Joshuaink: How much do you charge?

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How much do you charge?

Wednesday April 13, 2005

I got quite an interesting response when I told a couple of colleagues my daily and hourly rates, they thought I was quite cheap. So I thought it would be interesting to know what the general rates are worldwide, specifically for web design services.

My current rates (in British pounds) are:

£250 per day
£30 per hour

What I have found is that complete SME websites (where the client provides the logo/identity and photography) are coming in at around £1,500 - £2,000. The highest paid site I have ever done came in at £10,000 but that had a bespoke CMS built in.

I understand that you may not want to broadcast your rates to the world, so please feel free to post anonymously on this occasion. I would much prefer to get accurate figures than to know who you are, though seeing your portfolio would also be interesting.

It would also be quite useful to know if you are freelance or part of a studio and, where in the world you are based.

Hope you will take part :)

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Max

1130 days ago

My usual rate is €55 per hour, dunno how much that is in GBP, but my feeling says it roughly equates. I don’t have a per day rate—might be an interesting option, although I usually calculate a fixed price before starting the job. What do you use the day-rate for, exactly?

From what I’ve gathered from colleagues, this is an average rate in the Netherlands. Well, for the smaller firms that is, of course there’ll allways be the Big Corporate Outfits™ that’ll charge you 30 grand for any site, just because they have a big name. And I’m willfully omitting the countless “hey, I’ve touched FrontPage once or twice, so that makes me a webdesigner too!” folks that happily spoil the market by selling crap sites for absolute crap prices.

I’m not going to post my portfolio, though. Hasn’t been updated for quite a while, so I’m increasingly ashamed at the thing =]
Gordon

1130 days ago

I have to admit that I’m toying with trying to “get into” web design professionally so look forward to hearing from other people. Looks like the hourly rate is similar to what I could get for my current profession (technical author).

I’ll be sure I’m undercutting everyone of course ;-)
David Horn

1130 days ago

Hi John –

I am surprised at how reasonable your rates are … currently I’m charging £40 per hour for web and logo work. I’ve been doing this for about 18 months or so now, and have not met price objections very often.

My biggest problem is estimating time accurately. I am often too eager to please every clients every whim. This means that while the proposals I send out might be for 20 hours work, £800, I probably, on average, end up spending 26-30 hours on that project, bringing my hourly rate down below £30.

Obviously, estimating is a problem for me. I guess it comes back to how tight / loose my proposals are. I had a great conversation with Malarkey fairly recently about drawing up proposals etc. and that helped me a great deal – as did Cameron Moll’s ‘more than a mechanic, less than a lawyer’ article.

Anyway, looking forward to the conversation that develops here!

Thanks,

David
David Horn

1130 days ago

sorry – links to articles mentioned above didn’t come through.
Max

1130 days ago

Heh, I think that estimating is something that most developers, web and otherwise, suck at. I know I tend to underestimate (grossly, sometimes), and it’s something you’ll hear most developers nagging about =]

I think the need to please is both a good and a bad thing. It’ll drive you to build better sides (wanting to please the visitor), but it’s dangerous for you wallet (as you’ll try to please the customer too much, as you’ve stated).
Andy

1130 days ago

I charge £25/hour at the moment, but not being great at estimating hours, for whole projects (Although I freelance I sub-contract with one company most of the time), I have an agreement where I received 60% of the sale, be it a small static site, or full blown CMS (normally made with Mambo). So prices range from around £650, 5 page static, to £thousands depending on project.

This suits me as I feel I can put quite a bit of work into each site, especially the larger ones, but then again, I’m getting to the stage now where I’ll be quite happy making sites, and knowing that while they’re what the client wanted, they won’t be going in a portfolio as they don’t represent my best work.
Ben Eastaugh

1130 days ago

I tend to charge £25 per hour for design work, although I mostly work with small businesses with fairly modest needs, so it never adds up to more than £1000.
Andy

1130 days ago

Oh to add, I’m in my first year out of uni, so not established fully as freelance.. still skilling up! Also based up North (UK), so money doesn’t flow quite as freely!
anony mouse

1130 days ago

Estimating time is quite a problem, as David and Max pointed out.

