Current Going Price for Web Design

[eyeluvmyimac]

Hi all,

I'm just curious what the current going price for web design is for any of you desginers, and how much experience do you have at it?

Thanks so much.

 

[gschumsky]

It depends.

Usually, I'll charge $50-75 an hour for web design (freelance), or, depending on the site (amount of graphics, animation, etc.) I'll charge anywhere from $350 per page to $500 per page.
If they want a shopping cart, then the minimum for a site is $10,000.

I do this full time as well for a IT company, and have been doing web stuff for the past 8 years.

Hope that helps.

 

[joker2]

small time worker

I do some small-time stuff, nothing fancy... and generally charge $30/hour. Mostly for small businesses and organizations that don't have constantly changing contents, shopping, or a lot of interactive stuff.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

What about flash? That's a whole different game and per page might not apply although the hourly rate might be better of used in that case.

If you're just starting out you're not going to be able to ask $50/hr and some areas of the country that's a little steep for freelance.

Good luck,

D

 

[Kid Red]

Well, I do mostly just graphics for my designs (no cgi, database, shopping cart, etc) and my package starts at $1100 for a 5 page site (5 pages represent the navigation links). Extra pages are extra, content input is the clients responsibility.

 

[D0ct0rteeth]

We submit proposals for full sites and other projects based on an hourly rate of 65/hr.

However, we move quick here and almost always stay on to do updates on a weekly basis where we really make our money.. the initial development is really worthless in the larger scheme of things, it just pays our sales team commission and various overhead.

I've been in the business since 99 and have worked on every scope of project, IMO the best are the e-commerce sites as they are easist to see a ROI on, and keep the updates coming.

As for regions and veriations in cost, Its very true.. the same project in Nashville vs NYC can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, easily. but charge what you feel you can justify and what ius consistant across the board.

- Doc

 

[Thirteenva]

$75/hour for design work.
$100/hour for custom flash work but... $150 for flash work that requires development and database integration.

$150/hour for development such as php, asp etc...

 

[jeremy.king]

Hourly rates can be misleading.

If you are looking to hire out work, go for fixed bid contracts.

If you are looking for work, go for hourly bids

The problem is that what one person can do in an hour isn't necessarily what the guy down the street that charges less can do.

Being a consultant, I offer fixed bid contracts with a clear statement of work that explains the details of the contract.

This way you are contractually bound, have a clear understanding as to what someone is going to do for you, and have a list of deliverables clearly stated.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Damn, those are some crazy hourly rates...

My department is getting off cheap, since I design (html, css, php, mysql and some flash) as part of my $20/hour tech salary.

Then again, I'm still in grad school, so...

Hey, gschumsky you know any good places to advertise locally?

 

[gschumsky]

Most of the side work I get is word of mouth, and when I had a full time business, again, word of mouth, but, I did have a yellow pages ad, and went to a LOT of industry or user-group meetings where I could network with other companies. M-cubed, SDMUG, ITVA (now MCI-A.org), and am involved with the San Diego Film Commission.

Sometimes I'll walk into a store I like and ask if they have a web site. Just got two very nice bikes for the wife and I, as well as a bike rack in trade for doing 4 pages (easy stuff, just design and content the client provided).

So, my advice, get involved, and network, network, network.
If you do a good to great job for someone, free advertising since they'll recommend you to someone else.

 

[gschumsky]

By design and content, I meant I did the design and html. The client provided the content (duh).

 

[Rower_CPU]

Thanks for the tips. I've been meaning to check out the MUG, but school and work keep happening.

 

[cb911]

sounds like there's a bit of money in web design. makes me glad that i'm going back to college next year to do web design.

 

[Thirteenva]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Damn, those are some crazy hourly rates...

My department is getting off cheap, since I design (html, css, php, mysql and some flash) as part of my $20/hour tech salary.

Then again, I'm still in grad school, so...

Hey, gschumsky you know any good places to advertise locally?

Car dealership mechanics typically bill $80/hour, a good plumber will cost you $90/hour.

If you want a professional website, then you have to pay a professional to do it. If the client wants to bicker, then let them go elswhere. If they want a website with clip art buttons and animated gif's then they can go have someone else do it for $15 an hour. Let your work speak for itself.

The market is very saturated with 'designers'. I no longer freelance full time. I decided to go work for a small company doing web, graphic and flash design. I still do some freelance work on the side.

The company i work for charges similar rates for the work that i stated above.

 

[Waluigi]

I used to feel guilty charging $50/hr for web design. But now I charge between $100 and $200/hr! To be fair, I do web design for free for friends, family, small local businesses, and charities. But still, it is nerve racking.....

--Waluigi

 

[LoopHoles]

Originally posted by Waluigi
But still, it is nerve racking.....

LOL!

it's nerve wrecking, alright! i'm about to "wire" for some help.

