General Discussions

**beta** · 03:10 PM

hi, im looking for advice, i made a site for free for a friend as a favour and as something to begin a portfolio on, now a friend of his would like a similar site and I have no idea of price... I know it can really but I just would like an idea.

The site should look like/ have the features of this one : The private kitchen Verbier

I know i can offer him a good service because its web-standards complient, looks good in every main browser and handheld, and has a blogging feature. Any idea?

**3rdShiftStudios** · 12:52 PM

linky no werky? i think you meant this: http://www.theprivatekitchen.net/

i would say price the site so you can get money back for doing the free one. Do you have an hour log of what the free one took? Can you just price per hour then tack on maybe 30%

looking at how professionally done the kitchen site is, i'd easily say that's a $2-$3 grand site.

**beta** · 10-08-2006, 03:12 PM

thanks for going to the trouble, even with the broken link

Yea, i think i undercharged my friend a little, took about $100 to cover the hosting

but thanks, its good to get a value range.

**vangogh** · 10-08-2006, 05:52 PM

beta I agree with Jaison. The kitchen site is nicely done. You might want to use the time it took to create that site to estimate the time it will take for the next one and then simply multiply by an hourly rate you think fair.

With hourly rates keep in mind when you do this work you don't get benefits from an employer so you can often double whatever rate you might get if you had a job as a web designer.

**3rdShiftStudios** · 10-08-2006, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

With hourly rates keep in mind when you do this work you don't get benefits from an employer so you can often double whatever rate you might get if you had a job as a web designer.

I've used this as a good theory: take you day job's hourly rate and triple it. [that is if you aren't working at mc donalds...i'm talking about a career job]

**beta** · 10-08-2006, 07:15 PM

yeah, good advice, but i dunno if i can adhere to it. Im the kind of person that takes about 7 hours to decide on one color scheme, only to spend 8 hours the next day changing it...

**colbyt** · 10-08-2006, 08:54 PM

When Vangogh gave you a "nicely done" I knew I had to take a look.

Nicely Done.

The other advice you have received for pricing is on right in line. If you feel like discounting it a little for starting there is also nothing wrong with that as long a you tell them it is a specail price based on portfolio building.

Best wishes.

**3rdShiftStudios** · 10-08-2006, 10:57 PM

the idea isn't really to actually charge PER HOUR. It's more like a guestimate. I mean, who has ever had a client that agreed to pay them 45 or 85 an hour and not requested a quote ahead of time. The idea is you give them a quote, hopefully the hours you spend working on it come up shorter than the total bill:hour ratio and you profit. Sometimes you break even, sometimes you lose out. Just remember, CUSTOMERS WANT TO PAY.

**vangogh** · 10-10-2006, 12:52 AM

Just like Jaison said the hours are an estimate. When I first started working on sites I really had no idea how long it took me to design and build one so my quotes were all over the board.

Then I started tracking my time. There are plenty of programs you can use to track your time or you could just watch the clock and record things in Excel. I break down everything so I have a better idea of how long each part of a site will likely take me.

Now when I estimate my own time I'm usually within an hour or two and I can better estimate how much I should quote someone. I'm assuming you're thinking of going into business for yourself designing and developing sites. If you do it's really important to track your time and know where it all goes. If you find you are spending 7 hours choosing a color and then 8 more hours the next you know you need to come up with a faster way to choose colors. By seeing how long it takes me to do something I not only know better how much to charge for my work, but also see the areas where I need to improve my workflow.

Another thing is to always add a little cushion onto however long you think something will take. Maybe 10% to 20% extra. That will usually come from things like communicatiing back and forth with the client a a couple of minor changes they ineveitably want. When you give yourself a little extra room you cover yourself for the things that can and will go wrong.

For the next site you won't have all the data about how long things take so do your best to estmate how long you think the site should reasonable take. Then do track your time on the next one. You'll be off on the first few sites, but you'll be building your portfolio. It will only take a few sites before you do have a good idea what to charge.

**beta** · 10-10-2006, 04:46 AM

Thanks a lot, its really good to see how one should plan their workflow, i really have no concept of it right now because its just allways been something 'when on the computer'. Time to put more thought in...

**vangogh** · 10-10-2006, 03:29 PM

Glad to help. It's all a learning process. Believe me I didn't start out doing this stuff. Just learned it all litlle by little. Tracking the time you spend on things is really useful. As you do it becomes much easier to know how long things really take and where you need to improve your workflow.

Try to break things out as best you can. Instead of just tracking time for design you could track time for choosing colors, working on the overall layout, creating graphics for the page, etc. It's up to you really how to categorize things based on how you see the tasks you do.

Tracking the specific tasks though has helped me a lot in refining the whole process of how I design and build a site.