Your rates seem very reasonable, and border on the ‘pretty cheap’ side from my perspective. I work at a design studio however, which may make a difference.

Pitching your rate isn’t an easy thing to do. If you look too cheap you risk putting clients off just as much as if you look too expensive. If I were you I’d be tempted to throw an extra £10/hr onto your current rates, if not a little more.
Andy

1130 days ago

I’d agree, especially given your portfolio.. Hicks states he charges £40/h, no reason you can’t charge the same
Mark Boulton

1130 days ago

I currently charge £50 an hour, which has seemed quite expensive for some clients. Interestingly I think quoting an hourly rate makes you seem more expensive than a daily rate (mine is currently £350 a day).

I’m thinking of lowering it slightly due to some clients being a bit twitchy about, what is in essence, comparible to a small agency rate (with overheads and all that stuff). So twitchy in fact that they negotiate a lot harder to get the fixed cost down, because the daily rate is high.Like David I end up estimating too low and therefore my hourly rate ends up being lower.

So, i’m thinking of going down to the £40 a hour/ £300 a day rate. It seems to be more the norm because at the moment I feel I may be a little expensive.
Steve Hubbard

1130 days ago

Geographical differences aside, the following links may be of interest with regard to pricing and annual income:

The AIGA Annual Salary Surveys:
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/CategoryID=186

The AIGA Salary Calculator:
http://www.designsalaries.org/
G Bancroft

1130 days ago

For my first commercial job, a 150 page nightmare with CMS, I charged £2,500 just to get the job. I know for a fact the company had quotes as much as £10,000 (which I found out afterwards, Doh!).

I’m still at the stage where I only charge what I think the client can afford, purely because I don’t have the commercial experience and a barrage of work to choose from.

And of course there are other factors such as supply and demand and one of my favourites, buy cheap buy twice.
At the end of the day you get what you pay for. (Makes me sound great eh?)

Bung another 15 squids on your hourly rate, clients can always haggle.
Mr Bob

1130 days ago

I work for a small studio – 5 people – in the UK just outside London. We usually only do fixed rate work, starting at £1k and going up to £00,000s.

Hourly/day rates are usually only used on projects that need maitenance after launch and are based on the urgency of the task. To start immediately (and drop everything else) the rate is £65ph; to start within the next 3 days it’s £55ph; and within 7 days it’s £35ph.

This approach usually helps focus the client’s mind as to the real urgency of the changes and means that we can fit the work inbetween other projects.

I think your rates sound very reasonable – I’d use you if you do freelance work for companies..??? :)
Jay-Dee

1130 days ago

I work for a Web Development company in Manchester (UK) and (depending on the project) we would charge on average around £4,000 for a basic website, and from £6,000 for a shop, etc.

I’ve heard some say that this is a lot to charge but we always related our charges back to what the client will be earning from the website.

If the client sells materials handling equipment (for instance) at around £1,000 an item, then the website needs to sell at a minimum, 6 items to have paid for its self.

To have a shop sell only 6 items would be ridiculous so you can see from that example, that the cost of the site is nothing in comparison to what the client can be making.

In terms of sites that don’t directly sell products online, we always ask the client to take note of where there “calling” customers are coming from and, if they learned and were persuaded that this company was the company they wanted to use, from the website, then this too would count as a sale from the website.

Again, it usually doesn’t take many sales to have the site pay for its self, and then everything after that is pure profit. (Minus any maintenance charges etc)

Personally I would like to see more companys charge higher prices in order to run out the cowboys.

I often see advertisements around town quoting “Websites from 99 pounds”.

In my opinion these are the people who give professional web developers a bad name because the clients literally get what they pay for, a “hit and run” job.

Skilled developers such as those reading this article, who care about web standards, customer satisfaction, and genuinely have a love for this field, in my belief, should be charging there customers based on all of these rare qualities.

Often we use the analogy of a car when speaking with potential clients because its sometimes the easiest way to put forward what were getting at.

Its quite easy to go out and pay £200 for a Vauxhall nova which might last 8 months before blowing up, and in the end it may/will end up costing more to either put it right, or to by a new, more reliable car.

