Bulding site for fixed fee

[ethanmiller]

@Watson90, I can see the logic of your decision. I like the site, though; it’s a good clean design that looks nice at first impression and is easy to navigate.

[Watson90]

Thanks @ethanmiller, don’t get me wrong I don’t totally hate the design, but I have such an obsessive manner when it comes to design, I just want it to be perfect. The initial design was a lot nice, but he said it was too dark, which was a fair point.

He at first based it on the [Widescreen Theme](http://demo.graphpaperpress.com/widescreen/ “”) from Graph Paper Press. And it looked really close until I was requested to change it up a little.

[chrisburton]

Use your hourly rate for the time it costs you to create the site and add a profit at the end.

[Watson90]

@ChristopherBurton I think that’s the simplest answer I’ve seen but it just seems to _make sense_.

It really is just so hard to put a price tag on yourself especially when starting out in a bit of freelance work.

[chrisburton]

@Watson90 You also need to factor in your cost of living and other expenses for your hourly rate.

[chrisburton]

@jurotek No, I wasn’t joking. If you set an hourly rate of $50/hr and your monthly expenses are $2500/mo but you’re only producing work that covers $2000. You need to reset your hourly rate…or find another profession.

Note: Expenses doesn’t cover ‘gadgets’ that you want (such as an iPad). It consists of your cost of living (rent/mortgage and other bills).

[chrisburton]

@jurotek What are you talking about? You’re completely misunderstanding.

[Watson90]

I think @ChristopherBurton is saying that if you’re only getting enough work that equates to $2,000/month but your debts are $2,500/month then you need to make your hourly rate higher to factor that other $500 in + anymore to make yourself a bit of profit.

I get paid from my full-time job around £1,100/month. That is enough to pay my all of bills and leaves me with about £300 to myself for football/clothes or whatever.

If i were to go fulltime freelancing then i would need to consider adjusting my hourly rate to ensure I have that amount of money still to be able to pay bills at least.

[chrisburton]

Agree to disagree, then. But I just have to say that I still think you’re misunderstanding. And for whatever reason you’re spitting out hypotheticals.

`What if I live beyond my means or if I make most of my cost of living in a week. I shouldn’t raise my rate for the remainder of those 3 weeks.`

That’s not what I’m saying at all.

If you’re **average income** is $2k but your monthly expenses are $2.5k, you would would need to adjust your hourly rate to cover your monthly expenses. Or…you could just go on and watch your electricity get shut off, then your internet, next your phone. Sooner or later you won’t have anything.

@jurotek What I would like to know is, how do you structure your hourly rate?

[chrisburton]

Respectfully saying, I think your response speaks for itself. We’re talking about an entirely different industry. And where in my statements above have I said anything about raising hourly rates to an extent that are absurd? You know, it’s not like I’m advocating for setting your rates to $500/hr. But It appears to me that you think we should all be setting our hourly rates very similarly with little margin and that’s just not competitive.

[ethanmiller]

I am not sure what is really at the bottom of this conversation, but it seems a bit aimless. I think you are both right. Of course, all people consider not only their base cost of living but also their desired cost of living in determining their rate — insofar as they can. And of course if they set a rate that is too high, nobody may buy. This is just the situation represented in old supply-demand curve. Market prices are not fixed; they are dynamic.

[ethanmiller]

@JoshWhite, I’ve not been designing very long, and that is undoubtedly a factor leading to uncertainty about my estimates. Still I’ve built a four sites now, some of them quite big projects. Also I’m not sure that your ability to predict with such accuracy is so commonplace among veterans. The [article I linked above](https://css-tricks.com/estimating-projects/) for instance admits the following:

>Sometimes, as much logic as you try and throw at estimating a project, you end >up >with the feeling that you just don’t know. You just don’t know how long it’s >going >to take. You just can’t forsee what kind of roadblocks you are going to >come >across. You just don’t know how well these new clients are going to >communicate >with you.
>
>At this point you’ll need to do a little reflection on previous projects and then >perhaps, pull a rabbit out of a hat. Uhm, let’s say $8,500, that sounds about right. >That might read as unprofessional, but I’ll bet you a dollar the majority of >agencies do a little rabbit-pulling in their estimates. It’s not unprofessional at all; >In fact, I think it’s the definition of professionalism. Professionals are people >educated, trained, and skilled in a field of work. That’s what we are, and a part of >those skills are making good estimations at what to charge for our services.

I’m comfortable following this kind of a process, but am very curious about how other people manage this process. It would seem ideal to me to set up a scenario with a client where you can create some flexibility precisely because in my experience some things that appear to be easy, sometimes turn out hard, and vice versa. But in my experience so far two things happen with clients in initial negotiations. One, they want a fixed price, and two, they come back with some counter-estimate from some fictive alternative source (a friend had a friend who had a website built for them) that is radically cheap. I find it hard to have confidence in my estimates in this scenario. Perhaps you are right, and that is just a question of experience, but still perhaps some wise words of advice from a more experienced developer would be in order?

[chrisburton]

@ethanmiller

“two, they come back with some counter-estimate from some fictive alternative source (a friend had a friend who had a website built for them) that is radically cheap.“

There’s nothing wrong with negotiations but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for potential clients to lowball you. The type of clients you mentioned (above paragraph) are the ones I usually ignore emails from. It’s a waste of time and if they want something “cheap”, they can find it on Craigslist.

[gurujust1n]

In my line of work I have a fixed cost of what I charge for all my sites. Just the other day I was asked to do a site, redesign of their old one, web 2.0 goodness. And right out of the blue I said that I may do it for $2000, that is with all that they are wanting. But it is subject to change, I gave them an estimate, and I am unsure of what the final design/development would be.

Any extra work outside of the contract, I charge hourly, normally $50-$65.

[chrisburton]

@andy_unleash

“I’m not suggesting that you charge bigger companies bigger money“

I would.

@gurujust1n

How can you automatically give out a number without doing research on the project?

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