Website design pricing

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 07 Jan 2008, 11:26

I'm thinking of designing website for small businesses and private persons from home, as a way to earn some extra cash ...

What can one charge for such services? I'll do the whole package, from domain registration, website design & maintanance and hosting.

eraser · Post by **eraser** » 07 Jan 2008, 11:34

I'd say it depends on how much time you spend on the site in total.

R400 per hour is about what our company pays at the moment if they want outside help. Although i have seen some quotes of about R900 per hour.

youknow · Post by **youknow** » 07 Jan 2008, 11:48

Yeah, we usually come in at about R350 an hour.

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 07 Jan 2008, 11:49

Damn, that's pretty steep ... more than I thought

beerman · Post by **beerman** » 07 Jan 2008, 13:45

If it's a part-time thing not affiliated with a business of sorts, you won't have much success if you charge the same rates at web design companies do ...

If you charge per hour, it should be based on your proficiency .. in other words, if you're good and it does not take you long to create a good site, you can charge more than if you just know some basics and will take longer to build a good site.

My advice would be to slap together a package deal (i.e. design the site and maintain it for a year) for a set amount. Don't be greedy .. charge less at the beginning and when you have a few sites under your belt, yuo can start charging more and use the sites you've created as a reference for you work you do.

Post by **maxxis** » 07 Jan 2008, 14:19

At the moment I charge more privately than what I do at the office.

My time after hours is worth more than the industry standard. Plus the quality of the site I do cant really be faulted so its justified.

If you just start with design you really cant charge more than R100 per hour. Its just not justified to charge R350 when you know squat.

po10cy · Post by **po10cy** » 07 Jan 2008, 15:22

yeah what maxxis says is true, if u gonna leave work then work at home for the rest of the night make it worth your time, but dont charge a killing if your just getting into this, also make sure that you will really have the time to handle support for the site after as u dont wanna take on 2 much work at once and be flooded by angry clients wanting money back....

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 07 Jan 2008, 15:39

Thanks for your inputs guys, I appreciate it ...

I'm glad to say that I know pretty much about HTML, so it's no new thing for me.

I think I'll start of at say R 750 for initial site design & setup (± 5 pages) ... and say R150 per hour maintenance afterwards.

How does that sound.

roguemat · Post by **roguemat** » 07 Jan 2008, 16:06

weasel it also obviously depends how GOOD your stuff is. Post us some links of something you've made and maybe we could tell you a descent price range. Im in webdesign myself so could tell you about what its worth.

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 07 Jan 2008, 17:15

Ok, I've uploaded a version of the site I'm currently working on, have a look here ...

pofadder · Post by **pofadder** » 07 Jan 2008, 17:29

Well, if I were a client who wanted a website designed for me (with reference to the link you supplied), I'd say that looked pretty good and well worth the money.

I pose the following questions, as I might be looking at requesting a website design in future:
What do you define as website maintenance and how would I (as a client) know how much maintenance would be required on the website?
Does maintenance refer to updating the website with new content periodically?

Any other examples?

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 08 Jan 2008, 08:26

pofadder wrote:Well, if I were a client who wanted a website designed for me (with reference to the link you supplied), I'd say that looked pretty good and well worth the money.

Thanks, I appreciate the comment

pofadder wrote:Does maintenance refer to updating the website with new content periodically?

Yes, whenever the clients needs or wants something to be changed.

pofadder wrote:Any other examples?

Not at this stage, sorry ... that link is the first one I'm done, so far.

Slasher · Post by **Slasher** » 08 Jan 2008, 08:41

weasel, that site looks nice enough, love the clean, professional look.

The site however could however not have taken much longer than that to make, as all the pages are static pages with information. There are no menu bars that expand, etc. Thus you only reuse the same page to add other information and add a link to each page (or main page if you use tables / frames...

May I ask how long that site took you to design?

weasel · Post by **weasel** » 08 Jan 2008, 09:15

It took me about 2-3 hours to get the index pages up ... and then, like you said, I used that pages as a template for the rest ...

Total design time ± 4.5 hours (maybe)