What is the going rate for designing websites?

Dean820

Currently studying web design in college and got my first job off an old friend. First I felt really unsure what to charge him, firstly because he was my friend and secondly I wasn't sure what I would have charged anyway. He wanted a facebook like website and excluding the price of domain/hosting I said I'd do it for 50 euro. I thought that was fairly cheap for him.

What is the going rate for say, a normal website? And how much extra would you charge for adding on blogs, forums, etc?

Thanks.

cormee

Dean820 wrote: »

Currently studying web design in college and got my first job off an old friend. First I felt really unsure what to charge him, firstly because he was my friend and secondly I wasn't sure what I would have charged anyway. He wanted a facebook like website and excluding the price of domain/hosting I said I'd do it for 50 euro. I thought that was fairly cheap for him.

What is the going rate for say, a normal website? And how much extra would you charge for adding on blogs, forums, etc?

Thanks.

You've offered to do a Facebook-like website for €50? Sweet mother of God, you'll live to regret that!

Your rate would depend on your experience and skillset. A good designer with a lot of experience would charge about €60-70 p/h but would probably be four or five times more productive than someone starting out. So I suppose in your case figure out how long it would take you and charge about €15 p/h.

Dean820

cormee wrote: »

You've offered to do a Facebook-like website for €50? Sweet mother of God, you'll live to regret that!

Your rate would depend on your experience and skillset. A good designer with a lot of experience would charge about €60-70 p/h but would probably be four or five times more productive than someone starting out. So I suppose in your case figure out how long it would take you and charge about €15 p/h.

Well I plan on just getting a clone of a popular social networking site and editing it. So it shouldn't take more than a few days I hope.

Thanks for the quick reply. Interested in what others have to say.

ivanc

Interested in what others have to say.

Most people start off doing stuff for free so €50.00 providing he has low expectaions is fine.

Placebo

Your friend doesnt know the work involved, im not sure you do either.. Even simple editing etc will take you a while.

professore

Dean820 wrote: »

Well I plan on just getting a clone of a popular social networking site and editing it. So it shouldn't take more than a few days I hope.

You will learn my son. It is a good and cheap learning experience. You will also learn how much of a friend this guy actually is.

Trojan

Anyone got the time to go back through this forum and link all these threads here? It would make a fascinating study.

cormee

Dean820 wrote: »

Well I plan on just getting a clone of a popular social networking site and editing it. So it shouldn't take more than a few days I hope.

I'm not sure you've thought the project through. Unless your plan is to just install the script and the database and that's it, 30 minutes work, that's fine.

But you're going to edit it as well? Edit what? CSS? Content? Templates?

It sounds like you've committed yourself to a potentially massive project. If I was a gambling man I'd say you'll come out with 33c p/h (and that's if you're working fast and doing minimal editing.)

TitoPuente

Dear oh dear.

Dean820

Lads, you're overeacting here a bit. I'm mainly only looking for a bit of experience doing these types of sites and right now money isn't an issue. I can back out at any time, he isn't expecting much.

So back on topic please, how much would you charge for doing a site for a customer? And how much for addons like forums, blogs, shopping carts?

mbiking123

Since its a friend and you want a bit of experience in web design a nominal fee is fair. However 50 wont cover the costs, google -web hosting and check out prices of companies offering web hosting.

To do professional can get tricky as you will need a licenced version of say dreamweaver, photoshop etc etc and you need to cover these costs. jsut be careful that at some stage an audit may be carried out(but unlikely)

Alot of web designers become resellers, check out hosting companies for information. I have heard of a basic website costing €300 euro from a web design company, however the person must pay another 300 every year for the hosting. The initial profit was low for the web designer but now they will make a nice earning every year for hosting it on somebody else's server. Reseller seems to be getting more popular.

A professional website with flash,photos, shopping cart etc etc will go into thousands - easy (or so I have heard). For these websites you would need a team, photographer, webdesigner, programmer etc etc.

