Website Price

[gunslinger]

Unless its the next Ebay or Amozon I can't see $5,000 in a website.

 

[hawks5999]

Hope I didn't short change myself? That is what I hate about beiong on my own... What is too much or what is too little...

I learned a simple rule of thumb back when I was managing techs in someone else's company. When scoping a project, I would ask the technician how long he estimated it would take to do 'x' and then I would double the time that he said. Reason being, the technician's estimation was always off by half. The technician always, always always underestimated the effort required to do a task.

I suggest that you use a similar formula with yourself. Whatever you estimate a fair price to be, double it. You will always, always, always underestimate the value of your work, always, period. And you will likely underestimate the effort to complete the work.

And if you do overestimate and end up completing the work in half the time you expected and charge the customer double what you originally thought then what you have just done is improved efficiency and maximized profit. That second part is typically one of the main goals of business - maximizing profit. You are in business right? If you could make twice as much doing half as much work would you do it? You should. And don't feel bad charging the customer. Here is a law of business: When value exceeds price a sale is made.

So you feel like it's nothing for you to create a website so charging $1000 seems high. To most people creating a website involves some sort of technological voodoo and so they pay someone else to do it. You are being paid not for your time, you are being paid for your knowledge. As long as you simply trade dollars for hours you will never get ahead. When you start trading dollars for your knowledge then you will start to see bigger returns. Approach all future deals with that mindset. Maximize your profit, don't apologize for it. You are bringing more value than the cost.

Markets are efficient too. So if you are in fact bringing less value than the cost, the market will correct for that in that people won't pay your price. That's fine too. You aren't selling until someone says 'no'. At the point you encounter that then you can either demonstrate your greater value or back off on your price. But don't do the client's negotiation work for them. If you say $1000 and they want to pay less, make them earn the reduced rate. Again, that is how markets work.

Now that the business aspect of this deal has been addressed, let's talk about the technical aspect (and then a little more business). Don't create straight HTML pages. Use some sort of Content Management System (CMS). Joomla has been mentioned (hats off cmnova on the game site - looks great). Another product is Expression Engine (aka EE). My own site: http://hawksys.net is built on EE. A CMS is a database driven site that is easily updatable with new content. This beats editing HTML any day of the week. The added benefit for you (back to business) is that you can charge the client a much higher hosting fee based on this idea: "Do you want to pay me my hourly rate of $xxx each time you need to make an update or would you prefer to be able to make the change yourself as simply as you would edit a document in Word? Well, since your site is built on the latest technology I can give you access to update or add content as part of your
hosting for just $xx each month." If you go this route, I'd recommend using EE as the admin panel is very easy and with about 30 minutes of training most clients can be trained to add/update content. Sure you can do this with a free/open CMS like Joomla, but the interface might be just a bit too techie for the client. EE is priced at about $300 per license.

 

[hawks5999]

Unless its the next Ebay or Amozon I can't see $5,000 in a website.

Again, looking at price vs. value $5,000 is not much for a good website.

Consider that Ebay and Amazon are not so much websites as e-commerce platforms. They are essentially applications that exist on the web.

I happen to know that this site: http://www.camptallpine.com/ had a price north of $10k. It's not eBay or Amazon but it allows the owners to update their content and has a nice design. They were quite happy to pay the price for a professional looking site since it will generate more than the price they paid and save them much more than the price they paid vs. doing it themselves.

With 14 actual pages what would you quote for this? At the rate, Leztek charged it would be about $1300. Does that seem a fairer price? Could you make any money at that price?

 

[bagellad]

Humm that is quite interesting, Do you how how many hours they took to make that website? I am assuming the customer supplied all the content (pics & text). Ive found pricing websites very difficult as well. I assume you make a little bit on the hosting as well.

 

[hawks5999]

I don't know the hours involved in making that website but the question sort of misses the point. You need to break yourself of the idea that you are trading hours for dollars. If it took them 8 hours or 80 hours is immaterial. Clients are paying for outcomes not hours. Charge for outcomes.

 

[bagellad]

That is a really good way of looking at it. The client doesn't need to really hear about how long it took to make, all they care if the final product. Ill have to think about that a little bit with my pricing structure.

 

[Wheelie]

Unless its the next Ebay or Amozon I can't see $5,000 in a website.

Are you serious?

There are a phenomenal number of web sites that cost 10x that to get to day one.

 

[Wheelie]

I don't know the hours involved in making that website but the question sort of misses the point. You need to break yourself of the idea that you are trading hours for dollars. If it took them 8 hours or 80 hours is immaterial. Clients are paying for outcomes not hours. Charge for outcomes.

That is so true. This is truly a "value-added" product/service you are providing. A good way to sell your services is to provide a list of web sites you have done to show your prospects as examples of your work. This - coupled with your confidence and salesmanship - will play the biggest role in your selling price.

That said: "brochure" web sites do not generally cost as much as "interactive" web sites or ones with lots of flashy content.

 

[TechnoKelvin]

What do you guys think about pricing per page?

My setup is this currently,

200$ for a single page / homepage, and $50 for every page after that. It still ends up working out for the customer price wise.

I can offer web sites at this price because I use a CMS called DNN (It's like Joomla but more programming friendly).

I am going to do a business website that will have roughly 24 pages and with my system it will come out to $1,400 but I'm not sure if that's too much.

 

[gunslinger]

What do you guys think about pricing per page?

My setup is this currently,

200$ for a single page / homepage, and $50 for every page after that. It still ends up working out for the customer price wise.

I can offer web sites at this price because I use a CMS called DNN (It's like Joomla but more programming friendly).

I am going to do a business website that will have roughly 24 pages and with my system it will come out to $1,400 but I'm not sure if that's too much.

Thats actually about what I would charge for a site that size if they didn't want anything too complex.