[thelist] site services pricing schemes, was:SALARY.COM: Is that right???

John Corry webshot at neoncowboy.com
Thu Aug 3 20:53:57 CDT 2000


> Hey, first time poster, avid fan.

right on, if you survived the whole Angorra Socks thing and still want to
participate, you must have the right stuff
:)

> Uhm i just have a question about what is reasonable to
> charge per page. I'm going to go off for my first
> meeting with a potential client, and i am sure they
> will want to talk price right away. So i want to give
> them a reasonable ball park figure.

I think what'll happen is everybody will start reminding us of how as a
group, we aren't supposed to discuss pricing. Something about price fixing
and free trade and all. But your question brought up a concept I have long
pondered...the 'per page' pricing scheme.

Now, as professionals (or at least skilled, experienced amateurs) let's
consider what it takes to produce a web page. I usually start by defining
the architecture for the whole site...will there be nested hierarchical
navigation or is it all just daisy chain one page links to the next? Graphic
navigation, buttons with rollovers or just blue, underlined, 12 pt Times New
Roman text? Professional graphic design or FrontPage 'theme'? It goes on and
on...

The point I'm trying to make is that because there are so many options for
how a single page can be built, I don't see any good way to price 'a page'.
Oh yeah, and that doesn't even touch the way the other pages get built!
Suppose you charge $50 a page...You open Photoshop and make a great looking
template with beveled buttons and professionally created drop shadows. Go to
imageready and lay out some slices, export the HTML and come up with a blank
page that's ready to dump in some text and JPGs to become a real live web
page. Say, it took 3 hours to make that page. But you need an 'about us'
page too, so you save as to a different file, erase all of that index page
text and photos, paste in the carefully prepared bio the client supplied on
a 1.44mb floppy disk, slap in a left aligned photo of your client at work
and bingo...there's your 2nd page! Time spent, about 3
minutes...price...$50? OK, sure you price per page and the 4 pages at $50
add up to a pretty small $200 site. But it could get out of hand if you
needed to add more pages.

I built a site for an art gallery once (http://www.viewpointsmaui.com) where
we decided during the planning stage that each work should be displayed on
it's own individual page. Well, that decision led to the creation of well
over 120 pages, each a near duplicate of the other, different only on two
lines of code (title and img src). So, what is my per page rate if the site
is architected like that?

See, one of the important things about doing this for a living is to have
consistent, competitive pricing structures. Once you start, you're kind of
committed. I mean, you can't build one site for $20 a page and then build
your next one for $50...your clients will share with other people what you
told them about pricing, so its good to tell them all about the same thing.

Having exposed the flaw with one pricing scheme, let me now share the stupid
way that *I* price my projects...

1) I try to be vague about price initially, waiting until I can get a feel
for the client and their expectations before giving them any numbers.

2) I know what I want to make per hour, and usually can guess how many hours
of work a given site will be. So, I propose that we develop the site a
certain way, guess how many hours of actual productive work it will take to
do it, multiply, add 20% because I'm slower than I will admit to myself, and
there's my estimate.

3) build price hikes into the proposal. Always identify extra time/work
situations that might come up and spell out in the proposal/contract that
you will do this stuff, but at your fixed hourly. Always try to be real
specific about what a proposal covers and what will be extra.

4) charge as much as you can get away with. You are doing a major disservice
to the design community as a whole by working for cheap. If you are a
student, its acceptable but still undesirable to work for less than
competitive rates.

5) make your hourly at least 2-3x what you feel you are actually worth per
hour...because you will not bill anywhere close to a full time week even if
you put in 18 hour days all week long.

6) charge extra for the cool stuff. I have higher rates for Flash and
QuickTime work than I do for Photoshop/HTML work. I notice that most other
providers charge more for more demanding work.

That should be enough to get you started. Do a good job and good business
and before you know it you'll have more work than you even know what to do
with!

John Corry
Neon Cowboy Design
http://www.neoncowboy.com





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