How much should I charge for this?

[alexb]

I was inspired by this post, so I decided to try it and posted a few ads on craigslist. I've had 4 bites, and I'm currently working on one of them right now. Basically, this lady wants me to design her site from scratch and plug in the content that she's providing. She doesn't seem to care much about SERPs though.

What I've done

• Picked out a nice wordpress theme, set it up on a subdomain, and populated the main page with some of her content. Showed it to her and she wanted me to 'make a few changes'.
• Spent about 4 hours mucking around in the style sheet and php files, changing fonts and colors, removing/adding page elements, etc. Also in the process of designing a large banner for the top of each page in Photoshop.

What I still need to do

• Once the layout is correct, I need to populate nine pages with her content and pictures.
• Setup Google analytics.
• Teach her to use Wordpress.
• Move everything to her hosting.

How much should I charge?

 

[nickclarson]

Charge by hour for sure... um to someone I don't know I would typically charge $60/hour, but I'm a pretty fast worker these days. To give you an idea, what I usually end up charging for an average site is anywhere from $500-$1000

However it sounds like you are using a generic template and wordpress, so nothing really custom just some tweaks here and there. I would probably charge $200-$500 depending on how much work you feel you put into it.

I mean, $200 is a pretty good price for getting an entire website set up and on the web regardless of how custom it actually is.

I'm pretty lenient though, I like to make both sides happy when coming to agreement on a price. So keep that in mind if you're anything like me

If you make the person happy that's always a chance for repeat work, or they'll tell their friends!

 

[nohatter]

I cant give you a prize to charge, but i give you a few things to think about.
Dunno and dont care if these were covered in your inspiration thread but here goes:

1. You should charge from the package and tutoring separate, and come up with a hour amount for the included tutoring.
2. You should say that any extra tutoring costs $$ per hour.
3. You should say that you fix any problems with initial setup that might rise, but
any user made problems will charge $$ per hour.

I think these are crucial things to let your customers know, since otherwise you will
spend all your time fixing and tutoring them if and when they come back bitching.

 

[maximus]

Good point by nohatter about setting expectations for your clients right away. They have to know that they can't come to you with tiny changes and bs requests every 5 minutes.

If you really want to expand this business model and it's your only source of income, then start your first few clients at low rates to get the business and to populate your site; then after getting a handful of clients and as your site becomes more desirable, raise your rates.