Thread: What price do you charge?

Hi Dave

Yes, that sounds like a must not miss talk. You've already been very helpful to me in the past when we talked about this but I still agonise over pricing. Sometimes I think I should see a hypnotherapist because I still actually go red when I give clients a price in a face to face situation. (Seriously). And I think that makes me look like a complete amateur even though I'm confident about my design work.

It is without doubt my least favourite part of running a business.

thanks

Jennifer

Well, hopefully you can make it down for it. We're going for dinner the night before (see Pre Barcamp Cork dinner) too so we could have another informal chat if you go to that. I'll be talking about the whole sales process from start to finish and explain my process and what I found works and what doesn't work.

Hopefully it will help people! Hope to see you at it but you know you can give me a ring anytime too.

Rgds, Dave

Hi Dave,

Just wondering will there be a podcast available of your talk, I won't be able to attend but id love to hear what you have to say on the whole process. Even if there wasnt one on the site maybe you could organise to record one yourself and stick it up on your site or something?

Cheers.

I'll have a chat with the organisers to see if they will be recording the talks for a podcast. That's a good idea. Can't remember it being done before (except podcamp probably). Will keep you updated.

Rgds, Dave

Hi Dave,

I used to work for DIT and when we had seminars we used to do it, the likes of Bernie Goldbach would be at it speaking so we would set up recordings, you can just get an adaptor for an ipod and do your own anyways if they dont. As i cant make it id just like to hear your own talk to be honest to hear what you have to say.

Cheers

The time it takes to get and process all the info from the client can take alot of your man hour time. Building the site is the easy bit.

Alot of people dont realise the amount of research, telephone calls, emails and meetings that can take place. This time needs to be paid for too, its not just the design of the site itself.

Its hard to say exactly what to charge, it all depends on how much Preperation work is involved. I could charge anything from 500 to 5000, it all depends.

DB

Good point. If you look at many products, the price we pay is mostly made up of the cost of the process of selling the product to us. Take bottles of water in a supermarket - theres no way a bottle of carbonated water costs as much as a bottle of coke - its the space it takes up and the manual labour involved in selling it. Same as a car ... Toyotas come into Ireland at an average of €4k per bonnet but sell at €20k - the cost of people, forecourts, capital (invested in the business), overheads all make up more than the manufacturing cost.

I see Dave Davis' post from RedFly about not charging less than 5k and I see RedCardinals sober posting about why paying more than €2k for a brochue site. I guess the difference is in RedFly are hiring the best to push the boundaries of the web. These resources require the best environment and don't come cheaply - they can move to any company at a minutes notice - if you buy them for a brochure site, you have to pay the cost of having those resources.

One big problem in Ireland is that people treat buying a website like buying a product. Like it's off the shelf. Even if you buy a template site, the customisation of it is a service. You can't compare a RedFly site to a Mike Byrne@ennis.com site - even if it has the same requirements - the same way you can't claim a jacket from penneys should cost the same as it does if it ships from Prada because it is a jacket (fits the requirement bill)

If you provide a good service, by that i mean taking the time to meet clients, figure out their business properly and who the site is aimed at as well as providing mock ups and revisions and then figuring out what the best solution is for their site rather then just lashing out any old ****e then i wouldn't be unnerved by those company's charging peanuts.

I recently saw some company offering CMS sites for under 400 euro, with free hosting and domain name for a year ... seriously, race to the bottom or what, they simply can't be giving a good service for that price, i'd imagine there's a lot of Ctrl C + CrtL V into templates going on there with little or no regard for their clients company or their target audience. I'd imagine very few of their customers get much from their sites which is a shame.

In general tho i find people are realising that they need more then just some two bit website thrown to gether by someone who dosent care.

A bit of investment means a site can get some TLC in the process and you know what you get if you pay peanuts! ... or you will find out sooner or later.

that is a very general question.

what i get paid depends on how much work i do, but usually i get between 100 and 500. I am a beginner web designer and thats why i get paid so little compared to more advanced devolopers.

Conor, I think your not charging enough to be honest. Its ok if your just doing it part time, looking to make a few euros for the weekend or to help with paying off loans, but if you do web design full time then you should be charging a bit more.

Take the last site you did, try and add up all the hours and expenses it took. Inlude hours, telephone calls, and meetings, processing images received from the client....everythng!

Work out an hourly rate.. maybe €15 to €25 for a beginner, then see if the total is more than €500, i bet it will be.

A lot of beginners spend hours in the evening doing sites for others, sometimes not getting any sleep! and then charging very little. In my opinion if you put in the work and effort and your client is happy with the finished product, you should be getting what you deserve, And thats getting paid properly for your long hours.

Well, thats my opinion anyway :P