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  • #30395
    bdrums
    Participant

    So I’ve been at it a while now with WordPress and building websites for a few friends along with a couple paying gigs. I’ve got a potential new client that wants what boils down to a WordPress site with Ecommerce (FoxyCart maybe?) and a mailing list that people can sign up for to showcase her handmade jewelry, and she wants it for under $500. Am I nuts, or does what she wants, and what she wants to pay for it not exactly line up? Any advice/words of wisdom here would be welcome and appreciated.

    Thanks!
    Brian

    #78998
    Chris Enloe
    Member

    Personally I wouldn’t do this for less than $750, plus if you are going to make the mailing list script by hand, I would raise my minimum price, but then again that me. It’s just going to depend on how long this will take you, cumulatively. Since this is your first real client, then maybe its good to be in the $400-$500 range, if the project is going to take, lets say, somewhere between 7-10 hours, then I would do it. It’s your first actual client, and you really need to learn how to operate things, legally and such. Use this as your “guinea pig” project, but I wouldn’t try and take advantage of her, or let her take advantage of your skills and knowledge.

    -Chris

    #78993
    noahgelman
    Participant

    I agree with the above poster. If it’s your first real client, don’t worry too much about getting enough money for your work. Realistically speaking, I’d charge around $1000-1200 for a custom theme with Ecommerce (although that’s a gestimate depending on the design she wants and how much extra stuff thrown in). You should treat your first real client extra special because she’ll be the start of your clientele web. She gets you more clients for treating her so nice, and they in tern get you more. Then after a few, when you have a good flow of clients, you can raise your prices to what you would normally/should normally charge.

    And in the end, it’s always good to get more experience dealing with an actual client plus it builds your portfolio which lets you command more money later

    #78871
    Rob MacKay
    Participant

    I would charge well more than that LOL.

    There is no way what she wants in anyway lines up with the price, unless you value yourself as worthless :)

    Lets break this down yea?

    You have to design the site – design revisions, UI research, fine tuning etc etc – including the 300 changes the client will probably want to make.

    PSD to HTML/CSS – this always takes longer than you expect.

    HTML to WordPress – depending on what you have to build in to the theme and how complex it is, this is another large-ish task.

    Wordpress Eccom intergration. Now depending if she will let herself be bent into a certain shape by an already existing ecomm solution – or she wants to fork out more cash per month on Foxy (which I would say is the best solution because of flexibility of design). After that you need to test the balls off it.

    Mailing list – probably the easiest part of the whole thing as there are probably a good few awesome WP plugins for managing mailing lists.

    Then you have to account for time that WILL stack up because something will happen or something will change etc etc

    You need to make sure both of you know exactly what each other expects. Write it down, because she will be disappointed it dosen’t massage her feet in the morning – and you will be stressed trying to add all the “Just” features (“Just add a button that solves world hunger”).

    To give you an idea, if she gave me $500 that would be 8.3hrs of my time – and I am too cheap, and I would not dream of factoring in Ecomm into that – that would be a very simple simple site, with no design revisions for her to come back to me on. I am currently in the middle of an ecomm site that is causing me more trauma than profit because I was ignorant of the amount of investment required.

    Stay on ya guns and Have fun!

    #78866
    bdrums
    Participant

    Thanks for the input everyone. I’m trying to read up on some different Ecomm solutions right now to get a better grasp of what all will be involved. Any suggestions? I’m currently looking at FoxyCart and the WP-Ecommerce pluggin.

    #78864
    Chris Enloe
    Member

    Foxycart should always be the Ecommerce solution when using wordpress. No if’s, and’s, or but’s! :D

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