Building a website

[Sleekit]

Hi everyone!

I'm currently studying web design at college, someone has asked me to design a simple website for his small buisness but I don't know how much to charge.

Could anyone give me an idea of how much to charge someone for a simple website? Has someone desinged a simple website for someone before, if so how much did you charge them?

 

[tinytomlogan]

If its a mate Id do it for free and use it in your course mate, just get him to sort you out when it needs updating ect.

 

[Sleekit]

Well it's not a mate, I work in a health club and it's one of the members who is asking me haha

 

[tinytomlogan]

Ahhh right, depends on the work load tbh mate, can be very time consuming.

Ive done mine all myself, but them I learned how to with youtube on one sceen and dreamweaver on the other!

 

[TopSecret]

How many pages does the 'friend' want and does he own all the images and logos he wants to be included? Does he have text prepared for the site or are you going to provide it? All this will affect how much you should be charging. If he doesn't own any suitable images and/or a logo, you would have to buy royalty free images to use, which would have to be factored into your charges.

Preparing the images and writing content for the site is very time consuming, and you also need to ensure that the site is search engine optimised, otherwise no-ones going to see the site. The easiest way to price the work is to break it down into individual jobs with a fair charge for each, taking into consideration the amount of man hours required for each one.

Cheers,

Stuart

 

[JN]

I'd probably be looking at £200-300 for something fairly basic. As others have said tho, as soon as you start adding on extra's like logo design, image royalties, text and whether or not it's going to be a dynamic site the price could easily get an extra 0 on the end.

 

[Youngie1337]

Everyone's prices are different Sleek. I have seen some web designers charging £99 for a website and lifetime technical support etc. You can get some that charge up to £200.

Like Jim said, making a professional website will cost a lot more money, although a small business website is easy to make.

You might want to invest in buying a template for a business and editing to your needs.

Need any help PM me, will be more than happy to help.

 

[BloomerzUK]

If it's just a flat file html based website, I wouldn't charge to much, but if they want some dynamic things like RSS feeds and message boards, you'll need a database behind it.. thats when you want to start charging alot more.

Edit: JW, Jim did you build this site from the ground up?

Edit 2: If it's just a simple one, you could use a simple free CMS, like Joomla or wordpress etc.. it cuts out the workload, and you can make custom themes in like minutes.

 

[JN]

Edit: JW, Jim did you build this site from the ground up?

Yeah mate. Obviously not the forums (apart from the skin). But on the homepage side everything from the original photoshop image to the html coding, to the PHP and Mysql backend + admin control panel (for the editorial team) was coded by me.

I could have gone for a CMS system, but I'm a minimalist and really hate having lots of 'things' that aren't needed. The code on the backend does exactly what we need it to, nothing more, nothing less. Adding new features is easy too as I know the code inside out.

 

[Sleekit]

Yeah I was maybe even thinking of settling for £250, it's quite basic tho cause i'm not very creative hence me moving onto computer netowkring next year at uni lol

He will give me info and pics and all I need to do is put them together, the logo is easy cause its just plain text with part of it in bold (i copied the design from his buisness card lol)

 

[Sihastru]

sleekit, first of all, I'm not trying to make you hate me, I just wanna give you some advice from my limited experience.

In order to get real money for a design it needs to be unique, simple and strong. It must add value to your client's brand and not to just be an excuse when you bump into each other.

First you must have a portfolio and it needs to be a good one. If you don't have a portfolio, then any project you can get is a must. If you are really interested in web-design, get the project and forget about the money. You might argue that this is just a small thing, on the side. But you would be wrong. To make a joke: There are no small projects, just small web-designers .

I went to your site, it's so-so (don't shoot the messenger, it's just my opinion), but besides the actual design there was one thing that bugged me:

Error establishing a database connection

...unprofessional.

Another thing that bugged me was the absence of any projects. So if you don't have any projects by now, just be happy that you got an opportunity, worry about the design part first, see what you can come up with, and if you and the client are very happy with it, set a price.

I would do it for free or for peanuts. Or a recommendation + a link on the footer of the site that links to your own website, so you can get even more clients.

This is just my advice, take it or don't take it, it's your choice. I don't claim to know you so don't hate me if I am wrong.

 

[Sleekit]

Sihastru, I really appreicate the honesty, so thumbs up for that lol

As I stated before, after the summer i'm going to be doing Computer Networking as I am not creative enough for web design. I enjoy doing it, i'm just not good enough at it lol.

Yeah I know i'm gonna put my all into the website and i'm not planning on charging alot of money (£150-£250). The reason why my website hasn't had a lot of effort put into it is because I know that no one would be looking at my website so I just didn't have the motivation to do it, if you get me?

Obviously if people do start viewing it, that will encourage me to make it better.

The dtabase connection thing was meant to be my blog I had put in my webpage but it was basicly a link inside an "iframe" as I didnt know how to display my blog underneath it any other way.

This is my first project hence having no projects to display on my webpage, but ill add this webpage to it once its done.

 

[Sihastru]

Thanks for not getting too upset with me.

Well, if you're not looking in pursuing it further, then forget about the things I said, you should put more time in the things that you want to do and take this project as a one time thing.

For a one time thing, I would try to bleed him for every last cent possible. Sounds like bad advice, I know... but considering it's one of the first (and only) projects, you are maybe inexperienced, so you'll have to put more effort into it then you probably think it needs now at the beginning. (Prototypes are more expensive and more complicated to build then the series model.)

Think of a sum that will not make you think on the way that it was a bad idea to work for such a small amount. You have to feel that it was enough and that you are rewarded for the effort. If you think 250 will make you happy, then it should be 250. But if you think you'll end up hating the fact that you didn't ask for more, ask for more. It's a negotiation thing... you say the largest sum, the client tries to take it down (often more then a notch)... so negotiate with him.

 

[charlie-j]

Starting off, I would do small price. You might feel like you are working for next to nothing but if people are happy then word of mouth is by far the best advertising:buying ratio - if you advertise you might get 1 in 1 or 200 people who buy, but around 50% will from word of mouth (or so I think from sudying internet marketing and used to do webdesign myself).

To be honest, I would say around £50-£100. You will benifit more from the experience and new challanges than from the money.

Once you have your qualifications in your portfolio, someone with experience will unfortunately beat you in this field, so if you have some experience and the qualifications, although you worked for less money at the start, you will find it is much more benificial for the higher-paying customers in the long run.

 

[TopSecret]

I wouldn't price it too cheap, alot of people - myself included - think that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys I would go for a middle of the road price, selling yourself too cheaply can be a costly mistake in the long run.

 

[charlie-j]

£100 for an hours work is good though.

 

[Sleekit]

While in this thread, as some of you might have seen I tried to incorporate my blog onto my website using iframe but that didn't work so well! is there any possible way I can display my wordpress blogs posts on my website while maintaining my top banner?

Thanks

 

[charlie-j]

Don't ever use iframes, they are unprofessional and the display massively varies between browsers. Use PHP code (save your page as .php or .phtml):

<?php

include('http/docs/link/to/blog');

?>

 

[Diablo]

I wouldn't price it too cheap, alot of people - myself included - think that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys

So my idea of getting infinite monkeys and their computers to build a website won't work then?

 

[soapsupah]

So my idea of getting infinite monkeys and their computers to build a website won't work then?

i still preffer those little dudes