Website charging

[Blindsya]

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

1) Are those tables used for layouts? If so, you should be paying them.
2) Form posting to an email address? If I understood right, you're just
setting the action to "mailto:[email protected]"? If so, pay them some
more.

 

[Blindsya]

1) Are those tables used for layouts? If so, you should be paying them.
2) Form posting to an email address? If I understood right, you're just
setting the action to "mailto:[email protected]"? If so, pay them some
more.

No, I shall be using CSS positioning for layouts and what other way do you
suggest than using a simple mailto: in a form?

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

No, I shall be using CSS positioning for layouts and what other way do you
suggest than using a simple mailto: in a form?

A proper form-handler. mailto: DOES NOT work.

To your original question, how much is your time worth? How much
experience do you have? Are you doing the design work, too? Do you
have office overheads to pay? Do you have a portfolio? Where is it?

 

[Matthias Gutfeldt]

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

As a rule of thumb, charge whatever makes you feel good. There's no
point in working for peanuts, and there's no point in charging so much
that nobody hires you.

Or "shop around" and check out what similar webdesigners in your
country/area charge for similar work.


Matthias

 

[Michel]

mailto DOES work, but like shit.
use a php mailer script to post your form to.
That can be setup in minutes, and if you can't do it, I would be able to
help you out in a flash, no problem.

Michel

PS: 10 basic pages..... I'd say, be happy with 250 and do a really good job
on them

 

[Richard]

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

5 pounds a page if there's not much in the way of graphics, 10 pounds a page
if they want to add a ton of ads on it.
Charge more depending on how intense and time consuming it is to you.
If they want it that bad, they'll pay.

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

mailto DOES work, but like shit.

No, no, no, no. Never take advice from someone who top-posts.

use a php mailer script to post your form to.

Except taht bit of advice.

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

No flat out answer is possible. How much work are you investing and how
much is your time and ultimately your effort worth?
A suit designed by Giorgio Armani costs more than one designed by John
Doe. Also, what is it that you are doing? Just the HTML code? Or will
you design the layout of the page(s), too? And the graphics as well?

 

[Blindsya]

5 pounds a page if there's not much in the way of graphics, 10 pounds a page
if they want to add a ton of ads on it.
Charge more depending on how intense and time consuming it is to you.
If they want it that bad, they'll pay.

There was some site on the internet that was wanting £450 for 3 simple
pages! That I thought was just an incredible rip off as their own site was
pretty dire!

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

There was some site on the internet that was wanting £450 for 3 simple
pages! That I thought was just an incredible rip off as their own site was
pretty dire!

True, but 5 pounds (Which pounds? I'm assuming Pound Sterling here,
which is about seven US Dollars or seven Euros.) a page is pretty low,
unless all you have to do is some adjustment of a template.

 

[Blindsya]

Nicolai Zwar said

"5 pounds (Which pounds? I'm assuming Pound Sterling here, which is about
seven US Dollars or seven Euros.) a page is pretty low"

Yes I agree! I'm going to be doing a couple of sites for several small
businesses and shall be starting from scratch doing absoloutly everything
from layout, graphics, page design, content right through to uploading to
server, buying a domain name and regestering the sites with the top search
engines. I fell for a job like this I would have to charge more like £20
per page.

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

Nicolai Zwar said

"5 pounds (Which pounds? I'm assuming Pound Sterling here, which is about
seven US Dollars or seven Euros.) a page is pretty low"

Yes I agree! I'm going to be doing a couple of sites for several small
businesses and shall be starting from scratch doing absoloutly everything
from layout, graphics, page design, content right through to uploading to
server, buying a domain name and regestering the sites with the top search
engines. I fell for a job like this I would have to charge more like £20
per page.

Why charge per page?

 

[PeterMcC]

Nicolai Zwar said

"5 pounds (Which pounds? I'm assuming Pound Sterling here, which is
about seven US Dollars or seven Euros.) a page is pretty low"

Yes I agree! I'm going to be doing a couple of sites for several
small businesses and shall be starting from scratch doing absoloutly
everything from layout, graphics, page design, content right through
to uploading to server, buying a domain name and regestering the
sites with the top search engines. I fell for a job like this I
would have to charge more like £20 per page.

The following is my own take on how my company charges for time - it might
help.

A professional, employed by a company on the income side, should be looking
to bring at least £40,000 in to that company to pay him/her a decent salary
and cover the on-costs associated with employing that person: NIC, office
space, insurance, benefits, etc...

At best, that person would be fee-earning for two-thirds of their time - the
rest of the time they'd be looking for business, liaising with clients,
involved in admin, keeping their skills up-dated and so on. If they work for
48 weeks in the year at 40 hours per week they be fee-earning for 1280
hours.

To bring in the gross £50,000 they'd have to charge £40 an hour - any less
and they're not worth employing commercially.

If you consider that you're not a full time professional and you're probably
slower than a pro, you might halve that figure - I'd call that a bit drastic
but you don't want to frighten off customers in the early days, after all,
earning £20 an hour is a lot better than not earning £40 an hour.

So, on those figures, it's £20 an hour - and if you can't get that you'll
either have to reconcile yourself to it being a hobby that makes a few bob
or give it up because you can't make a living charging any less. Imagine
that you managed to work full time at this - you'll do well to be actually
earning for half your working week - at £20 an hour, you'd be grossing
£19,000 a year and you'd have to pay for all your equipment, software, tax,
NI out of that.

I hope that helps - even if it only helps you decide to forget it

Best of luck.

 

[Andy Dingley]

There was some site on the internet that was wanting £450 for 3 simple
pages!