On the other hand, you could pay £400,000 for a top of the range Jaguar. In reality both of these are cars, yet you cant really compare them. I believe the same goes for web development. There will always be the “hit and run” cowboys willing to “knock up a site” for £200, but for most of us, we are in a totally different genre.

Excuse me for the amount of space I may have taken up here. My job is something i’m extremely passionate about, as I assume the same is for everyone who reads this article.

Thanks for reading.
Scott

1130 days ago

I’m just getting started in web design, so I only charge $15 USD per hour. Once I have a few more clients, I will raise it, but I wanted to price it low enough for potential clients to overcome the fact that I lack a solid portfolio, unlike most everyone reading this.

Cheers,
Scott from Missouri, USA
S+Squared Design
Matthew Pennell

1130 days ago

My prices are comparable to yours, John, although I should point out that I don’t currently freelance full-time so it’s all extra pocket money at the moment.

However, I always quote on a per job basis (usually £1,500 – £3,500 for a full SME site), and as my timekeeping sucks I couldn’t tell you whether I’m actually getting that hourly rate on a regular basis, or if I’m over/under-pricing myself!

I would imagine that if/when I go full-time, my rates will rise to compensate for the loss of my current income (and also to cover the additional expenses that would be incurred, such as marketing, stationery, etc.)
Martin Smith

1130 days ago

I think your rates are inexpensive considering the level of design and skill you offer. I agree with Andy, I assumed you would be charging something similar to Jon Hicks. I guess the biggest problem is convincing non-savvy clients of your credentials above your competitors.
Rob Mientjes

1130 days ago

I charge not much more or less than €20-35 an hour. Yes, reasonably cheap. But heck, you know I just started off. No real comparison :) However, like Max said in the first comment, my country is infested with crappy designers who are willing to do crappy work for €80 or something. I don’t like that much.
Nathan Pitman

1130 days ago

Studio rates:
£75ph (Design, XHTML, CSS), £95ph (PHP, MySQL).

Freelance rate:
£35ph.

:)
Jared Christensen

1130 days ago

I wanted to post a topic like this a few months back, but got scared off when I started running into warnings about “price fixing” laws here in the United States. Does the UK have no such laws?
Surprised of Worcestershire

1130 days ago

My employer currently charges £750.00 (ex VAT) per day, which I personally think is pretty short sighted as it just causes the designers and developers problems in the long run.

All of our clients (existing or potential) have a budget, and charging a high daily rate means that we’re constantly forced into unrealistic deadlines / project plans, because we “can’t afford” to spend more that x days on a site design.

Of course, we don’t get paid overtime, but are contractually bound to work extra hours “if a project requires”, so the company doesn’t lose out, just the employees.

Much better to knock the daily rates down a bit and let your employees leave the office once in a blue moon.

Sorry, that unexpectedly turned into a rant.

Along with everybody else, I was very surprised at how low your rate is. Every freelancer I know charges around £35 / hr, and certainly none of them (myself included) have your following (I haven’t seen your portfolio).
RAMON

1130 days ago

I just did a quick conversion and it looks to me that 40 pounds runs abooooooout $75 dollars American. So $150 (xhtml, css, and design services, print etc. etc.) and $200 (php, mysql, and any bizzare thing that a client can come up with that I wouldnt normally do). I dont know what other average American rates are I do know people who charge more than me tho. I should mention that those are my freelance rates, my work at an agency but I am sure what they bill for an hour of my time, but i’m sure it isnt cheap.
RAMON

1130 days ago

One more thing Jared I called my brother ( a lawyer ) and asked him about “price fixing” he told me its to prevent an organized attempt to “rally” surrounding businesses to set a standard price. Something about it being a businesses right to be able to find the lowest prices blah blah blah so basically dont worry about unless your trying to the above.
Cody Lindley

1130 days ago

You should have different hourly rates depending upon the involvement the projects require in consideration of the technologies used.

I start my base rate at about 55$ (American) an hour for design, css, xhtml, and simple javascripting. If the client for example wants flash, a CMS, or custom server-side coding (PHP) I have increased rates for this type of work. The rate is completely dependent on the scope of the project. Particularly the technical specifications.
Jeni

1130 days ago

When I was freelancing on the side, I was charging $40/hr (roughly £20/hr) for front-end design and $60/hr (roughly £30/hr) for back-end development. I intentionally kept my rates low because I was working on the side – I didn’t have insurance and overhead to worry about, and it took me longer to produce than someone who was freelancing full time. If I were freelancing full-time, I’d have to earn about $75/hr (£40) to make a comfortable salary and pay for benefits.