I would say to look into forums, this is complicated to set up and you may find this hard to host. You may have to do what boards.ie has done and host it yourself which involves using firewall's, server etc etc. Once again this requires a team. For a complex website you have an application server for example PHP and a database server for example MySQL, an email server and system possibly requires subnetting, possibly a NAT server (network address translation), a system for backup, a disaster recovery system and the list goes on. The free non licence forum servers ones usually run on an Apache server(to my knowledge).

To start with go to a hosting provider and look and there content management service that they provide that allows a website to be built. You can take a test drive. Once you get an idea check others, shop around and find one that you like. Maybe this is the best way to go with your first website. Remember to get software to ftp your work up and down, WINSCP is a free one that I find good

when it comes to over-reacting from others dont worry. I got this too from a post I made. It was my opinion which people can either accept or reject and all that happened was smart comments. Take or leave my own comment and best of luck.

mbiking123

I was on askthedirectory.com and there is a webdesigner listed. You can view their website and they give details of costs. Its free to use the directory listing so you can also request jobs to be done. If you friend wants a job done thats a bit too complicated for you. You could post a request and see what people quote. Government departments tender out contracts in this way, cheapest quote wins. You can see the governments tenders at http://www.etenders.gov.ie/

Might be something to think of if you want a job done

StupidLikeAFox

It may be worth looking at installing Joomla and check out some of their add ons for it. As far as I know there are a couple there which are social network/forum orientated. Fairly easy to set up also, you'd only really have to worry about the design/customisation

Feckfox

Dean820 wrote: »

Lads, you're overeacting here a bit. I'm mainly only looking for a bit of experience doing these types of sites and right now money isn't an issue. I can back out at any time, he isn't expecting much.

So back on topic please, how much would you charge for doing a site for a customer? And how much for addons like forums, blogs, shopping carts?

It depends on your experience. You can charge more if you're good, fast and have a great portfolio.

If you're new you obviously can't charge as much because you can't deliver. It's probably worth making a few sites for yourself and make them good so you can show off your skills. That's what I am doing at the moment so I am speaking as someone in a similar situation to you, not as a guru on the subject

EDIT: Just to note I am into development rather than design, but the idea is the same.

en.r4cart

Dean820 wrote: »

Currently studying web design in college and got my first job off an old friend. First I felt really unsure what to charge him, firstly because he was my friend and secondly I wasn't sure what I would have charged anyway. He wanted a facebook like website and excluding the price of domain/hosting I said I'd do it for 50 euro. I thought that was fairly cheap for him.

What is the going rate for say, a normal website? And how much extra would you charge for adding on blogs, forums, etc?

Thanks.

400 + 10/hr
could be?

aidan_walsh

en.r4cart wrote: »

400 + 10/hr
could be?

Where did you pull that out of?

sheesh

things like forums if you have not done it before can take alot of time

I did one last year for a charity using simple machines forum and it took over a week. and I skimped as much as i could I used a previously created theme and changed the css and just edited the the html for the header there were still loads of stuff to go through to make it look right.

so thats one week (at least).

e-commerce: the person you are doing the site for will have to give you bank details or credit card details so there is a bit of trust involved there. just tell them to set up a new account for it and and they should be fine there will still be alot of to-ing and fro-ing between I went with paypal because it was low volume sales and they did not want to pay anything up front. you can get transaction cost down to by going with other payment companies. I haven't even got into shopping cart scripts and skinning them which seem to be another week or 2.

consider it 2 weeks with all the waiting around


design: if you can knock out a couple of designs to show the client and get them to choose 1 in a 2 week period you will be doing well.

if I were you I would decide on a shopping cart script CMS and other stuff now and get familiar with how to skin them so that you know what you are getting into before you start designing.


I say go for it either way it will look good in your portfolio to have done it and will make you more employable and give you something to talk about in interviews.

consider rolling out the website first (if there is one)and then the e-commerce section.