£150 for "designing" a "page" isn't a bad deal. The trouble is that
"the page" is a lousy metric for the effort involved. What does a SW
England web spod get these days ? £15/hour ? A whole day's work on
doing the design work for a page from scratch is easily added up, if
your client changes their mind or quibbles a detail.

A one page site is easy - no navigation. The HTML takes minutes and
the rest of the effort is down to "the design" of "the look" which can
take any amount of time, depending on how you do it and what they
want.

2-7 pages is quite cheap, because navigation can be a simple one-axis
menu and it's recycling the expensive one-off design work you've
already done with only a small amount of cheap text added. A CSS
stylesheet can easily take as much work as a dozen flat HTML pages
without any layout - the incremental cost per page becomes tiny
afterwards.

8-36 pages is a little more, because you need two levels of menu
structure and that brings in enough content management hassle that a
minor layout change by the client can cause a lot of re-work and need
for re-testing.

Over 50 pages and you're into databases. Now you have to judge
complexity before quoting. Most of my pages cost several thousand
_each_, but then that one dynamic page might be running almost an
entire site.

The mailer form is a no-cost add-on, because a commercial developer
has already solved the tech of providing these on their previous
sites. If you do charge a price for it, it'll be small (I'd
probably bundle it into the basic package deal).

try too

 

[nice.guy.nige]

at £20 an hour, you'd be grossing £19,000 a year and you'd have to
pay for all your equipment, software, tax, NI out of that.

But don't forget that a lot of the purchases (especially IT equipment,
unless there has been a change recently) may be tax-deductable! And if you
are VAT registered, you can claim the VAT back on business purchases. May be
beneficial to employ a good accountant, as long as they don't cost more than
they save...

Cheers,
Nige

--
Nigel Moss.

Email address is not valid. (e-mail address removed). Take the dog out!
http://www.nigenet.org.uk | Boycott E$$O!! http://www.stopesso.com
"How strange the change from major to minor..."

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

But don't forget that a lot of the purchases (especially IT equipment,
unless there has been a change recently) may be tax-deductable!

Yes, but tax-deductable means just that: you don't have to pay income
tax on the money. You still have to pay for the stuff yourself.

 

[nice.guy.nige]

Yes, but tax-deductable means just that: you don't have to pay income
tax on the money. You still have to pay for the stuff yourself.

Yes. But you don't then have to pay the tax... If I buy a product for £100
then you are right, I do have to pay the retailer £100 for that product. If
that product is 100% tax deductable, then that is £100 that I don't have to
pay in tax. Simplified figures and analogy, of course...

Cheers,
Nige

--
Nigel Moss.

Email address is not valid. (e-mail address removed). Take the dog out!
http://www.nigenet.org.uk | Boycott E$$O!! http://www.stopesso.com
"How strange the change from major to minor..."

 

[Gerry Nance]

From: "Blindsya" (e-mail address removed)

Newsgroups: alt.html
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 13:35:26 +0100

I know I know, this has little to with HTML issues and I'm deeply sorry for
posting this on here. I live in the south west area of england and was
wondering how much I should charge for making a website for a small company
aas I don't even know where to start on pricing. The site consists of 10
pages of tables and text and another page which includes a form that posts
to an email address. Any help would be much appriciated.

It is not the ease of the task, but the willingness of others to pay you for
your expertise.

I put a lot of time into designing a website, so I charge US $150 for the first
page and $100 for each additional page, plus $50 per maintenance session.

I base this on the needs of my daily income of about $100, for my cost of
living -- which I need to calculate more accurately.

Figure out what your Annual/Monthly budget is:

Start by paying your self first:
Add in a Savings goal of about $200 per month, 30-days of holiday/vacation per
year at about $50/day or $1500. Annual Savings plus vacation expense equals
$3900.

Add costs for your Mortgage/Rent(s), utilities, food, sundries, clothing,
insurance, vehicle (fuel and maintenance), entertainment, tools, hobbies,
subscriptions, etc., and a miscellaneous of $100 per month.

Add dependents/pets expenses.

Divide the sum by 2000 hours, or 12-months, or 30 days (or 22-days), then
divide the daily amount by 8, 10 or 12, to get your hourly rate. You might
even want to average the three rates, to get your number.

You might charge USD $1,050 for the ten-page site, but is that enough?

How much should you earn per day, in order to afford what you need/desire?

How much should you charge for one hour of your labor, in order to afford the
lifestyle, and savings goal, that you desire?

You might charge USD $1,050 for the ten-page site, but is that enough?

How many websites do your need to do --or average -- a month?

Consider there will be months, when people don't need a website, or your
services, so while you are out marketing your business, you will need to draw
on savings, to pay your minimimized budget.



Gerry Nance
World Alumni Registry
http://www.alumni.net
Register Today! Pass it on...

 

[Joel Shepherd]

Yes. But you don't then have to pay the tax... If I buy a product
for £100 then you are right, I do have to pay the retailer £100 for
that product. If that product is 100% tax deductable, then that is
£100 that I don't have to pay in tax.

No, that's £100 you don't have to pay taxes on[1]. That's very
different from not paying £100 in taxes, which seems to be what you're
saying. If the tax rate is 8%, then a £100 deduction will save you
from paying £8 in taxes ... not £100.

[1] Maybe: depends on whether you're talking a flat tax, a step-wise
tax like US income, etc.

--
Joel.



Simplified figures and

analogy, of course...

Cheers, Nige

--
Joel Shepherd

http://www.cv6.org/
"May she also say with just pride:
I have done the State some service."