Charging for building Wordpress sites

I think you should treat it like any other website. have a look at what web designers charge for setting up a simple 5 page website, and charge something similar. With regards to the social media, I have seen a few companies charge a set up fee to create the account and then charge per month for a set number of tweets or updates. have a look at EMS internet, warrington. They have somne prices setup for this kind of thing

Live by price, die by price. Make yourself a commodity and you'll be competing with $99 builders.

How much is this person going to make from your site? How many visitors...how many will convert...what is the average value of a sale...what % of that do you feel comfortable asking for in exchange for your work?

I do builds based on premium themes starting around €1000 (~$1150) and builds based on a completely custom design starting around €2500 (~$3000 or so).

The amount of work required to do a custom theme *properly* is enormous. Nevermind the tens of hours of design meetings, creating all the template pages that people forget about when they build a custom theme, etc - there's a lot of work.

Charge enough to do the job properly and never under-price what you feel you are worth - you'll feel much better about your work, do a better job, and provide a better service to your client. You also avoid the bottom feeders (who are always the most demanding clients for some reason).

You're better off with one good site in your portfolio than ten cheap looking pieces of crap that you're embarrassed to show off

I dont use any premium themes. We do a basic layout in Photshop/Illustrator showing Headers/Menus/Themes. My base price is based off a minimum of 9hrs. I have it to a science and do a basic small business site including an hour consult and 5-10 pages in about 12-15 hours. They supply the content though. We bill that extra if they need copy writing. We also up sell logo design if they need it.

I do this as just one service for my clients. We are a full service ad agency and most of my clients we have created their logos/ or have done branding and have their files on our server.

An example of 1 site that is underway. He is a general contractor. I created his template design and colors and uploaded a template for him to preview live in about 3 hours. Copied his content that he emailed me and set up menus for his pages. (1 hour)
Backed up his site and am waiting on a domain transfer. When that finishes, we will upload his site, add his supplied photos and add the rest of his supplied content. (2-4hours) Add an hour for consults and we are at about 9/11 hrs for a 12 page site. These are not anything crazy or tons of custom coding. These are basic small business info sites mainly for contractors, etc that utilize a joomla core with extensions from the joomla extension gallery based on what the scope of the site is. This also doesnt include SEO. That is additional, and we do talk with the client about it and use it as an up sell.

As far as hosting and domains... A lot of people use go daddy and namecheap for domains. We do that and point them to our hostgator account which is currently housing about 15 client sites. We also charge for hosting above and beyond the site building.

Hope that helps a bit.

Warren

Go for it. Keep in mind though that you need to charge enough to make it more than worth your time and effort. When I started out in offline, I didn't charge nearly enough for website building and didn't have a specific rule about edits and it became a huge headache having clients call every day and say "change this on the website, take this off, add this, etc." so I decided to stop building websites completely for a while. Granted, I made a number of rookie mistakes and have since smoothed out the wrinkles, but just be sure to think through the possibilities.

you do like this, create wp websites for them for a low cost such as $200-300 per one and then sign up for a monthly fee like $50 per updates. I don't know whether u like my idea or not, but I think it's quite good. Fair for both sides

Hello From the Dirty South,

We scope out a job by some basic tiers such as modified premium themes from $699 , custom themes from $2k+ ... develop some tiers you are comfortable with.

A good rule of thumb is take the total amount of time spent to make one website, add 2 hours. Then take your base rate, $60+ and do some basic math. It makes it easy to explain to the client and you will always be under the big box shops like web.com, clickweb, and godaddy.

Just my $0.02

Thank you guys so much for the feedback. So I understand so far to:

• Not underprice yourself, deliver good value/work
• Use reseller hosting
• Good pricing points
• Using wordpress premium themes work just fine

How about some of your experiences/opinions with these?

• How do you handle revisions/edits?
• How do you handle tech support issues?
• How do you go about training? What works well for you?
• How did you get paid? All up front? Or 50% up front and 50% after?
• Any other details that you wish you would have known or done when you started?

I understand I just need to get some more experience and a portfolio, but asking some experienced folks like you guys wouldn't hurt.

Having 3 pricing bundles has always worked for me.

If you've the ability to build themeforest like full featured themes, then you should cost $40 at-least for one unit.

Thanks GrumpyMonkey for taking the time to answer those for me.

How do you guys feel about using contracts? Especially when starting out? I feel like I need to earn my wings first.

I've been reading a lot about them lately when it comes to freelancing. Here's a video that I watched yesterday called "F you, Pay me" ... where a successful business man in creative work brought his lawyer along for a presentation :

Contracts, contracts, contracts.

My rule of thumb is: if the project is for 500$ or more, or will take 8 hours of my time or more (whichever would come first) I have SOME sort of contract, even if it is an email with the whole "by responding to this email you are providing your digital signature and entering into a contract for the aforementioned goods or services as outlined in the agreement and are liable to 'XYZ company' for any charges incurred henceforth as a result of this agreement. Only respond to this email if you agree to these terms."

I don't know, I haven't read it in a while, but it goes something like that.

Don't devalue your time! Use contracts! there's nothing worse than working hard on something and then not getting paid, and having no recourse against them. At least with any kind of contract you have different things to "persuade" them to pay you. Including contacting the BBB, FTC, etc etc.

Best,
-Mike Roncone