When I worked for an agency, they charged about $125/hr (£65) for design and more for speciality work like usability tests and domain name transfers. I think their prices were about average for the States, but I couldn’t be sure.
Greg Hinch

1130 days ago

I’m in the same boat as a few people who’ve posted here, fairly new with not much of a portfolio of my own work (from scratch to finish). I’ve been charging $25/hr. for projects, but a new one I just started is a bit more complicated so that was bumped up to $30/hr. to calculate the fixed price I quoted, but like so many have stated I’ll probably end up working more. I even did my best to overestimate a bit this time, especially in regards to the finish date.
nikki

1130 days ago

a-n (the artists information company) are pretty good at championing decent fees for visual artists and seem to be the people called in to advise/conduct research for the big funding agencies.

They have an artists’ fees toolkit at http://www.itool.co.uk/Interactive/artfees/login.php
that walks you through the stages of calculating your fees; taking into account things such as overheads, research costs, promotion etc.

I’ve yet to decide whether the results of this would be useful or just downright scarey … (I’m another one prone to under-estimating)
somewebguy

1130 days ago

I know here in the US there are laws that say you’re not to share your pricing info. Buuut since we’re talking £...

Flash/Multimedia $75hr
Design $65hr
PHP/SQL $65hr
HTML $55hr

Projects are quoted at a flat price based on an internal estimate of hours needed. Estimate is derived from a per hour breakdown of the type of work that will be needed. Out of scope work is billed at an agreed hourly rate on top of the total price for the project.

I keep an Excell sheet up to date with types of tasks and what my average actual time spent on that task usually is. At the end of each project I look at my true hours spent and update my estimation sheet so my flat price estimates will keep getting more accurate.

Estimates include a list of what is in scope, out of scope, and how many rounds of revisions are included in the price. Extra revisions are billed hourly as out of scope.
Lori

1130 days ago

My prices are pretty low, maybe too low at times. I charge around $35/hr, which seems like a fair price, but I usually bill by the project, not by the hour. I charge $349 for a customized stock install of most common php/mysql cms’. $4.95/mo for a customized hosted blog, $49 for blog w/no hosting. I do charge hourly for completely custom sites and for extra customization/programming on all sites.

The problem I come across is that people always seem to want “just one more little thing”, which can really mean many things and many hours. I have a hard time figuring out when to charge extra for these “little things”, and when they should be considered part of the original project.
Lori

1130 days ago

oh, there were more questions… I am freelance in California, US.
Max

1130 days ago

Hm, maybe it’s slightly off-topic, but OTOH I’ve seen several mentions of this thing called “time-keeping”... =]

How do you do that? Do you do it at all? If not, do you have that nagging feeling that, you know, you really should do it? =]

To kick things off: I’m using Project Timer (by Script Software), not as often as I should, but I try not to forget to “clock in”. Works OK, not the most beautiful app around but it gets the job done, and it’s affordable.

John, if you feel that I’m a horrible prick for going off-topic like this, feel free to move, maim or kill this comment =] Just curious, that’s all…
RAMON

1130 days ago

One resource that I would suggest for anyone working in design would be the Graphic Artists Guild “Pricing and Ethical Guidlines” book. Any time a question of pricing, legality, or the random odd thought needs answering I refer to this book its excellent you can find it at http://www.gag.org/
Schultzy

1130 days ago

Looks like im the cheapest.
Hourly – £10.25
Day – £60

Not done many sites though
Martin W

1130 days ago

Just curious Mr O – do your costs include the “expense” you may incur if you need to bring in someone to code PHP etc for you – do you factor that in at the time of quoting your hourly rate or – like a lot of people – do you get hit later on when you think “doh! half of my income has gone straight out the door!”

