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Website and Internet Services - What do you charge?

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by wizarddrummer, Jun 10, 2013.

  1. #1
    Hi,

    I'm trying to give a reality check for my friend about the cost of Web Design, web maintenance, Internet research and other services. In a sense I'm out of touch with the current trends myself.

    Four questions:
    How much do you / would you charge per hour for:
    1) Internet Research: Using Google and other resources to find information and report back.
    2) Internet Sales: You're asked to help sell some things. Posting vehicles (uploading pictures, text, stats, etc.) and other items on classified sites and forums and also entering the info in relentless posts in blogs. (Power houses like eBay and other paid classified sites which would give HUGE visibility are off the table.) Would you consider spending hundreds of hours doing it for commissions only w/no guarantee of a sale? If not how much per hour?
    3) Web Site Maintenance: Changing / adding / deleting content on an existing site?
    4) Web Site Conversion: How much would you charge to do a conversion based upon the information below?

    Website conversion project.

    The old site had many authors over the years; was not SEO friendly; was written in antiquated (gobbledygook) HTML style with no CSS. Pictures and other site files were erratically named and the site had little organization in the directory / folder structure.
    Screenshots of the old site are located here. (at the bottom page are some other relevant bits of information)
    http://musclecarranch.com/flslzBYYWdE/ForumQuestion.html

    Now that you've seen the old site, a quick recap of what I did.

    Originally I wanted to do a Toy Story type 3D representation of the Ranch. Within a few days, I learned that my skills in Maya were not up to that challenge. Then I remembered a free 3D Mustang for Maya, by Ralph Manis (infinite-designs) that could be imported and I thought I could use that with some 3D letters for the Logo. It is located here: http://www.infinitee-designs.com/1970-Mach-1.htm His version looks a lot better than mine.

    When (after many, many hours of frustration) I was finally able to import it into the correct version of Maya. Unfortunately, none of the wonderful textures came along with it. So textured it using Blinn and lit up the headlights and other lights.

    Spent a couple of days looking at fonts and then used CINEMA 4D (way better than Maya for text) to create the Muscle Car Ranch section.

    I imported that into Maya, added the shiny floor and the other text, played with lighting for a long time and rendered what you see. The Logo took me about 3 weeks to get it the way I wanted it to look. Lots of tweaking and rendering in that process. My machine was way too underpowered to manipulate things quickly.

    The rest of the site is what it is. I used PHP for Navigation for the side menus, inline menus and Gallery displays. I used CSS for formatting. New Version:

    http://www.musclecarranch.com/
    Pages NOT in the Navigation anymore because the items are no longer available.
    http://www.musclecarranch.com/1969-hurst-oldsmobile-455.php
    http://www.musclecarranch.com/1971-ford-mustang-mach-1.php

    The bulk of the work was getting the old content and wrangling it into the new design. I added some new content: History of Muscle Cars, expanded several sections, renamed 98% of the image files.
    I inspected each image. In many instances I did image processing: I cropped them or resized them or enhanced them or replaced them with better versions or any combination of that.

    I tried to create a more SEO friendly site with the PHP (generated HTML)

    The website validates without the third party Weather insert.

    The folder that contains the site files has: (18 folders, 27 PHP files, 18 CSS, 3 HTML, 580 JPG and one animated Flash File.)

    The parent folder has 25 folders w/more than 5,000 files: proof of concept, CSS menu variations, Logo Work, Image work, Design variations, Gallery work, etc.

    Again, (pretend you like the design) because this question is only about what you think your price would have been to convert this site.

    Just looking for a ball park figure.

    It's a question that encompasses not only the time it takes to build or convert a site but also to learn the craft, how to use the tools (graphic, languages, editors, Flash editors, and other applications) that are involved.

    My good friend tends to think that website design is not real work. He tends to think that creating a site is not much more difficult than what he's doing when he's updating his Facebook page because it is done sitting in front of a computer and not outside building an amphitheater.

    Thanks very much.
     
    wizarddrummer, Jun 10, 2013 IP
  2. xira

    xira Active Member

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    #2
    Not trying to be cheeky, but every country is different in pricing. Since you're from the US - West Coast, my guess is that a site can cost you $1000 - $10,000 depending on what you want to do.
    Regardless of the cost, the first thing to consider is: What is the overall objective of the website?

