I have done about 6 websites so far, and I am not great at it but the people I have done the sites for are satisfied. I use dreamweaver. However mostly I have done them in trade for services for my kids (horseback riding, baseball training etc). This will be the first site I will get paid for.

Anyway, a friend who is an attorney asked me to create a site for someone who is running for a county superior court judge. I will probably not use a template and the site will include a place to take donations, and I will also be hosting the site. It won't be as creative or as progressive as most of the site I have seen here but it will be pretty good, I think. I will probably have to update the site frequently during the campaign.

Any ideas how much I should charge? The campaign manager is going to call me this afternoon and my friend said he is probably going to try to get me to do it for as cheaply as possible.

Thanks,

Rob

It's hard to tell you what to charge since it can depend on so many factors. without knowing the details of the job I couldn't even guess at an exact price.

What I'd suggest though is to do your best to estimate how many hours you think it will take you to finish the site. Maybe bump those hours up by 10-20% since all sites seem to take longer than you initially think. Then multiply the hours by the hourly rate you want. The more sites you develop and the more you keep track of your time the better you'll get at estimating the time it will take to develop the next site.

The hourly rate will depend on your experience and even your location. When I set mine I checked out others in my city who did the same kind of work and had similar experience.

As you are just starting out then don't worry too much about the money, adding to your portfolio is the most important thing and this alone will usually lead to further work (and money!). As Vangogh says, try to estimate the time it will take, remember to allow for the ongoing updates in the time taken. But if you get it wrong, then just put it down to experience and at least with website design the costs incurred (apart from time spent) are usually very low.

that's always a tricky one. when I started I used to build sites for a low fee, then I gradually increased my price for each subsequent job until it reached a sustainable level.

I agree with the other reply. Just starting out you need to build a group of clients. Lawyers, accountants etc are great people to do work for because they know so many people.

Set a fair low price, and CLEAR BOUNDARIES OF WHAT YOU WILL DO. Don't get sucked into endless edits and revisions. They take time.