How much should I charge?

[saif]

Hi, can anyone give me advice on how much I should charge for a website to be developed as this is my first freelance paying project...

It will be for a small business, a simple website with contact us, profile, services, and home page. I'm in Toronto so I'll be charging in Canadian dollars, not that you have to convert it for me, I'm just mentionning this in cases it makes a difference on how much I should charge. It's also for a friend or a relative, so I think they sort of expect me to charge a little less than expected. I told them I'll give them a price tommorrow and I was thinking about $600 cdn, am I off? any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

[coconut]

Those are the hardest to charge...Just saying well $600 will do, won't work, how many pages, how many graphics, ecommerce?, hosting fees, registration, how long will it take you. I would do a layout on the structure on paper first, if you haven't already and figure out how much time and work it will be for you and is it taking your working time as a professional, then you should charge the professional fee. If it were a good friend or my mother, for say, I wouldn't charge a thing. Of course you could always set up a payment plan if cash flow is a problem. But if I were doing it for fun or a favor on my free time, the charge might be a barter of some sort minus the fees that have to be paid. Just my opinion.


What do I look like a smoken monkey?

[Ryan8720]

$600 sounds right since they are family. Keep in mind that you could end up doing a lot more than $600 worth of work. Normally I would charge a project like that by the hour.

http://www.edgewebdesign.org/images/misc/ryan_shadowmetal.gif (http://www.edgewebdesign.org)

[ToeJam]

$600 sounds reasonable to me.


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[morea]

^ an excellent article!

The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.

[saif]

thanks everyone for the feedback /emoticons/thumbsup.gif

[jlee9911]

I have the same question. What is the normal professional fee for an hour?
I am an IT professional and also taught Webpage Design in college level.
However, I never designed website for outside of my university. Although I designed departmenal site, my church site for free of charges.


My docter's office and kids' baseball team asked me to design their website and I need to know the going rate.


TIA

[morea]

try running a forum search on 'charge' or 'price'... This has been discussed before, and from what I understand, we're not supposed to discuss pricing. Here's (http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/legal/d935705578.brc) the reasoning behind it.

So, I believe the answer is 'Get a GAG Handbook' from Amazon or half.com (http://half.com) and it will provide guidelines for setting your fees.

Check this article, too. graphicdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa092702a.htm (http://graphicdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa092702a.htm)

You can also just estimate how long it will take and charge an hourly rate. You might want to add a clause stating that the first (x # of changes) are free, but then additional changes will be billed at an hourly rate. Hope this helps.

The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.

[Ryan8720]

The average rate is $45 an hour (USD). That can vary by location and level of experience though.

http://www.edgewebdesign.org/images/misc/ryan_shadowmetal.gif (http://www.edgewebdesign.org)