Abelloid

Dean820 wrote: »

Well I plan on just getting a clone of a popular social networking site and editing it. So it shouldn't take more than a few days I hope.

Thanks for the quick reply. Interested in what others have to say.

For €50 can I have one too?

TitoPuente

Dean820 wrote: »

Well I plan on just getting a clone of a popular social networking site and editing it. So it shouldn't take more than a few days I hope.

We really need proper regulation in this industry.

p

TitoPuente wrote: »

We really need proper regulation in this industry.

Not at all, it's survival of the fittest. People should be allowed try silly ideas if they want

mbiking123

We really need proper regulation in this industry.

this was in reply to someone saying they were going to copy somebody else's work

SAP were doing this with Oracle

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/oracle-wins-13-bnsap-in-copyright-case/416093/

Even big boys doing it, in this case SAP got caught

CptSternn

mbiking123 wrote: »

this was in reply to someone saying they were going to copy somebody else's work

SAP were doing this with Oracle

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/oracle-wins-13-bnsap-in-copyright-case/416093/

Even big boys doing it, in this case SAP got caught

Ever notice how RTE's 'new' design looks a lot like BBC's old one?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.rte.ie/

CptSternn

Dean820 wrote: »

Currently studying web design in college and got my first job off an old friend. First I felt really unsure what to charge him, firstly because he was my friend and secondly I wasn't sure what I would have charged anyway. He wanted a facebook like website and excluding the price of domain/hosting I said I'd do it for 50 euro. I thought that was fairly cheap for him.

What is the going rate for say, a normal website? And how much extra would you charge for adding on blogs, forums, etc?

Thanks.

A few things here.

First, what exactly does he expect to accomplish with a Facebook clone? It's not an original idea. There is no USP - it has been done to death. Instead of cloning Facebook why not join the 500 million others and just setup a page for your organisation on their sure.

Second, to even clone Facebook you are looking at weeks of work for even a small team. Translated into real-world numbers, whats the minimum amount a small team working a few weeks would expect to get paid - minimum?

There are no set prices in web design, unfortunately. This leads to many problems here in Ireland. On one end you have the big or semi-big companies which service many counties. They charge very high rates - a basic one or two page site cost about €1,200. A normal business website could run you between €5,000-€10,000.

On the other end of the spectrum you have people like yourself who are new to the game and charging €50. There is a nice place in the middle if you know what you are doing. The problem is people expect professional results if they are paying a few hundred quid for anything, so make sure you know what you are doing and can implement what is needed, and put it all down on paper in a contract before you start anything, else you will find yourself in an actionable position later when you finish the site and they say 'do it again'.

Look up some local businesses in your area - ring them and ask them about prices. Many will ask you to come in or sit down with them, which means they want to charge you a **** tonne of money for the site. Still, play along to get some hard numbers, just don't tell them you are the competition.

Tis what I did sure. It's how I know the local big boys wanted to charge €10,000 for a job I did for €2,500.

Per the blogs and forums, again, this comes down to if you want to re-invent the wheel. Some people go with a third party solution like Joomla or DotNetNuke. The problem is that the more popular the system, the more likely it will be hacked. You will find yourself patching the site weekly, and if you can't code well, it will be hacked and you look very bad, not to mention will then be looking for another solution to a job you have been paid for and will have to do again for free.

I always code from scratch, no scripts or code I didn't write will be in my designs. That does mean more work, but of course a higher asking price.

Then again looking to my first statement, if you want a blog or forum on your site why not implement one from like Facebook or use one of Google's many free services to do this and incorporate their apps into your site. This is cheaper, easier, more secure, but you won't be able to charge as much.

It all comes down to skill and the amount of time you want to invest.

Pixelcraft

CptSternn wrote: »

Look up some local businesses in your area - ring them and ask them about prices. Many will ask you to come in or sit down with them, which means they want to charge you a **** tonne of money for the site.

