talkmagic.co.uk

Once again I am back with some website woes...

Right...I have been studying flash for a while and using my creative talents, have become quite proficient.

A fellow photographer has asked me to design him a website. Simple, an about me, some contact details, a feed to his blog and a gallery.
It's done almost all in flash and so is pretty suave looking and the gallery is really smart.

Now, as the title says, the question is a little sensitive and I hope to get answers without argument between members...

How much do I charge? It is of course my first ever proper website design that will be used by somebody seriously and I have to take that into account...I also have to think that I have spent a good while on it and have really made it work well.

I know, I know. I should have sorted out a price to start, but we have known each other for a while and it just happened over time. Now I need to tell him how much I want for the final product and deliver..

Thanks for any suggestions. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to say it in public.

Sit down with him. You both know what you'd expect for an hour of photography, so come to a price using that as a mutual bargaining anchor.

is there anything that he has that he could let you use in a quid pro quo kinda way?

pay each other in kind so to speak...and he sends onto you anyone who says "cooo...i like the site..."

or do the old thing of you write a price on a card, he does the same, then flip 'em over...if its more than you wrote, you look gracious and take your fee, if its less than what you want - then you meet in the middle or do some kind of swopsies?

thats what i'd do anyway...

Yeah, but you'd probably use a swami!

How many hours did you spend on it? Multiply that by minimum wage

kolm wrote:How many hours did you spend on it? Multiply that by minimum wage

And add a percentage.
No-one doing a specialist job should be earning minimum wage, and by offering a cheap price would mean that referals would expect an equally low price...

...My apologies, I must stop reading that "How to be a rockstar freelancer" book...

I think the advice you have recieved so far has been good, however, I'd like to temper it a bit with the answer to a similar question I asked someone a while back when I was just starting out in my line of work.

"You can't charge extra for being slow."

That's the problem with looking at a straight hourly rate when starting out in something. You might want to earn £x an hour but if you're slow because you're relatively new to it, that means charging far more than other people who can do the same (or better) in half the time.

When I mentioned the "hourly rate" issue to my mentor back then, he said, quite simply, "If you want a better hourly rate, get better at the job and work faster." which was quite right.


I don't know how much time you've put into the site or how much on-the-job learning you did, but you may well have to take a hit on the hourly rate at first... even if that means taking less than minimum wage.
My suggestion would be to consider what you would have to pay someone else to produce a similar site and (if you like) give some sort of "mates rates" discount.


As for DenmarkKilo's comment, I agree that specialist work shouldn't only fetch minimum wage (subject to the "slow" line above) but cheap doesn't necessarily mean referrals would expect a cheap price.
Just say "I'd usually charge £x for a site like this, but I'll only charge you £y" or some such.