[thelist] What to charge for web design

Warden, Matt mwarden at odyssey-design.com
Sun Apr 15 13:04:40 CDT 2001


> Golden tip:
> if you charge a little, the perceived value of your work is small.
> If you charge a lot, the perceived value is big.
> This means that charging a lot makes the client respect you.

Ok, but what if the value of your work is not big and you charge big? Then,
your client is expecting one helluva site and you don't have the experience
to be able to do that.

The problem that people aren't bringing up is that with no portfolio, you
aren't going to charge $65/hr for html-jockying (*duck*). If you quote
$65/hr and have no portfolio or have a portfolio that shows you don't have
enough experience to charge $65/hr, you're going to get laughed at. Sorry,
that's the breaks. You have to go for the small-business clients who don't
have the cash to put up a really "cutting edge" kind of site and are willing
to take a lesser site for, of course, lesser cash.

Like people have said, there is a lot affecting how much you should charge
(location, local market competition, etc.). But, if I can just throw a
number out here, I'd say $30/hr for your first job or two. Then, quickly
increase the rate with each job after that.

And, I'm not just talking out of my arse here... this is what I did. I
quoted $30/hr for a really small client-side javascript job and I did it
very well. I've been getting more and more work from this guy ever since...
but my rate has near doubled.

my $0.02


--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com





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