Bear in mind with all these costs floating around here – as someone coming from the other side of things – i.e generally your client – the costs are coming in under (way under in some cases) the charges we incur for print design (and quite often the timescales aren’t that far out!) For you and Mr Hicks to be charging the prices given in this thread – I’d personally be piling the work on you!!
Chris McLeod

1130 days ago

My current employer currently charges my time at £40 an hour to clients. They aren’t an IT related company (an Oil & Gas Industry Consultancy), so they aren’t too worried about making money off my skills, and thus don’t push for “sales”.

I’ve been mulling over where to price myself when I go freelance. Up until now, if I’ve done a “out of hours” job, I’ve leaned towards £15-£18 an hour or so. The idea was to start off low, then build up the prices as the business grows. When I go fulltime, I’ll probably put that price up a bit.

That said, I’ve always tried to keep in mind the job that I’m going for, and the client. If it’s for a noble cause (like a local youth team or something), then I’ll usually give them a lower fixed rate. Same if it’s someone that I can call on for a favour/is likely to recommend me to someone else. If it’s for someone like the DTI, the price goes up a bit…
Vespa

1130 days ago

£600.00+VAT per day, with a minimum charge of £200.00+VAT
G Bancroft

1130 days ago

@Vespa. That must be all MOD cons and all that….........
Chris J. Davis

1130 days ago

My prices start out at $100.00/hr USD for-profit and $75.00 USD non-profit.

That is only for HTML and CSS. I usually bill design and development separately if I can.

And I try to steer my clients toward per project quotes as opposed to hourly.
Roan

1130 days ago

I work for both an agency, and freelance on my own.

Typical agency rates are about £375 a day, whereas freelance I’ll charge about £250.

You’ve got to be flexible though, and I’ll find myself giving a client a cheaper deal if I like the project or they’re strapped for cash. Maybe that’s wrong, I dont know

I recently did a small-ish site for only £500 just because I was really inspired by the idea behind it.
RAMON

1129 days ago

I asked some friends today what they do and most of them charge per project. But that quote is based on an estimation of hour and so if the client goes nutty and begins to want more and more stuff you track that time and bill extra if warrented.
Sebastian Schmieg

1129 days ago

Rob M., I’m surprised you’re saying 20-35€ is cheap, taking into consideration that you’re a “beginner”. I do charge 25€/h which I think is OK because I’ve no formal education yet (1. Semester). However comparing my work to other people’s work that are posting their rates here I think I could lift my rate—at least for web-work.
Ischa Gast

1129 days ago

You say:

bq. What I have found is that complete SME websites (where the client provides the logo/identity and photography) are coming in at around £1,500 – £2,000. The highest paid site I have ever done came in at £10,000 but that had a bespoke CMS built in.

That would mean that you:
* Sketch
* Design in PS or something
* Build
* Test
* Got a killer site

In only £2.000,-/£250,- = 8 days of work and for a wonderfull price I think.

Can you let us see an exemple of a £2.000,- site because I am very curious what kind of site that would be and how many pages that site is.
Barry

1129 days ago

Interesting. A rule of thumb is double the hourly rate and you get a good idea of the annual income (assuming work up to your eyeballs…).

How long does an average site take to design? For the $99 website that’s about 2 hours for most of the rates here. And there’s no way I’d be happy with myself about something created in 2 hours….
Anatoly Papirovsky

1129 days ago

Sebastian – you see, the problem is that in Netherlands they may have differently priced services. It all depends. For example I am based in Canada, and when working for US or Canadian companies I usually charge around $40 (sometimes I go lower, but that’s only when I like the project or see any other possible uses of charging low). But when working for British companies (and I do get quite a lot of work from Britain) I charge around $60 – $70. Maybe in Germany prices for webdesign are much lower? And it is well known that in Britain webdesign is freakin’ expensive… :D (That’s why I love to work for them…)

Anyway, I wouldn’t consider Rob a beginner – his code is on top level and design skills are pretty good too.
Max

1129 days ago

I’ve seen several people say that they charge less, because they have no formal education / less then 25 years of experience. While I do think that some sort of know-how is, indeed, a nice thing to have, I’ve seen people with all kinds of papers and years of background screw stuff up horribly, and I’ve seen young pups doing brilliant stuff.

