I am BRAND new to web design. If you read the link in my sig. it will explain things further.

I have a client that im doing a site for and while im doing his site im learning. I basicaly started doing his site just as a project to learn from but he REALLY needs a site so I asked him if he wanted me to do it. Get paid to learn

The problem is however... what do I charge him for my time? It has taken me way longer then any of you guys since im just learning. So I can't charge him by the hour. If I was to charge by the hour what would the rate be? I live in CT if that has anything to do with it. How do you guys base your prices?

So far I have basic HTML ( kind of cheating by designing it in Indesign.. saving as a PDF .. bringing it into photoshop to splice and then droping it into dreamweaver. Thats bad right?) I made a pretty basic Flash splash screen, and 4-6 pages total (home,about,contact,menus)

sorry this is so long...

Umm I can't name a price but to be realistic, it would be way less than a professional, experienced designer.

At the moment, it sounds like you're slicing a design up and throwing it into a few tables - I wouldn't even class this as real web design because it's simply images, not any HTML text and stuff. It's a way to create web pages, but it's definitely not good practice. I recommend you spend some time learning HTML and CSS before you get stuck in this habit - HTML and CSS are more complicated but they are worth it for numerous reasons.

Dan

Originally Posted by whym

Umm I can't name a price but to be realistic, it would be way less than a professional, experienced designer.

At the moment, it sounds like you're slicing a design up and throwing it into a few tables - I wouldn't even class this as real web design because it's simply images, not any HTML text and stuff. It's a way to create web pages, but it's definitely not good practice. I recommend you spend some time learning HTML and CSS before you get stuck in this habit - HTML and CSS are more complicated but they are worth it for numerous reasons.

Dan

How did I know you were going to say that. I know i need learn HTML and CSS but Its taking me longer then I thought it pick up this codeing. Do you recommend any books I should start off with or website (free is better ) I learned all I have so far from Lynda.com video training.
I don't want to keep designing half assed like this but my client needs a website ASAP, and I need to charge him something.

Originally Posted by iveo83

How did I know you were going to say that. I know i need learn HTML and CSS but Its taking me longer then I thought it pick up this codeing. Do you recommend any books I should start off with or website (free is better ) I learned all I have so far from Lynda.com video training.
I don't want to keep designing half assed like this but my client needs a website ASAP, and I need to charge him something.

Yep - I recommend www.w3schools.com . It's free and it's all standards compliant code. Practice is best though - try practicing making just simple pages for yourself with a bit of HTML and a bit of CSS. You quickly pick it up that way.

Originally Posted by whym

Yep - I recommend www.w3schools.com . It's free and it's all standards compliant code. Practice is best though - try practicing making just simple pages for yourself with a bit of HTML and a bit of CSS. You quickly pick it up that way.

Ya I went to www.w3schools.com first but it is very confusing. I need something much more userfriendly. Its very hard for me to go from Illustrator/Indesign/Photoshop to coding.
I plan on working on it, but like I said he needs a website ASAP so I was just doing this to get him by, and then as I learn I'll just update the site so its correct. It's a brand new restaurant and he needs his menu, directions, phone numbers, ect. online.

He wants a price...

Originally Posted by iveo83

He wants a price...

Hey dude, I would have to see the site you built to put a dollar value on it.
Ya can't price a car over the phone without looking at it right?

Post the URL please...

BTW - If you are inexperienced at web design, I would charge very little. Maybe $100.00 bucks!

http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/ is a great resource for people first starting out. Don't buy any books for this though. There are 1,000s of sites out on the internet that teach basic web design a thousand different ways. Try a few of them out until you start to get comfortable with the basics. Then go to w3schools.com as was mentioned above. Once you grasp some of the very basics, they will start to make alot more sense.

As far as your original question, I would charge them a very small amount. 4 to 6 pages of static content that isn't standards compliant isn't worth much at all. And like you said you are being paid to learn. If your customer is happy with what you created though, charing $100 or something else very small like that wouldn't be a bad thing. If they aren't happy, don't charge them a thing. Just chalk it up as experience for you for your next job. If you just give them your code for free, you can always use them as a reference in the future, as I'm sure they'd be willing to say nice things about you.

This is the basic idea if you are still learning web design

1. make a design using Photoshop, create all the components from logo, button, text, etc. (you can use 800x600 px, or 1024x768 px)

2. If you finished, slice up using Slice tool for each part. And rename all of the part. For the unecesarry images, like text, solid background color or white color, you can rename it with del or delete. (right click and choose edit slice option to rename)

3. Save your file using Save For Web and convert it into HTML

4. In the images folder, if you see the name with del or delete, you can deleted all, because that is unecesarry images. (less images mean the website will be load faster)

4. You can use HTML program like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to input the text or change the background color

practice and practice, later you will gain a lot of experience.

Even more experienced persons in web design ask this question. How can you charge fairly for something, when sometimes there are people out there better than yourself. If you are brand new to webdesign, I'd say ask for a couple bux donation, and then do your best job. It's not a real price tag, but rather something better than nothing deal. Until there is something you can confidently say that you are good at, it's hard to put a price on something. Right now I'm considering offering a particular package at a certain price, only because I'm confident it can work.