Or they want to get accurate requirements rather than pulling a number out of the air?

mbiking123

Look up some local businesses in your area - ring them and ask them about prices. Many will ask you to come in or sit down with them, which means they want to charge you a **** tonne of money for the site. Still, play along to get some hard numbers, just don't tell them you are the competition.

If anything like Oracle, they will go mad for a sales. ex-Oracle consultant told me its all about the sales in Oracle.

Back to web designers - be prepared for alot of telephone calls, this often happens with a variety of companies/activities. In current climate they will be eager for a sale/contract. Always get ready for the sales one at the end when they dont get a contract for the "I'm very disappointed"

Ever notice how RTE's 'new' design looks a lot like BBC's old one?

yes, but at least not an exact copy

Grey_Goose

Hi Mbiking & Deano 820.:)
Some very sound advice and encouragement here especially from Mbiking and CptSternn.

I have a feeling your delima is have you taken on a project for a Friend that is way above and beyond the expections as a favour. You will have to work out if this friend is being very cute or innocent as to what is involved and if he has shopped around and could be maybe just using you.

If everything is kosher and you are working for the experience at the very least my advice would be that one needs to at least cover expenses, phone calls etc has been suggested. So just think of the €50 as an expenses downpayment and put your client on notice that as the site developes he will have to stump up your expenses as you go along with the project.

I would expect Insurance and other pitfalls as a Web Designer is covered in your College Tuition.

If we didn't have plagiarism would we have moved far from the wheel?

Dean820

Thanks for the replies everybody.

I must stress to those who think I'm some kind of idiot for taking this job on is that right now I'm not in this for the money but the experience. Money-wise for college now, I'm sound. My friend isn't trying to trick me or anything like that, I could turn around tomorrow and back out if I want. Great advice from everybody.

Trojan

Dean820 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies everybody.

I must stress to those who think I'm some kind of idiot for taking this job on is that right now I'm not in this for the money but the experience. Money-wise for college now, I'm sound. My friend isn't trying to trick me or anything like that, I could turn around tomorrow and back out if I want. Great advice from everybody.

If that's the case, let me give you what I believe is massively important advice: don't take the money.

If you take cash payment to do a job, any job, then you're obliged to do just that. If you do it for free, it's a favour. If it becomes trouble, you can re-negotiate, cos you're doing it for a favour, right?

I tell you from many projects, many years experience, and lots of experience both good and bad working for mates: either do it for free, do it for full commercial rate, or don't do it. Do not do it for almost free: bad idea.

HTH, good luck with it.

was.deevey

If that's the case, let me give you what I believe is massively important advice: don't take the money.

If you take cash payment to do a job, any job, then you're obliged to do just that. If you do it for free, it's a favour. If it becomes trouble, you can re-negotiate, cos you're doing it for a favour, right?

I tell you from many projects, many years experience, and lots of experience both good and bad working for mates: either do it for free, do it for full commercial rate, or don't do it. Do not do it for almost free: bad idea.

I have to agree with this .. do it Free or get paid "half" decently per hour .. even if its half your intended final hourly rate, it'll be rewarding in some way at least. It'll be motivation to finish and it IS really easy for low money clients to get "naggy".

Don't ask a paltry sum like 50 because seriously you will inevitably end up in a world of hurt if things for any reason go sour. And trust me a friendship WILL go sour even over 50 euro you were PAID for the job regardless of how many 100's of hours you put in.

cormee

...also bear in mind, if your friend is only paying you €50 he/she probably doesn't have any budget to promote the site, so there's a 99% chance the site will fail and be either a graveyard or completely gone in 6 months (especially as it's a clone of an extremely popular site and is probably in no way innovative.)

This means you'll have spent an awful long time working on something that you're not even going to be able to use in your portfolio.

If you're going to work at a reduced rate with the aim of building up your portfolio try pick projects that will have longevity.