Education, for me, isn’t the biggest issue when looking at somebody’s work. In fact, I don’t care if and what education they had—kick-ass work is kick-ass work, crap is crap. Passion is what counts, price accordingly =]

That’s also what I kind of meant with one of my previous comments, about the big firms charging tonnes just because they can—and lots of times I find their work as visually stimulating as, say, a loaf of bread.
Sebastian Schmieg

1129 days ago

I didn’t want to say Rob’s a beginner when it comes to code but he’s a beginner regarding freelance work and I assume everybody (should) start small.

Well, prices aren’t low or high in Germany, I guess. I only think that your rates should be somewhat related to your education and experience.
Ischa Gast

1129 days ago

You are a fast designer/builder I think. Unfortunately we can’t see any of the work so I could see the size of the pages and what kind of killer design it is.

Must I think of somethink like this:
http://www.digbusiness.com/blog/
http://www.denbighshiresupportingbusiness.co.uk/
Peter Costello

1129 days ago

Good timing on this post as I’ve just landed in london and am about to start contracting. I’m interested to know if these rates are working on site as a contractor or as a small business working out of your own home/office.

I’ve just accepted £25 per hour for contracting which by australian standards seems about right, however after reading this post looks like I may have under cut myself???
Mike Stenhouse

1129 days ago

What you can charge depends on whether you’re a contractor or a freelancer… I dare you to find a web shop that’ll take you on as a contractor for £50/hour! On the other hand, if you’re doing all the client liasing, management and work yourself then 1 hour of estimated time is probably more like 1.5 hours of real time, after phone calls and all that malarkey and you have to charge accordingly. Personally I prefer contracting, and I get between £200 and £250/day for that and it’s no hassle – I do my job, I enjoy it and the stressful stuff is out of my hands. For freelance stuff I normally go £250-300 and I’ve been told I’m cheap at that price.

I like to break my estimates down by time for transparency – lets clients see exactly what they’re getting and if they need to modify their spec I can easily justify changing the cost. I don’t consider myself to be particularly experienced (or good for that matter) at handling clients directly though so it’s really interesting to see how you chaps do it.

Oh, and Peter: £25/hour is bang on the money for front-end contracting work in London.
Matthew Pennell

1129 days ago

I really don’t understand the rationale behind those people who have said they charge one amount per hour for design, but another amount per hour for backend/programming/etc.

Surely an hour is an hour is an hour? Why does your time magically become more valuable simply because you’ve got Homesite open instead of Photoshop? If I have a design job that I think will take 10 hours, and a PHP/MySQL job that will take 10 hours, I would quote the same amount for both.

If you’re charging people by the hour for your time, it is disingenuous to charge different amounts for different types of work (IMHO).
Ed Merritt

1129 days ago

I currently charge:
£25 / hr
£200 / day

But I usually work 10hr days so any clients willing to commit to whole days in advance get a better deal.
seba

1129 days ago

I think I have to reconsider our prices. I don’t what we, at 909, earn per project but it’s not as much what most of you guys do. I think we don’t earn 20€ per hour.
hynes

1129 days ago

Most work I freelance work I charge out on a project basis. My cost though is determined from an estimated out based upon hours and hourly rates, which currently sits around $45USD (about £24). At the moment I’m not taking on a ton of jobs, but as work comes in, that rate will be raised to about $80USD (about £42).
Chris J. Davis

1129 days ago

Hmmm, maybe it is my animal magnitism, but I don’t ever get so much as a peep of apprehension when I quote $5,000 USD for a site design that takes ~ 2 weeks at 4 hours a day or around 40 hours.

I am assuming I am lucky though from what I am reading here…
Jared Christensen

1128 days ago

Dude, I need to raise my rates!
Jeff Silvestris

1128 days ago

I hover around $30/hr freelancing. I work full time here: http://onepica.com

I know I’m undercharging, but building the portfolio is important. I currently offer illustration, actionscript, xhtml, css, php app development and a couple custom-developed ecommerce and cms tools.

I would assume I could charge triple what I charge now for the same work, but you’re not going to output as much that way, you’re going to end up revising things to death—though the prospect of bathing in $20 bills during the process is tempting to go that route.

Cheaper prices have lowered the expectations and allowed me to exercise my creativity and spend more time on a project on the client’s buck. I haven’t garnered any real complaints in my first year of freelancing, so far so good.

