I just got fired from my job

[pwired]

find a way to be useful to millions of people rather than just your boss. The internet really is the land of opportunity where anything is possible.

That's how I see it too Ryan. In contrast with the local economies, (unemployment here is 35 %) I see the Internet economy year after year growing. That makes investing in your self and in PW for a growing number of people no longer a hobby but a serious thing. Thanks for those links. I can add Dr. Joseph Murphy to it.

[pwired]

@ arjen

Let's say the accountant costs me $400 (really simple administration) a year, but my wrong tax administration costs me $800 a year. The bottomline is that I've just earned $400 a year.

400 dollar per year, that would be ok. I didn't have any clue what an accountant costs per year, but 400 dollar per year sounds ok for me to handle. Thanks for the docracy link.

[NooseLadder]

Also, don't be afraid to try new things. Sometimes one thing leads to another. As an example; the reason I found Processwire is that I wanted to give my clients an easy way to manage their website content, but it came with added bonuses. Some of the functionality I have added to sites would not have been possible (easily) for me without PW.

I completed a basic site for someone last year, since then I have added a products/shopping area and now am working on producing a PDF brochure for their products, all extra income you see.

I have a number of my own websites, some of which being the affiliate one I mentioned earlier, a web hosting one integrated with WHMCS and customised/branded Cpanel with additional added sections for upselling other products. So I can offer a complete service (domain name registration, hosting, website, emails etc).

When my workload is a bit on the light side, I offer a free website (limited number of pages) in exchange for a minimum 12 month hosting contract. But I also do these freebies in PW so the client has the ability to add more pages themselves.

I made a community website for free. I'm still paying for the hosting etc, but the plan is to attract local businesses to sponsor the site to cover costs and any additional revenue goes back into the community council funds.

Just some more ideas to think about I hope it helps?

[arjen]

$400 dollar is just an example. My point is a) hire a professional b) only hire someone you trust. Therefore just ask in your local situation. Get away from the computer and ask them. They probably won't want money for an intake conversation.

[pwired]

@ NooseLadder

Just some more ideas to think about I hope it helps?

It sure does. What you posted there, are not just standalone tips, but actually a strategy - a way of working

to keep things going during or after a project. Thanks for making me see that bigger picture.

[Macrura]

@pwired - +1 for getting a percent up front, and then keep the site on your development server until you get paid in full..

i put a coming soon page in the client's domain and then once the site is done, they need to pay the balance before the site is installed on their domain..

[pwired]

@ arjen

Get away from the computer.

Haven't talked with those kind of guys before. But you're right an intake conversation with such a guy will make it more real for me. Though I think that I need to learn and practise PW's api, and come up with a decent portfolio first, before that.

[ryan]

 Thanks for those links. I can add Dr. Joseph Murphy to it.

Who is Dr. Joseph Murphy? Those books I linked to are classics, ones that I have in print and that I think are worth reading in full once a year. They might seem like they are just about money, but that's just how they attracted readership–the concepts are actually much bigger. 

[pwired]

I think are worth reading in full once a year. the concepts are actually much bigger. - yes.

Dr. Joseph Murphy wrote about the same concepts in easy to read words,

but somehow he is not so known as the others.

[pwired]

I know this can be a personal question as each has it's own skills and hour rate and so I will not ask you personally about it, but where can I find more info about prices for making a website ?

1) pages with just text

2) pages with text and pictures

3) pages with text - pictures and animations

4) pages with picture slideshows / presentations

5) pages with flash

6) pages with movies

7) pages with a guestbook

8) responsive pages

9) the number of pages

Are they all treated the same in one project when charging for building a website or do they count to the price ?

When a website is finished and delivered, how much to charge for afterwards editing pages ? Per hour or page ?

And should the client pay before or after you edited his pages ?

What about hosting. Is affiliated hosting a good idea ?

I googled a lot but it is not easy to find how a single website designer or company is calculating a price and what

is considered to be standard prices/rates.

[Manfred62]

@pwired

not sure, you are a german?? If so, this is a nice book. Fun to read.

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3836215292/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1/279-2256976-5125355?

[Macrura]

might be cool at some point to have a pw user survey

[arjen]

There are numerous books on pricing. Don't just look at web design pricing structures, but on the creative or broader service industry as well. It depends on how experienced you are and what kind of value your expertise can add to a website.

[pwired]

There are numerous books on pricing. Don't just look at web design pricing structures, but on the creative or broader service industry as well. It depends on how experienced you are and what kind of value your expertise can add to a website.

Hi arjen, thanks for your reply but that still doesn't give me any clue or guideline or reference when it comes to how much euros or dollars to charge for what you have delivered the client. Seems that most people don't like to talk about that for private or competition reasons. I can understand that. Also It isn't that easy to find on the net but after an hour googling I found some hard figures that at least gives me a reference:

http://website-creations.co.uk/index.html

http://cmsteachings.com/how-much-charge-joomla-website

http://netmatters.co.nz/index.php/seo

http://www.joedolson.com/pricing.php

[Pete]

Pricing is very difficult to be honest and unless you are looking to create many of the same types of site (homepage, services page, gallery, contact page for example) you can't really set a price up-front.

