Howdy!

 

As some of you have been in the design business for some time now, I'd like to share with you the money involved in my first project, for verreglas.com. It was the first time I worked with this sort of contract, which goes as follows: an initial price of 100$ for the template; once the client liked the design, I coded the pages at a price of 10$/hour.

 

In total it will cost him about 160$ (Canadian money). Is this too much or too little considering the size of the site? I visited my client one time... should I count the hour or so I spent there in my total hours? Is it a good idea to work with a flat fee? I would much appreciate if you guys could tell me how appropriate the deal was.

 

On one hand, I feel like I'm not getting much, but on the other hand I feel like I wouldn't have had the deal if the price had been bigger. I'd like some input for my next projects.

 

Thank you very much!

Ben

Well... 160 CAD would get me two new games for my Wii. Does that seem a lot?

I think pricing is a bit of a double edged sword. The amount of customers I have nearly lost with my initial quote is quite scary. But at the end of the day, I don't want to provide a free service

 

As a freelancer, I am assuming you work from home? Therefore, your overheads can't be as high as, say a company in a shop with rent, bills, insurance etc.

 

When I was first starting out, I rang some of my local businesses asking for a quote to get an idea of what they were charging.

 

As long as you are happy with the amount you are charging, and it pays the bills every month, stick with what your charging.

There are loads of factors that make up your final price. The main ones will obviously be the costs to you and the quality of your final work.

 

I would say the basic rule would be to work out how much the project cost in total, then take away anything you had to pay so you have your total profit. Then divide this by how long you spent on the project, and decide is that hourly rate enough?

10 CAD per hour doesn't sound a lot. I bet you could earn more than that being a lacky at Macdonalds!

 

You have a skill so you're worth at least what any tradesman charges!

It seems to my mind that you've under-charged and sold yourself a little short here and would echo Bluedreamers comments above.

 

EDIT: As for what I charge, well, I charge a flat-fee for the initial design and setting up process. I'm still learning the ropes in this game and as such, a lot of my time is spent learning new techniques, which obviously takes me longer to produce good work (hopefully!). I'd feel uncomfortable charging by the hour in this respect because it's not up to my client to pay for my learning time. I agree a fee with the client based upon the type of site that they require and the number of pages within it.

 

Once the site is up and running, I then charge by the hour for maintenance as I will be comfortable changing the existing pages and feel that this is better value for money for my clients.

 

HTH.

Lots of good replies!

 

I do work from home, and as far as the costs involved, I'm not sure how to count that. I still live with my parents, which means I don't pay any bill. I use primarily free softwares, and the hosting and domain name were already sorted out.

 

I think I should go with at leasts 15$/hour after the design is completed, and increase the amount depending on the job to be done.