Pricing for web design from a template?

April 19, 2008 10:04 PM

How much would you charge for web design from a template?

I'm a graphic design student about to graduate with a good amount of professional experience under my belt, but as far as web design goes, I'm entirely self-taught in HTML and CSS. I've been offered freelance web design work, feeding information into a template that the client picks. What to charge? I've only done a web design project once and it didn't involve going from a template. There are only 6 pages of content (and thousands of searchable listings already in place).

posted by inactivist to work & money (6 comments total)

Charge by the hour.
posted by Jairus at 10:10 PM on April 19

maybe you could price your web design work in relation to your graphic design work.
since you're professionally new at web design, maybe do 75% of your GD rate.
posted by blastrid at 10:32 PM on April 19

If you are thinking of going pro in web design, you will need to expand your knowledge of web design. It isnt as simple nowerdays just to do a website.

You need to look into:

Xhtml (no more tables)
CSS2
Optimized Content

I charge $500 per day or $60 per hour (UK prices). However I've been doing it for over 8 years.
posted by spinko at 3:55 AM on April 20

Depends on what you're after. It sounds as though you're new to the field, so, if you want to get more jobs like this, you should probably low-ball the quote in order to get the job. The value of adding this work to your resume will outweigh whatever cash it may bring.

OTOH, if you're just doing it for the money, compare your job with the rates being quoted on places like elance.com, and price yourself around twice as high.
posted by gregor-e at 4:55 AM on April 20

There have been squillions of "how much should I charge for freelance web work?" questions. The answer is always "it depends." (It depends on your skills, on your level of knowledge, on the type of work, on your location, on how much of a PITA the client is, etc etc etc.) It's not at all clear what you mean by "feeding information into a template that the client picks" -- are you doing design work or data entry? And what do you mean about 'searchable listings'? so this question is basically unanswerable anyway... but even if you told us exactly what you're doing it'd still be unanswerable. Charge what your time is worth to you. That's really all you can do.

That said:
Do charge by the hour. Requirements always expand; the client always asks for 'just one more thing'; if you bid a fixed amount up front it's very easy to screw up, bid the wrong amount, and wind up doing tons of work for free.

Do not follow any part of gregor-e's advice, especially the bit about lowballing the quote to get the job. Too many novice designers get themselves taken advantage of because they undervalue their own work; doing it on purpose would just compound the problem.
posted by ook at 2:52 PM on April 20

Depends on what you're after. It sounds as though you're new to the field, so, if you want to get more jobs like this, you should probably low-ball the quote in order to get the job.

...

Do not follow any part of gregor-e's advice, especially the bit about lowballing the quote to get the job. Too many novice designers get themselves taken advantage of because they undervalue their own work.

Resolving these two pieces of advice can be tricky, because both sound reasonable. Early in my freelancing career, I found it useful to set a 'default' rate that was in keeping with the general market rates for a service. That could, in many cases, be pretty high. At the time it worked out to about $80 an hour.

As a relative newcomer, though, I would offer pretty steep discounts to each customer for arbitrary reasons. "Because they're a non-profit," or "The job sounds particularly interesting and I'd like to be involved with this project," etc. The important part is that one's "official" rate is started very clearly, even when every one of your clients is being charged a "discounted rate" while you build your portfolio.

It's harder to do that with services like elance and so on, but if you're talking one-on-one with any potential clients, it's a good way to frame things. Lead with the official price but explain what is special about them or their project that you'd give them a discount for this particular project. Eventually, as you become more confident and build your portfolio, you can simply stop charging the discount to new clients. It makes a big difference.
posted by verb at 10:51 PM on April 20