Starting Out as a Freelancer (Need Advice)

[RawadM]

I’m just starting out as a Freelancer, I seem to be having a hard time figuring out how much I’m going to charge a client for a website. I already know I’m going to charge per project.

What do you guys think about this idea, charging a $100.00 per page. If they don’t have a lot of content I will make sure to decrease the price. Let me know what you guys think.

Example: 5 Page Website|With a lot of content – $500.00
Example: 5 Page Website|With small content – $400.00|$350.00|$300.00

[Senff]

I don’t think you should be setting a fixed price per page, because this limits yourself right from the start.

What if the client wants a one-page site with a bunch of different sections and lots of content that’s going to take you 10 hours? Getting paid $100 will not be worth it.

What if they want a site with 5 pages with a design so simple that it only has a title, a little bit of text and a few images that will take you half an hour to do one template? You may be pricing yourself out if you charge $500 for that.

I would suggest you don’t set a price until you know more about the content structure and the designs. Not sure if you’ll be doing the designs yourself as well, or just the coding, but let’s say someone else is doing the designs and structuring. You should look at that first, and make an estimate of how long it would take you to develop that into a site. Once you have an idea how many hours you’ll be spending on it, you can tell the client how much you will be charging for it.

In other words, charge by the hour. You don’t want to do lots of work for $10/hour if it’s a really complex design, or charge your client $300/hour if it’s a simple site.

tl;dr — first determine how much work you’ll have to do, then put a price on the time you’ll be spending on it.

[RawadM]

Thank you for the quick respond Senff. Yeah I do the design myself .So your saying I should first design the layout first , then when it’s all done, I decide the price from there?

[Senff]

Well, that depends how much time you plan on doing the design. What does the client want? A few designs so they can choose? Or will they take your first shot at a design?

It doesn’t really matter what you do (design, development, etc.), you should charge the client for the amount of time you spend.

If you come up with a design, the client wants changes, you tweak it, client wants more changes, you come up with something else again, client agrees and wants you to make a site, which will take you 10 hours…..there are so many possibilities that it would probably be a bad idea to charge by page.

[Chris Coyier]

I’m not a freelancer so I’m not super qualified to speak to this. BUT. I feel like web design and development is highly specialized and valuable work. If you’re beyond the “just staring out” level, I think charging $100/hr is reasonable (or basing set prices based on estimated hours at that rate) and go up from there.

Here’s a “how much do you want to make” approach.

Here’s a more verbose explanation, which ends at $75/hr, but the goal there is only $40k a year which I’d say is low for this kind of work, especially freelance.

[RawadM]

After researching for some quite sometime, I have decided for small projects to charge $17.00 per hour, for large projects that are time consuming and take around 2 weeks will be around a 1000.

Thanks for all those who responded. I appreciate all the advice giving.

[RawadM]

You got to remember I’m just starting out, so I have to start a little cheap . I will for sure research the forums. I don’t want to lose clients, yet again I can’t be too cheap on myself.

[RawadM]

According to where I’m living the overall Web Designers make per hour is $17.00. I’m going to start at that price then move up later on. What do you guys think about that. I’m living with the family still, and I only pay for phone bills and my MasterCard.

I have 2 packages, one would be small task and the other would be large projects

Large Project – time consuming| Requires Time|Full Website
Small Task – Minor changes | Bug Fixes | General maintaining

http://occinfo.alis.alberta.ca/occinfopreview/info/browse-occupations/occupation-profile.html?id=71003292

[Anonymous]

According to where I’m living the overall Web Designers make per hour is $17.00.

If the link you posted is meant to demonstrate that, we’re looking at different pages. The page says that the overall mean hourly wage is $28.80 (median is $25.45). The figure you are quoting is for people in the lowest 5th percentile. The mean average wage for those just starting out is $21.97 (median is $20.33), but even in those figures, the highest 5% are earning $36.38.

More importantly, look at the skills shortage information. 40% of employers have tried to employ someone in the last two years, over half of whom experienced difficulties in doing so.

Make sure you are offering quality work. Work within your skill bracket initially and your work will be of the same quality (hopefully better) than others competing for the same contracts. If your skills aren’t there yet, then take the time to develop them before charging for your services. I don’t see a reason for you not to charge at least at the average rates, but if you truly believe in what you can bring then I would urge you to focus on the upper percentiles rather than the lower.

[RawadM]

I have decided for small projects that my hourly rate is going to be $20.00. Thanks for all advice guys. I appreciate it.

[Erik]

I found this article pretty good for answering my question Freelancing: How to talk yourself into charging more

Plus these guys on here have helped me a TON!

[Andy Adams]

Hey Rawad, I’m happy you found a rate that works for you. If you’ll take my humble suggestion, after you complete your first project, bid your next one at $40/hour and see if it works. From my experience, you’re well below market rates at $20/hour.

$20/hour will (roughly) equate to $20,000/year, or $1,700/month – unless you work above average hours.

If that amount will make you happy, awesome – keep at it. If not, try upping your rate to see what happens!

[lprintz]

I used to charge ‘per page’ and it always seemed to bite me in the ass!

Also, if you’re using a CMS like WordPress, there aren’t any physical pages per se.

I typically charge per project but give the customer a page range – like 10-12 pages just so they don’t come back with a site map of 100 pages! Of course, if it ends up being 14 pages I don’t nickle-and-dime them…I’m clear it’s just a range. That way they don’t come at you for a discount if it’s 8 pages ;)

[shaneisme]

Find out the customer’s budget up front rather than have an arbitrary price. Once you have that, as well as the real scope of the project, you’ll know what is and is not possible – or if you want to take the job in the first place.

Many first time buyers (those that have never purchased design or development before) will scoff at this idea, but really it’s a requirement for me. It’s easy for people to understand you can put in 1 hour or hundreds of man-hours into a project. Without all the information, you can’t give an accurate quote.

Don’t fret though, you’ll get better at selling yourself as time goes on.

[Alen]

$35.00/hr, eventually my price will go up

If you’re developing something that will generate a lot of income for that customer you need to charge accordingly. You can’t treat this type of work as same as building simple brochure type website. Since you’re just starting make sure to stay organized and keep track of your time, this includes meeting with clients, commute, phone conversations, everything that needs tracking so that you can evaluate if what you are doing is sustainable. Because it’s not a business if it’s not making money. :)

[Author]

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