How Much Would You Charge?

chuckles · Mar 31st, 2008, 12:41

Hope someone can help me here.

I'm new to web design, although I work as an application developer, so I'm fairly technically capable

I have become involved with an Association in my local village which is run by all the local businesses. They currently have a website which is in a real mess. Totally out of date info, messy, hard to manage etc.

I have been asked if I will set them up a new site. Due to the kind of things they want on it, I am thinking of usin Joomla. I've set up a test site and am comfortable with setting up and managing a Joomla install. I plan on using Sobi2 component for the business listings.

So for those of you who do this kind of thing as a living, and maintain sites like this, how much do you charge for your services? I've been told the last guy was paid to look after the site and for setting it up, so I'm assuming I would be as well. This would only involve evening/weekend work as it'd be an extra bit of work "on the side" so to speak.

I can't sell myself as an experience wed developer, because I'm not, but I'm well aware that Joomla is designed to be very powerful without the need to have a mass of web development knowledge, so I might get round that one

Any advice would be great

Thanks

aso186 · Mar 31st, 2008, 13:08

I think welshstew summed this up pretty well

Basically, it's really down to you! What do you think is a deserved price? How much are you prepared to work for? Are you charging by the hour or a fixed fee?

I really don't have much weight to base this on, but I'd say fees can be between £8 to £40 per hour, depending on your expertise and the work involved.

chuckles · Mar 31st, 2008, 13:20

Fair comments

I'm torn at the moment. I know Joomla will do what we want it to, and I have lots of ideas that I want to implement, such as newsletters etc, so I think there will be some pretty constant updating/management involved.

The one thing I'm not overly capable with is template design. As a non-web developer I'm not too hot on CSS, although I'm pretty good in Photoshop (for images, obviously

). I can easily enough mod a pre-existing template, but I'd probably struggle to create a new template from scratch, without a lot of time and learning.....

aso186 · Mar 31st, 2008, 14:36

Is there any chance of sub-contracting a web developer for the template work? There's a known service called 'PSD to HTML' (Google it) who turn your PSD designs into CSS and HTML templates.

If you can get this work outsourced, it would save you a lot of effort and you could reap the rewards of light, valid, accessible markup!

Of course, you can always learn CSS! At Webforumz, we always encourage others to learn CSS as it's such a powerful tool for today's web developer, and fairly easy to get the basics under wraps.

The reason why I mention the above though, is learning CSS is not always a practical solution for everyone, and generally I would not recommend to start building commercially until you've really got to grips with it.

If you take the plunge, make sure to check out our CSS forum stickies

Gerry · Mar 31st, 2008, 21:07

Can you find out how much the previous person got paid, and whether those that paid it were happy with that cost? It might give you a level to base your costs on e.g. if it was per the hour, would you be happy working for that same rate or not?
It all gets down to whether you would be happy working for a certain amount or not.
Getting the experience also counts.
good luck

nuideas · Apr 17th, 2008, 16:48

if you have a good relationship with them then just ask them dude... what can it hurt. (find out what they paid before.)

if you do this one and its a success then your gonna get freepress by word of mouth.

get your link to ur site on it...

ask if they can testimonial you...

its all good aslong as you dont think ur out of pocket.