After recently receiving the following question from a friend …
I’ve built a single page website for a starting business and I have no idea what to charge, please can you advise me on what you would charge, I also designed their logo, the site has no fancy scripts in it, only a google analytics tracker.
I decided to see if I could clarify things a little, and wrote the following response.
As I’m sure you are aware, this is a very loaded question.
I would suggest essentially that you can charge a percentage of what it is worth to your client in revenue.
What do I mean? Well if within a year they could see that the website brought them R10,000 worth of business and they made R5,000, then they might pay you R1,000. If on the other hand it brought them R100,000 and they made R30,000 they might happily pay R5,000.
What I’m getting at is there is an immense difference between “getting online” and “making money online”.
Anyone can build a website. The trick comes in ensuring that that website does what it should, which is to generate more sales. So if Google doesn’t rank you, because you’ve done no work to help it rank you, then you’ve failed to succeed or succeeded in failing.
try differentiate myself from general designers in the value I add. In that sense if they get a site designed by Joe and it gets them 1 new lead a month and I can design a site that generates 2 then surely I’m making them the money they will pay me with.
You can do the traditional hourly rate, but you’ll always face clients that think that you are not supplying value.
You do know that companies spend often upwards of a million dollars and a year’s development on a logo redesign. That is because they realise the value of their logo, long term.
Problem, with logo and web design is that both can be quick to get started but can take many hours to fine tune.
Back to your question, without seeing what you did and guessing how long it would have taken me, I can’t give you a number. Same with the logo design.
It’s not necessarily how much you put in that is relevant, but what it is worth to the client.
He then sent me the URL and I took a look and responded …
I’m not trying to be harsh but if you want to get into this industry you need to take a long hard look and decide what your aim is.
I would not build what you have built primarily because it is not responsive, mobile is how more people browse and it is growing. So if it doesn’t display properly on mobile, no.1 google penalises you i.e. you won’t show up in mobile searches 2. users on mobile will land and leave.
As it is it would take me about an hour or two. But I would tell the client if all you have to spend on your website is R1,000, design it yourself using WIX or Squarespace. You need a reasonable sum to help the client get what he want’s, which is more sales.
Hosting, once again, there are people charging R1000’s for hosting, it depends on what you offer your client.
read this http://wptavern.com/donnacha-macgloinn-predicts-the-end-of-the-webhosting-industry
I recommend these guys to get your head thinking differently about this
http://www.ugurus.com/
http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/
His response …
You’re not being harsh, I appreciate your observations.
I’m learning html/css as I make the site, on a notepad equivalent. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured out mobile device compatibility.
I have had some problems with inter-browser compatibility (solved what I saw).
Perhaps I can learn how to do a good job by working on this one.
I do not see the point, in figuring out how to code for every browser, when you can use a framework that will handle it for you. Take a look at bootstrap.
http://getbootstrap.com/
A framework gives you the backup of a large team to cover some of the technical frustrations. This was originally developed by twitter then open sourced.
Or take a look at WordPress, it does all the heavy lifting, browser compatibility, best practices and optimisation. You just have to build within that.