    The base problem with your current site (outside of the design) is the lack of clarity of what you're trying to do. And who is your target audience? Dumping money into a site without considering who is supposed to come visit and how to present your products and services, is literally like tossing it in the trash. You won't score high on Google, and worst, no one will be interested in your site.

    In regards to maintaining the site, well... there are two aspects to this. The technical side (keeping your code and CMS updated) and there is the content side (writing new content). They generally are two different companies that do this. Keeping things up on the tech side will run about $20 - $200 per month. The other one depends on how much content you want maintained and written. Could cost you a bundle.

    These figures are mostly guesses based of my American client's reporting. Fact is, none of it is relevant until you have a marketing plan. What do you want to say and to whom? Now how much money are you willing to invest to get your message out there?

    Good luck
     
    xira, Jun 12, 2013 IP
  3. wizarddrummer

    wizarddrummer Peon

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    #3
    Thanks very much for the reply.

    You make some excellent points. And I don't have great answers that I can give you.

    Most of the websites in the distant past, before Google, were basically informative sites.

    They didn't have any notion of being SEO friendly which I know a thimble full of information about. It's voodoo science and changes regularly.

    They weren't trying to be first on the page ranking or top of the list; they weren't in your face to sell things either.

    The website I put together was just a meager attempt to take the content of the old site and put it into a prettier package that was easier to modify.

    The target audience is everyone: Kids, Adults, Senior Citizens, Car enthusiasts, Collectors, RV'ers, basically anybody that's breathing, etc.

    It's an interesting Open Air Museum that is also an RV park. It has a first class amphitheater w/lots of electrical connections which is great for hosting events and lots and lots of stuff to look at. All of the info is in the website.

    No, it doesn't have the typical landing page with the statistically favored Orange CTA Button, Navigation bar, Billboard Center along with Testimonials and such, it's just a site that has lots of information about the Muscle Car Ranch.

    That's the purpose of the site essentially. Shows you in pictures what the ranch is about and if you like it make it one of your destination spots.

    And there are things for sale, but that's not the main purpose, to sell items. Just want people to come and have fun.

    I just found out, a few days ago, from my friend that Hot Rod Magazine Just Listed MCR as the Top 57 Destinations for Gearheads and Car and Road trip enthusiast in the Country amongst places Like Pacific Coast Highway to the Finest Museums in the Nation to the Texas state fair etc.

    I haven't put that on the site yet.

    I don't know much about Internet Marketing or where to begin to try and something so multifaceted like this. It's like Disney Land in a sense there's something for everybody. How do you define a target audience for something like that?
     
    wizarddrummer, Jun 12, 2013 IP
  4. newglobalventures

    newglobalventures Greenhorn

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    #4
    We charge $50/hr to design companies and $85/hr retail. Most of our sites range between $1200-$1800 but are completely customized. Let me know and I will get you an exact quote for your project.
     
    newglobalventures, Jun 12, 2013 IP
  5. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #5
    Remember you are quoting on work that has been done...
     
    sarahk, Jun 12, 2013 IP
  6. wizarddrummer

    wizarddrummer Peon

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    #6
    Well that's helpful information but as @sarahk correctly pointed out, I did the conversion. I was interested in an assessment (not a critique) of what you might have perceived the work load to have been and put some monetary value (even it was outlandish on either side of the spectrum) to it.
    I realize that this is like asking what's the value of a house or a car; it's ambiguous if no information such as sq ft, or location or in the case of the car year and model.

    I showed old and new and gave some stats. (the design aside) if you were to try and duplicate what I did what would you have estimated it to be? I also realize that this can be a touchy question because I am asking about a dollar amount.

    For me, there is NO WRONG ANSWER to this question; it's whatever anyone that answers this question decides they want it to be.

    I'm just curious as to what the rest of the world thinks in terms of what they estimate how many hours it would have taken them to do the conversion.

    I found out from Freelancer that people charge anywhere from about $8.00 to $38.00 for Internet Research. So, I now have one of my questions answered.

    Thanks again for your reply.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2013
    wizarddrummer, Jun 12, 2013 IP