i am having a hard time finding what i should be doing from a business perspective. there is a huge discrepancy in web design prices. i am just trying to find the right price. i hate people that charge $500 for a site. how can you make a living doing that? you would have to do 100 sites a year just to make 50k. obviously i am not trying to compete with that but these chop shops online are driving prices down. i like doing custom one offs but it obviously takes more time so i have to charge more, but i could get a lot more jobs if i quoted lower and just did basic designs. where do people get there prices. i just did some work for a client on an online store and someone quoted him 42k and someone else 1k.... its just insanity just looking for any good advice
I would do some research into what others in your area are charging. Like you I also design everything from scratch, I'm not knocking anyone who uses templates that is a personal choice, it's just not mine. My pricing is very fair for the UK, that is why I would never try and compete with people from other countries. Quote "i hate people that charge $500 for a site" I think that's a bit unfair, in the UK that converts to £335, are you saying that a client should never be able to get a site for that price? If so I totally disagree, and I'm sure most other designers would too. Yes a client would need to be realistic about what they could get for that price, but I don't know of a designer that would state that they can't do anything for that price. Web sites don't always start in the thousands and nor should they, it totally depends on what the client wants. I once seen someone quote less than $100 for a 4/5 page web site, that to me is totally bizarre but hey each to their own. I may think it's ridiculous but it doesn't bother me if they want to work for those kind of prices that's up to them, I just sure as heck aren't going to try and compete, because I value my skill and time at much more than that. If you do your research and price yourself according to what others in your country are charging then you know you are offering a fair price and I wouldn't worry about what others are charging. Just my opinion.
Maybe you are not in touch with the web online world. If you did not already realise, many stuff online like latest news, information, email accounts, social networks like Facebook, games and even porn are free. Now in the offline world you have to pay for those stuff. Plus take into consideration, these days sad to say, anyone can start a website in a jiffy with CMS like Wordpress, Joomla- no need to know much abt web design or technical stuff. Which then means that prices for web design are much lower than before. You say $500 for a site is low ..you must be joking.. these days you can easily get job done for less than $100 As Michael Porter says there are 3 strategies of competing in business - a) Low Cost (Low price) b) Premium (High Price) or c) Focus/ Niche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies Someone who adopts low cost stratey and offers service for $100 may be able to make 1000 sites a year and gross $100K per year or someone who uses High price strategy sell service for $2000 and makes 50 sites per year to also gross $100K per year. At end of day, all depends on the needs, budget of the customers- there are low end customers and there are high end customers. Just like there are premium airlines like British Airways and there are low cost airlines like RyanAir. It is stupid to knock other low cost strategy of others when it is clear that you are serving different types of customers. I see this all the time- the low price suppliers bitching abt the high price suppliers and the high price suppliers whining about the low cost suppliers. To each their own strategy.
Actually $500 for a site is kind of low for web design these days. I have seen simple websites (5 pages) built for $500-$700. It depends on how much you know about web design and how detailed you can make them. The more detailed, the more expensive because obviously it takes more time. I would do prices for a Simple, Basic, and Advanced website and create 3 different prices or do quotes per site job because they will all be different. If it is a business looking for a website, you can be sure they can afford a few hundred dollars for a basic site, so don't be afraid to give them a quote for that.
This is something that challenges me on every project I undertake. I generally assess the hours required with the work involved and the estimated budget of the company involved. When I started freelancing I would undercut as much as possible because hey - some work is better than no work right? Wrong - I now stick to my guns where pricing is concerned and my rates are not the cheapest. This means I miss out on online projects (people per hour and all that nonsense) but I do a lot of good work for real world clients. and they're the ones that matter.
I would never charge a flat fee for SEO/SEM/graphics - that's just asking for trouble. Charge an hourly rate. Also, make it clear that edits also incur an hourly rate or your client will take advantage of you. If you are good at what you do and aren't going to throw together a Wordpress + pre-made template and copy/paste text into it, there's no reason why you can't charge $50-75/hour based on your expertise level.