$60/hr here. sometimes i'll go for less on a bigger job, since it guarantees more pay, but i dunno if that's smart or not.

my advice: if you're going to pay someone $1/minute or more, make sure they know web standards and can design a good, forward compatible (ie, long-lasting) web site.

 

[gschumsky]

I've been working full-time for a company doing web stuff since the market (multimedia, video, games) went dry for a while a few years back (just at the edge of the whole dot com boom). Actually, one was kind of a dot com company, and now I work for a big IT company, still doing web stuff though. I make about $40 an hour, and they charge or clients a little more than double that.

And, still doing freelance on the side for the rates I said in my earlier post. Plus, I have the freedom to to barters when I want or need (looking at bartering a site for a Porsche 356 Speedster replica right now!!).

 

[Rower_CPU]

Wow...now that's what I call bartering!

 

[rice_web]

The web design market in North Dakota bottomed out, and the average going price is $8 an hour for web DEVELOPMENT (custom coding).

 

[gschumsky]

Yikes!!

I have family in North Dakota...glad I never planned on moving there.

 

[ethernet76]

I do a lot of frelance stuff. I charge about 15 an hour. So that includes databasing, shopping cart software, pages, yadda, yadda, and more yadda. You can generally find people who do it for less. I've found generally that freelancers are overpriced though. I don't see why people who code HTML make as much as Unix programmers. C++ is way harder, and most freelancers stick to easy and stupid interpreted languages like asp, php and so on.

If you're looking for work, learn complied languages, if you're looking for someone, look for someone who can program in Perl, C or C++.

I run/maintain Daily Kent Stater and according to people here, based on freelance rates, I should make at least 160,000 a year (Archives contain about 35,000 files). Not bad for only working 10 hours a week eh?

 

[Rower_CPU]

Not to get too far out there in comparing markup languages like HTML to code like C, but you're looking at languages that have completely different backgrounds and purposes.

(X)HTML is for the marking up of content so that a browser, and therefore a user, can understand the content's meaning, and needs to be accessible by a wide variety of browsers/platforms. Much of the time spent designing web pages is ensuring code compatibility and testing on a multitude of scenarios, whereas compiled code just needs to run on the system it's compiled for.

As for "stupid" languages like PHP, ASP, they are the tools designed almost explicitly for the job. Why use a screwdriver to pound in a nail when you've got a hammer?

 

[eyeluvmyimac]

Well said Rower.

Thank you everyone for your responses they were quite helpful. Be sure to check out my site in the coming weeks, (it is down now for "spring cleaning" but will be back up soon).

 

[jotter]

I charge between $50 and $75 an hour, depending on who I'm working for.

Alternately, I charge a flat rate for sites that get mired in redesign and rework. I recently charged a flat $1500 for a site that included logo design and flash animation.

The vast majority of the freelance work I do is probono, though. Working for free (or barter) is the best way to get fun jobs that give you lots of design freedom! Highly recommended. Go volunteer to do sites for local theatre groups, bands, nonprofit groups, religious groups, whatever you're into. These folks have no money but will love you to pieces....and you can often get a very nice tax return at the end of the year for your donated work (if it's for a registered nonprofit).

As a sidenote, I totally suck at code, programming, that sort of thing. I'm a skilled visual designer who can chunk stuff together in Dreamweaver, but I don't pretend to be a good programmer. If a client wants something fancy, I subcontract.

 

[aphexist]

I am employed full-time as a web application developer for a Fortune 500 company and my salary equates to about $32/hour (plus benefits). This includes web app development in ASP/ASP.NET and JSP, database management and server maintainance as well as interface design using XHTML/DHTML.

I also do freelance work for e-commerce sites where I charge $40/hour for design/coding/DB/flash/etc. The work is similar to my full-time job. I am located in New Orleans, LA. I have been doing freelance web work for almost six years. My work is above average.

I think charging over $80/hour for web design only (no programming/DB) is absurd. Perhaps visual/interface designers who are in extremely high demand can demand such rates in big cities, but this is not 1998 and most people will not pay that much. Freelancers in New Orleans are largely quite untalented, ignorant of coding standards, and apparently colorblind, but they will charge some Mom&Pop store $80/hour to put up an ugly-ass homepage WYSIWYG'ed in FrontPage. The store owner's don't know any better because they know nothing about the internet, nor going rates. Congratulations, you just ripped someone off.

Plumbers may charge $90/hour, but he probably won't spend more than 2 hours at your house and HE HAS TO HANDLE YOUR POO. Hello, health hazard. Car mechanics are generally experienced and they are greasy as heck and are putting themselves inside a huge machine. As a web designer, the most physically taxing thing you will ever have to do is adjust your monitor. Oh, and watch out for carpal tunnel, you wuss.

There are no real web design schools, so your education won't tell a potential client that you are prepared or worth the money (although a graphic arts/design degree might help). I guess my point is: Don't come out of the gate charging these rates. Start modestly and build a portfolio. Observe web standards.