Prices etc.

Freeway
21

If you say you have not charged for any sites, then what you have done is actually pay out of your own pocket to produce these sites for your clients to date. We all have overheads however small, like; software, electricity, computer etc. So any charge above $0.00 would be good to recover these costs.

I would start of thinking about a payment structure (charge by the hour, page, site) Its all down to you. I would suspect your prospective client is wanting a cheap job, not approaching a commercial company to do the work, so keep it keen, but realistic.

On 13 Dec 2008, 2:13 pm, Fergus T wrote:

I haven’t yet charged for any of the sites I’ve made

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22

An earlier post by Todd kinda hit the nail on the head. But it really
depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you are doing it for the
fun of it, and want to earn a little extra money, then you can charge
on the cheap. However the client may expect you to be there for years
to maintain and update the site. If you build the site with Freeway,
that makes it difficult for someone to take over the site, when you
get bored doing it, without having Freeway themselves. If you are
looking to earn a living doing this, then you have to consider running
it like a business. Think about owning a business where you have
employees doing the web development ( then you can think about having
a business where you are the employee). If you have an employee, you
have to pay them a salary. Also, in the USA, you, as the business,
have to contribute an additional 7.5 % of their salary for their
Social Security, and there is also unemployment taxes, health
insurance, etc. You can only bill the client when your employee is
actually working on that clients project, so when the employee is off
work for sick leave, vacation time, holiday, etc. you have no one to
bill but you have to pay the employee. So you have to bill the clients
when the employee is working on their project extra dollars to cover
all the employee expenses when the employee is not working on
anything, Like going to conferences, and training, oh, did I mention
you have to buy the employee a computer and Freeway to use and you
have to pay the rent and insurance and power bill on the building you
are using for your business. All of these, and more, are the overhead
expenses you have to cover by charging the clients, in addition to
what the employee actually earns to live on. It is a ball park
estimate that the charge to the client may be twice the employee
salary, or more. So, if you think $80/hour sounds good, you may end up
with only $40/hr equivalent to working for someone else.

LLE

On Dec 13, 2008, at 10:13 AM, Fergus T wrote:

I haven’t yet charged for any of the sites I’ve made - they’ve all
been for friends and family etc. and used as portfolio
builders…and they seem to have worked, a large leisure company has
approached me about web design for their new cinema! so…that’s why
I thought I’d ask the initial question. And no, I have no staff!

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23

When it comes to doing a ‘real’ project for a client would it be possible to use a CMS and once the website is done to completely hand it over to them?

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When it comes to doing a ‘real’ project for a client would it be possible to use a CMS and once the website is done to completely hand it over to them?

First of all, when you publish a site into a clients domain you have essentially “handed it over”. The html will be there for all to see and edit as they please regardless of the fact it was generated from Freeway. Once you are done designing the site and it’s published the client is free to do what they want with the published pages.

As to the CMS option, absolutely you can do this. The big advantage to using a CMS is that once you are done designing things you can publish the pages, upload them to client server at which point they can start editing content, and still have design control. Of course handling things this way you will be “on call” for any design changes the client is interested in making, but repeat business is always preferable to one shot deals.

Even with the use of a CMS the html is still open for anyone to view and edit. A CMS will just make it trickier for and outsider to take over your work.

You could structure your price in two levels. The first price level would be for the whole site design. The second level (less expensive) would be for any changes or updates that you would make to the site design after the initial design work has been completed and approved.

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25

Thanks! That’s helpful to know…

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26

Sometime around 13/12/08 (at 11:19 -0500) LLE Freeway said:

If you build the site with Freeway, that makes it difficult for
someone to take over the site, when you get bored doing it, without
having Freeway themselves.

Actually, anyone can carry on editing the HTML that Freeway
publishes. Doing this does mean that the Freeway document won’t be up
to date any more, so uploading from that will wipe out changes made
directly to the code.

A Freeway-built site is easy to hand over, it is jut hard to take
back into Freeway once it’s been messed with externally. (Unless it
is designed as a CMS-based site and all the ‘messing’ is done within
the confines of the CMS.)

So, if you think $80/hour sounds good, you may end up with only
$40/hr equivalent to working for someone else.

The $80ph figure is based on an assumption that $80,000 per annum is
the goal, but as you say this must include all expenses, from
software upgrades and computer maintenance to heating, stamps, phone
bills and so on.

k

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