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Category: Career, job, and business ideas or advice

Testing and Prices

Howdy 'yall. These questions are for the hardened, experienced professionals out there...

1) How do you decide how much to charge your customers?

2) I use a Mac and can, therefore, easily test my work in Firefox and Safari. How do I test how things will appear in IE?

Thanks in advance and I hope these questions don't get asked constantly because I couldn't think of how to search for them.

:thumbsup:

Hello,

On the price front think about how long it will take you to make. If it takes 2 hours then charge for the 2 hours. If you see what I mean, In my prices I have:

Basic Web Design (no extras) - �10

Full Web Design ( 5 chosen extras) �19.99

Pro Web Design ( all extras) �40

Logo/Banner Design (non-animated) �5

Logo/Banner Design (animated) �7

Website management ( �2.50 per month)

Full Set-up (includes banners, domain, hosting ,website design, logo and all extras) �60

And as for the IE front I have the same problem. I however have a PC with windows on it so I can check. My site does offer a testing service if you are intereted click the link in my sig.

2) I use a Mac and can, therefore, easily test my work in Firefox and Safari. How do I test how things will appear in IE?

http://browsershots.org/

if you're in the least bit serious about it, then $80 for parallels (http://www.parallels.com/) and a winxp license ($30?) are peanuts.

Thanks. :) I would be interested to hear from others how they charge.

If people can't do something, and you have the expert skills, you can charge a large amount

I've done many websites for clients and I start my prices at �220 for a full website with content management system, �5 a month for hosting; and every client I'ce had has agreed that this is a reasonable price :)

When I go freelance I'll be charging at around tribalmaniac's prices, and that's without a CMS probably, unless it's a somewhat basic one - e.g. not wordpress.

I've look at other UK website companies and they usually charge around �350 ($700) for a 5-page website without CMS.

Some charge on a per-page basis too at �45 per page.

Those prices are kinda steep in my opinion but web design is a skill, so charge for it :)

In reality, your prices are going to be driven more by your finances than anything else.

Rather than looking at what others charge (which, imo is a bad approach) look at it from a "what do I need to make to live the way I want to". Now, I'm not talking about being a multi-million aire, so consider it this way...

Start with a desired salary, let's say $50,000 / year (which is probably near average for a web developer in the US).

Now, back track into your hourly rate. Consider that you won't be billing 40 hours / week, more typical would be 20 - 30 hours a week. So let's go with 25 billable hours / week.

So, 25 hours / week * 52 weeks / year = 1300 billable hours / year.

50,000 / 1300 ~= $40 / hour.

Now, here in the US, you also have to consider things like the fact that you'll need to pay both ends of Social Security (7.65%) + your own insurance, so add about 4000 to your salary for Social Security taxes, and about 500 / month ($6000 / year) for health insurance and you actually need a salary around $60,000.

$60,000 / 1300 hours ~= 46 / hour.

Of course, where you live, and your lifestyle play a role, and don't forget that you also have to account for business expenses, travel, etc.

In reality, asking $70 - $100+ / hour, although it sounds like a lot, isn't really that much in the grand scheme of things.

I always worry when I see a new programmer sell themselves short for $20 / hour. That's not a liveable wage anywhere in the US or UK, all things considered.

Of course, keep in mind that the 25 hours / week should be an "average" some weeks you'll have more (40+) other weeks you'll have none.

Hope this helps.