[poisonedapple]

I love making custom web sets, have had way too many sites just for the purpose of designing. Ive seen lots of wahm sites that could use a make-over, and was wanting to offer myself for this. But have no idea what the cost would be. I definetly want to be reasonable, because I assume the ones that dont know how to really design a site would pay if it were more in their range.

Any tips? Im gonna look into this more but I feel overwhelmed with it at this moment.

Thanks

 

[Erin Pavlina]

Depending on your skills you could charge anywhere from $25/hour to $120/hour.

Five years ago I started at $55/hour and today I charge my corporate clients $90/hour. I charge way less to WAHMs. I think you need to use a sliding scale. My motto has always been that I'd rather have tons of clients at $50 an hour then a few at $90.

Good luck to you!

 

[noranorth]

I have been doing web design for 6 years. When I started out, I charged $50/hour, but now I have a 2 rate structure of $75/hour for corporate clients and $50/hour for non-profits. I often extend the discount to WAHMs that I really want to work with to make it more affordable. I also do payment plans and occassionally a barter (I've gotten a nice canoe, custom tile for my kitchen and clothes for my kids that way). The other thing that plays into cost is how much time you spend on creating a website. I find that most sites take 5-6 hours in design, 3-4 hours in creating html templates and page content, and 1-2 hours in basic search engine promotion, more time has to be allowed for any script programming or special features such as drop menus, etc. that take more time. So I rarely estimate a complete website for less than 10-15 hours.

 

[poisonedapple]

Thanks so much for answering! It really helps to have a visual and an idea on how things are done.

 

[allformyboys]

My flat rate was $75 an hour but for WAHM's I usually go much lower, I love to do trades, and am more likely to trade for work with a WAHM than I am to ask for money. $45 an hour is what my base starts at with the general client now a days since I am not doing it full time.

 

[LaLa]

hmm...for true full blown web design, we don't do that type of work by the hour. We determine what needs to be done and give a full package price and then split up the payments into 33% incriments up front, during, and at completion.

Of course, we only do dynamicly driven sites and we don't use templates, so the timing involved for that type of work would be longer then 12-15 hours for an average site, but the product is very high quality. It would most likely be too costly to do a per hour rate, though, so we do a package price.

I have seen some wahm site builders who do package rates for wahms in particualr. Some of which are very cheap, but template driven so not "custom"...but then they offer custom work at a seperate charge.

I guess there is a lot of wiggle room in the pricing of that!
My dh used to do consulting web work for $200 an hour, so the prices really do vary. But so does the product.

I guess the best advice I could give is to find sites similar to your skill level of building and look at who designed them and find out what they charge. Do that with several designers to get a good average.

 

[poisonedapple]

Quote:

have seen some wahm site builders who do package rates for wahms in particualr. Some of which are very cheap, but template driven so not "custom"...but then they offer custom work at a seperate charge.

: I got kind of confused on this. When you say template driven, do you mean using someone else template and just sprucing it up for you? Or do you mean making your own template and then just giving them the "template" to add their own stuff to it.

All of which I do comes from viewing things around me. Like I just made one the other day that is like my daughters short outfit, and another on a baby blanket I have. Most of the html is similar as frames, div layers, or tables, but I dont use others templates to get it, I use online resources to find the code I want, and go from there. Well usually opposite, I draw it out in psp, then do the html.

Gotta run, kids are going crazy and dh could use some help.

 

[gardenmom]

For those of you who do web design, do you make custom logos/banners as part of your design services, or are we talking strictly about putting together 'already existing' digital material? (is my question clear?)

For example, I'm building a web site for an architectural firm (family members'), and am having no problem with simple cropping and resizing of pics, layout and html (with a little help from dh), but cannot take the photo of the firm's 'sign' and turn it into a decent logo! kwim?

I am just so bad at using those photo editors...yuck

:

 

[gardenmom]

bump