 'cause i haven't gotten a chance to talk to her. anywho, what do you guys think i should charge? keep in mind the cost of purchasing a domain name and hosting for months to come. let's just say it's a simple website with like 10-20 pages with info. how would you guys charge it?
 
grapes911

grapes911

Moderator emeritus
Jul 28, 2003
6,995
10
Citizens Bank Park
I make amateur web sites. I have a lot of web space I can distribute between many sites, but I generally charge cost + 10%. I also charge cost + 10% for domain registration. Everything else is a little tricker. I figure my time is worth $30 an hour. I estimate how many hours it will take to do everything (design, coding, uploading, setting up the hosting, etc) and I times that number of hours by the $30. This includes a couple of updates over the next year. Extra updates cost extra money.

The biggest thing is to make sure you have a contract. And not just any contract, but a very detailed one. Exactly what you will provide. Exactly what the client will provide. When it will be ready. What is considered an update. How often an updates can happen. Much more goes into the contract, but I hope you get the idea.

Many others are more professional than me and I'm sure they'll provide some more insight than I can.
 
anamznazn

anamznazn

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 10, 2005
211
0
Philadelphia, PA
grapes911 said:
I make amateur web sites. I have a lot of web space I can distribute between many sites, but I generally charge cost + 10%. I also charge cost + 10% for domain registration. Everything else is a little tricker. I figure my time is worth $30 an hour. I estimate how many hours it will take to do everything (design, coding, uploading, setting up the hosting, etc) and I times that number of hours by the $30. This includes a couple of updates over the next year. Extra updates cost extra money.

The biggest thing is to make sure you have a contract. And not just any contract, but a very detailed one. Exactly what you will provide. Exactly what the client will provide. When it will be ready. What is considered an update. How often an updates can happen. Much more goes into the contract, but I hope you get the idea.

Many others are more professional than me and I'm sure they'll provide some more insight than I can.
Click to expand...


may i get an example of what your type of contract would look like so i can get an idea?
 
grapes911

grapes911

Moderator emeritus
Jul 28, 2003
6,995
10
Citizens Bank Park
I actually don't have a standard one. I meet with the client and try to figure out what they want. Then I make a contact based on that and make a small wireframe for the client to get an idea of the layout. I bring both to the client and we sign it together.


My contacts are not written in fancy legal language or anything. I just make a list saying I am responsible for this, this, this, and this. The client is responsible for this, this, and this.
 
mnkeybsness

mnkeybsness

macrumors 68030
Jun 25, 2001
2,511
0
Moneyapolis, Minnesota
Never charge a standard rate for a number of pages; Always charge an hourly rate. You'll find that if you lock in an amount, some clients get abusive and put you through a lot more than you deserve.

Standard professional developer and designer rate is $50 an hour, but if this is your first professional (getting paid to do it) job, you may consider dropping your fees considerably lower. Just be careful that your client doesn't recommend you to others and tell them your price, or you aren't going to make much money.

Hosting is tricky. I always make the client purchase the domain and hosting. You may especially want to tell them to do it just in case, that way they will always be able to have access to it.
 
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