N1CK3RS0N
12-14-2009, 04:36 PM
I decided to make a new post for this, hopefully keep this one more organized.
I ordered 3 different books on web design pricing and legal documents and whatnot. One of them sort of summarized what my opinion was as to how you should go about charging for your web design services.
Time flies when you're doing your creative work, especially on the projects you really enjoy. In fact you may not notice how much time you're spending. Some designers don't realize they've spent much more time than had initially allowed for. They don't dare divide the number of hours by their hourly rate, only to discover they're making a little more than minimum wage. That's a rude awakening. And it's all the more reason to track your time.
It's a cliche, but it's true: Time is money. The more time one project takes, the less time you have for another, and the less money you make.
Many designers price by the hour, and for all the wrong reasons.
First of all, it's easy to price your services by the hour. It's clean, it's orderly and it doesn't require much math. But it is not to your benefit, especially in the long run.
This is because the fast you are and the better you get, the more money you should make. A logo might take you five hours today when, two years ago, it may have taken twenty. You get better, sometimes a lot better, with time. But if you charge by the hour, as you get better, you earn less. Does that make sense?
Also, design is a creative process. Not only is there no rule about how long it should take; there is as certain amount of inspiration involved. You probably don't know how long it will take for your best ideas to come. They could come right away, or they could take a while. Should you be paid based on how long it takes for your ideas to come together? Is that how you should determine how much money you earn?
The book goes on more on this subject, but it sort of shares my same view as how things should be priced. As I said in my old thread, I've been doing web design for 10 years now. I've come to a point where I can go from start to finish on a lot of projects in a matter of hours, depending on the needs of course. Unless I'm charging around $200.00 an hour, its not possible for me to make a decent living.
My theory was it is best to not price how long it takes you to do something, but fixed prices based on the clients need. Heres an example, your client need a custom website designed, coded, with a custom logo, and 5 pages of content. You could say "Well I figure this will take me 6-7 hours, and I charge $50.00 an hour, so it should be about $300.00 to $350.00". Its a very simple way of doing things, but if it takes you longer than expected your hourly rate can be devastated, and its not fair to the client to charge much more than you originally quoted. The way I figured you should look at it is, "Okay they need custom website designed ($300.00), coded ($200.00), with a custom logo ($150.00), and 5 pages of content ($40.00 per page x 5 = $200.00), totaling $850.00". Now that price seems more fair doesn't it?
Charging by the hour is so subjective. You have to determine what your time is worth based on your years of experience and the end results which you can produce. Yet projects vary a lot. You could make big money on one project charging by the hour, and take a big hit on another.
_______________________________
So what I would like to do is first organize a list of different aspects of creating a website and order them into categories. We need to first brainstorm a list of different aspects of creating websites such as the design, coding, logo, content, animated navigation menu's, software integrations, custom software development, theme integration for software, etc.
We will not price the different aspects ourself, but leave that to the designer to come up with his own pricing scheme, though it isn't a bad idea to include some example pricing guides.
There's a number of different ways you can choose to go about pricing it, but the first thing needed is a list of different aspects of the web design process.
What I would like is for people to help contribute different factors for website design such as the examples above. It doesn't need a price or anything like that. Just name different possible factors a client may need for a web design project.
I ordered 3 different books on web design pricing and legal documents and whatnot. One of them sort of summarized what my opinion was as to how you should go about charging for your web design services.
Time flies when you're doing your creative work, especially on the projects you really enjoy. In fact you may not notice how much time you're spending. Some designers don't realize they've spent much more time than had initially allowed for. They don't dare divide the number of hours by their hourly rate, only to discover they're making a little more than minimum wage. That's a rude awakening. And it's all the more reason to track your time.
It's a cliche, but it's true: Time is money. The more time one project takes, the less time you have for another, and the less money you make.
Many designers price by the hour, and for all the wrong reasons.
First of all, it's easy to price your services by the hour. It's clean, it's orderly and it doesn't require much math. But it is not to your benefit, especially in the long run.
This is because the fast you are and the better you get, the more money you should make. A logo might take you five hours today when, two years ago, it may have taken twenty. You get better, sometimes a lot better, with time. But if you charge by the hour, as you get better, you earn less. Does that make sense?
Also, design is a creative process. Not only is there no rule about how long it should take; there is as certain amount of inspiration involved. You probably don't know how long it will take for your best ideas to come. They could come right away, or they could take a while. Should you be paid based on how long it takes for your ideas to come together? Is that how you should determine how much money you earn?
The book goes on more on this subject, but it sort of shares my same view as how things should be priced. As I said in my old thread, I've been doing web design for 10 years now. I've come to a point where I can go from start to finish on a lot of projects in a matter of hours, depending on the needs of course. Unless I'm charging around $200.00 an hour, its not possible for me to make a decent living.
My theory was it is best to not price how long it takes you to do something, but fixed prices based on the clients need. Heres an example, your client need a custom website designed, coded, with a custom logo, and 5 pages of content. You could say "Well I figure this will take me 6-7 hours, and I charge $50.00 an hour, so it should be about $300.00 to $350.00". Its a very simple way of doing things, but if it takes you longer than expected your hourly rate can be devastated, and its not fair to the client to charge much more than you originally quoted. The way I figured you should look at it is, "Okay they need custom website designed ($300.00), coded ($200.00), with a custom logo ($150.00), and 5 pages of content ($40.00 per page x 5 = $200.00), totaling $850.00". Now that price seems more fair doesn't it?
Charging by the hour is so subjective. You have to determine what your time is worth based on your years of experience and the end results which you can produce. Yet projects vary a lot. You could make big money on one project charging by the hour, and take a big hit on another.
_______________________________
So what I would like to do is first organize a list of different aspects of creating a website and order them into categories. We need to first brainstorm a list of different aspects of creating websites such as the design, coding, logo, content, animated navigation menu's, software integrations, custom software development, theme integration for software, etc.
We will not price the different aspects ourself, but leave that to the designer to come up with his own pricing scheme, though it isn't a bad idea to include some example pricing guides.
There's a number of different ways you can choose to go about pricing it, but the first thing needed is a list of different aspects of the web design process.
What I would like is for people to help contribute different factors for website design such as the examples above. It doesn't need a price or anything like that. Just name different possible factors a client may need for a web design project.