Anyone need any cheap work? :P
Chris Walley

1127 days ago

£25ph
£200 a day

I’d say the value comes in many forms. Speed, reliability and quality of work I’d say are pretty high. Also having a good, realistic, understanding of marketing and specialist knowledge in certain industry sectors.
Josh Renaud

1126 days ago

I am also an under-charger… I charge $25/hour for all tasks, including HTML/CSS/graphics work, photo manipulation, proofreading, writing copy, etc.

I know I should charge more… I’ve been told from the get-go to charge more. But this has always been a side-project for me.

After reading through some of these interesting responses, though, I feel inspired to re-evaluate my pricing and my method for estimating (which is woefully inadequate).
Psmeg

1126 days ago

It’s interesting to read through posts like this as it helps to get a feel for what is generally being charged and is useful to see that I’m not too far out in my pricing structure.

For me, I work in 2 ways. For web design projects (as opposed to updates, face lifts or amendments) I work on a project total and the break it into the amount of hours I can dedicate to the project. For example: £1000 total @ £35.00pr hour = 28.5 hours.

I use this to monitor the actual development time and see how close my estimated price/time is to actual development time. If I find that I spend more time than anticipated on the minority of projects then I am on the right tracks. So far, it has worked pretty accurately for me.

However, if I’m working on graphic design projects or image manipulation/layout for large format or print work then I monitor the time taken and charge the hourly rate broken into 15 minute increments.

On a final note, the comments made in a few posts about clients making ‘minor changes’ and how they can become excessive and time consuming. The way I have combatted this situation is to have a pretty detailed contract and breakdown of what is included in the price. This includes minor amendments, but when many minor amendments become a large undertaking the client is charged at the agreed hourly rate.

This soon helps to keep things under control during the majority of projects.
Matt

1117 days ago

I’m fairly new to the world of web design, & have only made a few websites, which I consider to be good. I want to get into freelance web design & work from my home office & was wonderign if anyone can offer me any advice on how to get the work & promote myself?

. I am still studying some aspecs of web design but will have roughly 28 hours per week to work on projects.
Michel

1101 days ago

My salary is not a secret:)))

Well, I work as webdesigner (XHTML/CSS coding mostly – only CSS based layouts; a bit of Fireworks MX 2004 for graphics; a bit of CMS systems knowledge, etc.) and I work for a small foundation, which also produces websites for clients, as a side activity.

My salary is about EUR 275 per month, fullday job (40 hours per week), which makes roughly around EUR 70 per week, or EUR 1.75 per hour…

Should I only add that I live in Sofia (Bulgaria) and that this salary is above the average for the country :-)

John, I think it would be difficult to compare our salaries ;-)

Greetings & good luck, I hope I gave my $ 0.02 today ;-)

Michel
Chris

1094 days ago

I charge £25 per hour, although most people like to know a complete price up front. That isn’t always possible, unfortunately. You know what “scope creep” is, yes? :0)
Philip

1084 days ago

Hey, GREAT information here. I certainly learned a lot out of reading this. That’s all. Check out my website and tell me what you think I should charge:

www.rawsonreload.com

I’m only 16 so I have no idea what to price.

Thx for the help.
Charlie

1079 days ago

This information is so useful to me! I’m 17 and a web designer/admin for a group I volunteer through (so I get paid nowt…). A couple of days ago I was e-mailed by someone from a group of similar interest asking me if I would do thier website (they must of seen my website) and also maintain it for them. They asked me to give them a quote and I have no idea what to say as I’ve only done previous websites for myself or for free.

I do html and the graphics for the webiste, and if they wish a BBS. Can anyone suggest what I should charge? I think it would be better to come up with an hourly rate as then I can count the hours I do to complete the website in the first place, and then charge them how ever many hours I spend maintaining it once a month or when ever they want me to.

Charlie
Markus

1074 days ago

Does anyone charge separately for the right of use for design, or do you include this in your rate, or not pay any attention to it at all?

I’m not an English native speaker, so I am not sure whether “right of use” is the correct word. It is in addition to the design fee (the art work/idea/concept basically stay property and copyright of the designer) and in the print/corporate design environment is often charged at different rate depending on the scale and environment the design is used.

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