eCommerce Tycoon

**pealo86** · 08:03 AM

I'm very new to Magento but have familiarised myself with how to setup a basic store and create new Magento themes (or modify the default one anyway!).

I get a lot of freelance work from local web design companies, and am looking to get ecommerce work off them.

I have no idea how much to charge for a basic ecommerce website however.

I've always heard people saying that ecommerce website are very complex and involve a great deal of work compared to building your average CMS website (or Wordpress theme for example).

To me, it doesn't look as though there would be that much work involved. Well, obviously it would depend on how big the shop / website was.

Let's just say you were given a brief to setup a Magento shop. You had to customise the default Magento theme to fit the design you were given.

You didn't have to bother with tax rules, and were using PayPal website payments standard.

All products in the store were to be classed as 'Simple Products' (let's say there were 200 products in there store, under 5 categories).

I shouldn't imagine many ecommerce projects would be as straightforward as this, but it's just to give me an idea. How much would you charge for something like that?

Even if you just give me a rough estimate that would help to give me some guidance, as I know that there could be many other aspects that would affect the price. And I understand that everybody's prices are different.

Thanks

**TWD** · 07-11-2010, 03:53 AM

Well some PSD to Template Conversion companies I've seen charge 300 bucks or more for Magento themes.

By the way, are you talking Magento vers 1.3 or vers 1.4?
The theming structure is incompatible between the two.
Vers 1.4 seems a little easier in so much as there are fewer CSS files for a start.

**pealo86** · 07-12-2010, 06:33 AM

Wow 1.3 and 1.4 are incompatible between each other? Looks like I probably shouldn't have ordered a book on Magento 1.3 theme development then!

**metho** · 07-12-2010, 07:46 AM

Discussing web project prices on an open forum is asking for trouble. So much disagreement ensues that's it's not worth it.

"it doesn't look as though there would be that much work involved", unfortunately there most certainly is. After you've done a few ecommerce projects, you appreciate the old addage, 'the devel's in the details'.

Ballpark? Mr Backyard Noqualifications would charge between 1500 and 3000. Mr Freelance Experienced would charge 2500 to 5000. Mr Sole Operator or Mr Small Biz would be 5000 to 20 000. A lot of western design companies are 7.5 to 40K.

Then since it's magento, add another 40%. Developing for that bugger is painful.

Bottom line, if you're asking, you're a price taker. Get what you can against your competitors.