How Much Do You Charge For Creating A Site?

[craigiri]

The median for a web designer seems to be around $50,000 a year / $25 an hour.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/pricing/a/hourly_rate_for.htm

That article also mentions that the number may be around $70.
The reason is simple. If you are getting paid a "salary", your cost to the employer (and your client) is well over double that. So, as an independent web person, your hourly rate should be somewhere in-between. That gives both your and your client a good deal.
I think at $25 an hour you are cheating yourself. IHMO, anyway.

 

[DRE]

That article also mentions that the number may be around $70.
The reason is simple. If you are getting paid a "salary", your cost to the employer (and your client) is well over double that. So, as an independent web person, your hourly rate should be somewhere in-between. That gives both your and your client a good deal.
I think at $25 an hour you are cheating yourself. IHMO, anyway.

Thanks I wasn't reading that deeply.

 

[0xym0r0n]

I had 'packages' as most of my clients had no idea where to start.

$100 for 3-page basic informational. This package was basically an online business card. 1 page intro, 1 page *anything else informational* and then a contact page+map+etc+domain purchase.

$200 3-page basic + gallery/reel. I added to this if I had to go in and take photos/inventory for them.

$400 was my lowest offering for ecommerce. I set-up the site and did some things for them as well as showed them how to add and maintain their inventory.

$600 and up for basic + shop + photos + more

I've been paid a lot more for a gig but those were my most common rates.

Support fees were $30-$150/month pending on their monthly/weekly needs.
I spent a minimum of 5 hours on my lowest project rate. I was basically taking $20+ an hour.

I've dropped out of this sort of thing due to crazy clients.


--
My last deal was with a paranormal group here in Boyle Heights. I admit I took my sweet time making the site, but it was a favor for a friend and no deadline was given. I charged them $125 for something that I charge around $300 for. They never got back to me after I had said I was done with the site and then 4-5 months later I see they're using some of my 'designs' on their new site... which was likely made with some random WYSIWYG editor! Crazy ****. I did a fair amount of things I didn't normally do for clients and I charged REALLY low rate in support/good faith. I eventually got my money but that was low. He asked if I'd do another site for them before a major paranormal conference! I laughed and didn't even bother responding.

I've debated going back into all of this, but it's really annoying to collect on such small amounts :\
A lot of these guys I dealt with actually had money to spend, but they were just unpredictable! I hate be cheated and taken advantage of.

I used to work for a few studios and I'd get their excess work *when not enough people in-house could complete the work* and I was paid about $16/hr. This was approximately 2-3 years ago. Each project was pretty simple and mostly involved converting PSDs to HTML/CSS

 

[Slavik]

I've debated going back into all of this, but it's really annoying to collect on such small amounts :\

With due respect, I wouldn't get out of bed for the rates you were charging, i can see why you got out / find it hard to jump back in.

I turned down an e-commerce job last week, the customers budget was £2000 ($3000) and wanted it on Magento. My starting rate for Magento is £3000 ($4500) for a basic functioning site running with 10 products pre-input, with user training for 3 people on using the system.

The customer asked why I was so much more expensive than the others she had contacted, and rather than explain why I was more expensive, I turned it around and asked her, what exactly is she getting with the other companies? Is she getting 3 people trained, is she getting a guaranteed 30 minute callback between business hours on any email or telephone queries, is she getting an SLA backed 99.9% uptime? She couldn't answer, and left the phonecall with her going back to the other companies to find out.

She dropped me an email on Friday, asking me to come in to dicuss it further on Monday. I can guarantee i'll be walking out with the order and a cheque.

In an industry where price can always be beaten by someone else, you have to sell yourself as a service.

 

[Brandon Sheley]

It depends on the site but the industry standard for webdesign/coding is anywhere from $80 to $250 an hour.

In an industry where price can always be beaten by someone else, you have to sell yourself as a service.

^^ fact

 

[0xym0r0n]

With due respect, I wouldn't get out of bed for the rates you were charging, i can see why you got out / find it hard to jump back in.

I turned down an e-commerce job last week, the customers budget was £2000 ($3000) and wanted it on Magento. My starting rate for Magento is £3000 ($4500) for a basic functioning site running with 10 products pre-input, with user training for 3 people on using the system.

The customer asked why I was so much more expensive than the others she had contacted, and rather than explain why I was more expensive, I turned it around and asked her, what exactly is she getting with the other companies? Is she getting 3 people trained, is she getting a guaranteed 30 minute callback between business hours on any email or telephone queries, is she getting an SLA backed 99.9% uptime? She couldn't answer, and left the phonecall with her going back to the other companies to find out.

She dropped me an email on Friday, asking me to come in to dicuss it further on Monday. I can guarantee i'll be walking out with the order and a cheque.

In an industry where price can always be beaten by someone else, you have to sell yourself as a service.

I started doing this site creation service when i was 15. It was kind of hard to convince adults that I've got a rate of $40+ an hour at that age. I never grew out of it and so my rates have been low since then. Maybe someday in the future I will do something about it but for now there is a lot of competition out here. A ton of competition that does the same grade and quality of work for the same rates. In the end most of my jobs were coming from word of mouth. They still are, even if I'm declining them these days.

I used wordpress, joomla, and oscommerce/zencart/magento.

I mostly set-up, designed, and installed what was needed. I charged ecommerce customers based on the amount of products they needed me to place. My packages were base prices. I charged a lot more for adding products and even going in to take photos/videos for them. My ecommerce jobs have gone as high as $3500 but I've never gone over. At least not yet. I also did a fair amount of work for non-profits and not the sort of non-profits that actually pay their staff :\ so that didn't really help lol In some of those cases the unpaid staff scrounged up the money between them.

I've debating going back in and if I were to go back in I think $600 would be my base price now. Considering how much my life costs and the projects I need funded... $100/mins are not going to cut it XD

I regret not going to school for a comp sci degree. I went for a stupid business degree lmao. Now I'm nearly done and nearly have 4 degrees in something that I no longer care for. DAMN my younger days lol.