Any freelance web designers out there? If so, how do you set your prices? This newbie wants to know.?

Question

Web designers only, please. What sort of services do you provide? How do you you set your prices? Do you have any suggestions for resources? Thanks!

Answer 1

Most Web design houses provide graphic design; HTML coding; basic scripting such as displaying database records / simple content management systems; simple JavaScipts such as clocks, etc.

I built my business around advanced programming and turnkey systems for specific needs in the healthcare field, which pays much better.

When I started out, I made a point of finding as many advertising agencies as I could and offering my services as a Web guy. Many smaller companies use ad agencies to handle making their collateral material / TV ads, etc; most of them would only refer you back to the agency in any event.

Most agencies have plenty of creative people but not many technical people, so being able to take their designs and turn them into Web pages that look exactly like the collateral material they produce is a very lucrative business.

Most Web developers price by the job or by the hour. Most clients want you to price the job. The way you price the job is simple: Get a description of what they want. Guess how long you think it is going to take to do it. Double that time estimate. Figure the hourly rate you want to make. Multiply that by the doubled hours figure. That's your bid.

So, if someone wants a 10-page, static HTML Web site, and you need to write some of the copy, and you need to work up most of the graphics, you might guess that's going to take 30 hours. Multiply that by 2, you now have 60 hours. If you want to make $20 per hour for the job, then your bid is $1,200.

In most parts of the country, Web designers charge $60 per hour.

My last bit of advice: You should try to price jobs to what you think the client thinks it should cost, not what you think it should cost.

A way to find out what you ought to be charging, although it's underhanded, is to ask a friend to contact your competitors with a request to bid on the kind of work you'd like to do. Whatever the average price is, that's your pricing guideline.

Answer 2

first you have to be good at web design
next you need to build a web page to demonstrate
Next your customer as to be willing to pay the price when you find one and your price needs to include web updates

so it is not easy to work out a price off the cuff