Confidence Issue with going higher in price...

It depends on the quality, I would say you are charging enough because you aren't customizing or offering any additional value other than a quick change of images and content, right?

You could increase your prices but make sure the value is there. Don't charge $1,000 for a template with content and pic changes lol.

I DO think you're charging too little on your monthly fee if you're doing all that... Jack it up to $35-45, doesn't seem like a big difference but if you ever have 100 clients, it is a difference of $2,000/mo

we usually charge $69 just for hosting but if they say this is too much
in your case because you are throwing in the social media with it you can
just simply say I can take away the social media and only charge for the

hosting most clients have no idea what you are paying for hosting then
you can charge $49 a month

By removing the social services you show that you offer value by removing this and this will show your client that you are offering a valuable service not just low balling for his or her business

Hum. Another techie focused on keystrokes, hours and what you do for a living.

News flash: your prospect doesn't care.

You're not selling websites, facebook fan pages, etc. You're selling a steady stream of qualified inbound leads. That's what your client is interested in.

How you get there does not matter. Write the company name in the sky with a plane and smoke? That's fine, as long as it works. Herd a bunch of giraffes through town with banners on their backs advertising your client? That's OK too. Just as outlandish as "putting a fan page up on something called facebook".

The price of your solution should have nothing to do with the number of hours it takes you to make it happen. It should have everything to do with the value you create for your client. Start thinking about this. What revenue does your client get with the solutions you provide?

The price for the solution to a $100,000 problem should be higher than that of a $10,000 problem...even if you do exactly the same thing each time.

Prices discovered this way will always be higher than your hourly total.

It's interesting but, psychologically, if someone pays you a cheap price for a website, in their mind they have a cheap website...

Just something to think about.

It's funny. It might take us 2 hours to buy a custom wordpress template, change a few graphics and put up a couple of photos, and we charge our clients $500 for the job.

What people seem to miss is the amount of time actually learning about all these resources took. You didn't just wake up one morning and go 'well, I know of professional wordpress templates, can upload and optimize images using a free graphics program I found online, create backlinks through free tools I learned about online and rank a local website in 2 weeks'.

All of that took time to learn and to locate the resources required to do it. So charge that much. The client would have to spend the equivalent amount of time going from asking themselves 'How do I make my own website?' to the wealth of knowledge and experience you have gained to develop their own wordpress site.

Wow, so many awesome and insightful responses.. just awesome.

I need big, brass balls like you guys have lol. Where did mine go!? I used to charge like I said, $1,500 for a basic html/css website. I was confident with that pricing, but also expected people to give me weird looks and question it (which they did).

Now for a site that took me hours to learn about / find the resources, that's more complex than a static site, I'm low-balling myself. Gah!

This is my goal. I want to know if this is realistically attainable (aka, if clients will go for it). Charge upwards to $1,500 for the website, then $100 / month to maintain it (hosting, domain name, maintaining social platforms).

I'd love to be my own boss and make a living with this, but the key thing is to have enough clients to fuel the business!

The maxim, "You get what you pay for" always applies, even in a recession. Don't undercut yourself and the rest of us but underpricing your services.

My biggest thing is this - the client just cares about getting more clients for themselves.

My whole thing is, I can't guarantee them clients - however, I can certainly get them exposure through promoting their website. I can certainly give them an online presence (or better yet, or better designed online site if they already have one).

If most people in the end care about clients, and don't necessarily care about the website perse (they just care about what can get them business), how would you sell that through simply giving them an online presence?

For example..

Client: "so it's $1500 for the site. How is that going to make me money? How is that going to get my phone ringing off the hook?"

I usually just say "I can get you exposure, I can market your website for you". I can never come up with a better answer, because like I said, I can't "guarantee" them clients.

Any suggestions?

Go read this post in John Durham's Telemarketing Forum.

It has literally changed people's lives. You should easily be able to modify the approach there to your business.

I'll be totally honest here man, the first website I did I charged $300 for it and it took me a while. I used Homestead.com to build it because that was all I knew how to use. Although it wasn't horribly ugly it also wasn't the sexiest thing on the block either, but the client really liked it.

I'm an Social Media, SEO, Google Places and Rep Management kind of guy. I don't really like building websites. So anyways, I smarten up and started outsourcing the websites. Because I outsource them now I am forced to charge more which has been a blessing. I've found a couple sources that provide great looking websites for $400-$500ish and charge AT LEAST $900 and we have a proposal that's looking like it's going to close for $2,500. Keep in mind that I do ZERO beside making the sale and connecting the dots. I don't build, design or write content for these sites.

So the moral of the story is don't be afraid to charge more for your work. It's MUCH better having a couple clients paying you more than a lot of needy clients paying you a little.

Hope the helps!

Sean