Niall Kavanagh wrote:
> On Tue, 23 May 2000, Adam Wendt wrote:
>
> > I've been asked to take over the maintanence and design of
> > www.fredbgov.com and as this will be the first time I've done this kind of
> > work for money I'm not exactly sure on how much to ask for. I know this is
> > a little offtopic but I thought i'd ask here before going looking god
> > knows where or just pulling something out of my head.
>
> Well, sort of. How much is your time worth? How much time will you be
> spending each month on the site? Perhaps an hourly rate is not the best
> way to go.
>
Is this an activity that you expect to become a major source of work and income?
Or is it a minor sideline that will give you some extra spending money for a
little
time and effort? Do you need to cover overhead and expenses? Do you have
benefits through another job, or not care about them?
It's easy to forget about some of those things when you start freelancing, but
they take coin out of your pocket even if the rates you charge don't put
anything in to offset it. A good habit is to always append "plus expenses" to
any quote. You can always eat some of the minor expenses if the project
is profitable and you want to cultivate good will, but trying to raise the total
to recover from an unprofitable quote creates irate customers very quickly.
> Most shops I've seen in your position don't charge an hourly rate for
> ongoing "maintainance" work. Instead they figure out how many hours on
> average they'll probably work, and charge accordingly. If they work more
> than an agreed upon number of hours THEN they kick in an hourly rate for
> the extra time. Works out great because you're guarenteed a certain amount
> each month and the client is assured you'll be available for a certain
> amount of hours each month.
>
> As to the actual rates, the last place I worked with charged around $80/hr
> for content work (mundane HTML editing), $120/hr for development (Perl/PHP
> type stuff), $120/hr for design (a bargin), and $140 for heavey
> development and site structuring.
Couple of other things to consider. Is this a serious commercial endeavor or
a quasi-hobby? (Both for you and for the site.) You also can price based on
the value to them, with some constraint from competitive forces (i.e. you can't
price too high above what others would charge, nor should you price too low
compared to what your time would be worth to someone else)..
A serious business site will expect a professional level of performance and
should be willing and able to pay for it. If they aren't at that level,
consider
whether you need to be or not and plan accordingly.
--Bruce McCulley
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