Even with those types of sites I've often found the client will ask for something unique that means any pricing I might have had at the beginning is automatically different as a result of the unique needs. With that in mind I don't list prices myself and prefer to quote based on at least an initial spec.

An analogy would be a plasterer, plumber or electrician trying to have a pricelist for clients without the client first telling them what they need - other trades don't do it and I don't think our industry is much different in that respect.

What you can do once if you are in the situation after a few websites that many of them are similar is work out a rough price and put the words "starting from" in front of that price once you're more confident about it, but even then I would worry about potential clients ignoring the "starting from" and focusing on the figure next to it At the end of the day, to most people browsing the internet a website is a website - they just don't know how a "simple" request can mean hours (or on occasion days) of coding or alterations which is, again, a reason why I don't list prices personally.

A possible idea for yourself is to work out how much money you need to survive, then take a look on job websites at how much web developers are getting paid near to you and work it out based off those two figures. You should at least be able to work out from a job advert what an average hourly rate is for a developer working at a larger company, though by all means feel free to charge higher than this since you are essentially being designer, developer, salesman and managing director and saving on overheads - you may also find you work longer hours than a normal day job so your fees should take things like that into account if you're trying to give a client a total price for the job up front rather than an hourly fee.

Long story short, there is no right answer with pricing, but the world will definitely need more, better websites for the foreseeable future

[3fingers]

Hi pwired, I know this is a tough moment in life, a job is hard to find and clients have less money to spend than 3 or maybe 4 years ago.

That's is true because of the bad economic period the world is facing but also because clients are starting to have more knowledge of the "internet world" (even if their jobs or attitudes aren't directly correlated to the web), and so they can percieve and then better - but not of course perfectly - rates a website and its development.

What I want to say is that if you want to be competitive and make your clients accept an " fair price per site to surive and eat every day" (  ), you must let them trust you as a professional, with specific skills and be able to solve their needs.

I've take a super quick look at the websites you've developed so far and I think you should consider to improve your front-end design skill. Let me explain before I get misunderstood, because there is absolutely no intention to be unpleasant here, really.

From my experience in this industry clients tends to prefer a good looking website ( ...without touching the topic of " what is beautiful for everyone"..) rather then a website that is coded extremely well, with all the best-practices that everyone of us need and prefer to follow/achieve. Of course a website needs to fit clients needs and expectations, and be solid and scalable at most.

So what about to find a good front-end designer whereby work side by side, where you do all the developing and focus on the back-end, with processwire?

I'm telling you this just because, maybe, this could 1) lighten your back in front of the pc and focus more on the coding part and 2) put your future clients in the habit to be better disposed to evaluate an higher fee to pay you (even if you will share a percentage with your front-end designer).

I hope I'm not behaving grumpy here, I repeat...not my intention.

This is the preview of the site I'm making for the agency I work with (It's really simple and work in progress), just to help you to know how much I usually charge my job :

http://www.test.sundaygroup.it/ ( I have my monthly salary so I didn't make a price for this, but probably I would have asked around 1.200 Eur or so. (I made it in a week with plain html+css+js, no php except for the contact form (no processwire there).

Last link I suggest you to have a look : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/28/youre-pricing-it-wrong-software-pricing-demystified/

Even if that article is focused on product-prices there are some insights that might be considered, IMHO.

Good luck!

[pwired]

@ 3fingers. First of all, thanks for your feedback and your post writing about real life things in webdesign world.

I've take a super quick look at the websites you've developed so far and I think you should consider to improve your front-end design skill. Let me explain before I get misunderstood, because there is absolutely no intention to be unpleasant here, really.

Thanks for your feedback. I needed to read that.

From my experience in this industry clients tends to prefer a good looking website ( ...without touching the topic of " what is beautiful for everyone"..) rather then a website that is coded extremely well, with all the best-practices that everyone of us need and prefer to follow/achieve. Of course a website needs to fit clients needs and expectations, and be solid and scalable at most.

Yes the frontend needs to represent the look and "feel" of a clients business, service or product. You need to be creative with colors, fonts, shapes and layout and at the same time not losing the overall business look.

Not an easy thing to make that combination shine on the frontend.

Last link I suggest you to have a look : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/28/youre-pricing-it-wrong-software-pricing-demystified/
Even if that article is focused on product-prices there are some insights that might be considered, IMHO.

Your link to that pricing your product article is also an eye-opener. I have read it a couple of times.

Finally a demystifying article and gives me a real good handle on pricing your product.

Great find, thanks.

[3fingers]

You're welcome 

[arjen]

Like 3fingers said, the article is heavily focussed on pricing a product. In my opinion you should focus on service pricing. This is really hard stuff (multiple links). You hopefully have some time to read through all kinds of articles and find out what works best for you. Pete has some really nice advices. You have to find these things out yourself. Not everything is on Google