Service Pricing suggestions

[Hypatia_1]

I am, obviously, new to this. I have done web-sites for myself and for friends (free). This is the first time that I am going to be doing a web-site for a business and I don't know what the going (competative) rates are for web-site construction.
I have been told anything from $50/hr, $500 whole site completion, to 2-3 thousand for site completion and up-keep.
Suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank-you

[jpmoriarty]

personally i think it's dangerous to look at what some people charge and base your prices on that accordingly - you have to go by what you think your services are worth.

Yes there are some companies that will charge $50 per hour, but bare in mind that some of those will have 5 or more people working there, and will have experts in flash, graphic design, web programming, HTML etc. In those cases, $50 an hour is a fair fee cos you know that they're going to achieve an awful lot in an hour. If you're likely to spend maybe an hour a day (or an hour in ten possibly) looking for a ; that you've left out that's throwing up a parse error in php somewhere (for example), then it's not really fair to be charging $50 an hour because, not trying to sound mean or anything, but you ain't worth it!

WHen i'm doing a quote i base my rate on

how much i need the work (so will charge less if i've not got a great deal happening and really want to do the work)
how good i think i am
how long i think it will take me to achieve the task (and whether it's something ive done before or not)
mates rates etc

i've only been doing php for about 4 months now, and HTML for about 4 years, but my last job i did (an intranet for a company i used to work for) i think we decided on £600 for the "project" (since i was learning at the same time i didnt think it fair to bill "hourly" for the above reasons). I ended up spending a long time on it (but was happy to, again cos i was learnign) and i think my hourly rate worked out at just over £10 an hour. Sure that's cheap in web design terms, but it was fair because it was about what i was worth. If im doing work now, i'd probably look to start charging at about £15 an hour, but again it would depend largely on the project.

Bare in mind, however, that if you're doing it professionally (and charging thousands that would be considered doing it professionally) then you may have to consider things like insurance and so on (if you're not a company as it is). For example, if you design the site etc and are responsible for it's upkeep, what happens if through bad prgramming the site is hacked and offline for a week? If someone is paying you thousands of pounds to maintain the site, then they may well sue you for incompetence or breech of contract, something along those lines. When you start charging "serious" prices, then you have to provide a "serious" service, and if you're biting off more than you can chew just cos the dolalr signs are flashing in your head, then you could find yourself in extremely hot water - so get a lawyer and check out what the damage could be.

But other than that - good luck! i hope it all works out for you, and am sure that there are others on the board who would be interested as to what happens, so keep us posted!

[Hypatia_1]

Thanks for the advice! I think I'll do the web-site and judge the price afterwards. I know that that is not the way to do things, but he's a friend and I know he's good for any amount of money and he wouldn't jip me. He knows something good when he sees it. If everything turns out okay, when its all said and done I'll post the url.