How much should I charge a local business for a website?

There is no set price.

You charge whatever you think it's worth.

I understand. Thanks for your feedback. Would someone be willing to give me a link to websites they've sold and how much they sold each for? Also, should I handle hosting myself and make them pay a monthly fee or should I have them pay for their own hosting and set up the website on their servers?

Take a look at other web design companies in your area and see what their prices are. If they don't have prices listed, give them a ring, pose as a potential customer and see what they would charge for your services. Also ask any business owners you know how much they paid for their website and how pleased were they with the results. Find out if they host themselves or if the company host for them. If you do host, charge an extra fee. Some small buisnesses don't want to deal with anything, they just want to throw money at you and let you handle it all. Others want to control every aspect and will host and buy their own domains. Check out John Durham's legendary thread on starting a webdesign business.

I've found that in my area $199-599 for basic html style websites with the client paying for hosting is insanely good to people around here. For a nice wordpress template style page with the benefits you're offering they will pay from $600 -$1000+ depending on the size of the business. I know of one company, a major car manufacturer who pays $2000 a month for their website, domain and hosting, it's just an elegant theme wordpress that's been customized and has only been updated once in the last 6 months.

Do your research so you know what the market will bear and then determine your price based on the value you think you bring to the table. Don't just pull a number out of your ass. Local business people talk to each other and webpages aren't a new product so they may have a preconceived notion as to how much it's worth. Sell them on the value you bring to the table.

*edit* I'm on my 6th website client. I don't want to post links as I don't want people spamming my customers trying to sell them other services.

Thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed response for me. Your information has helped a lot and taking your response as well as the responses from the others who posted on her I think I'm going to ask for a bit more than I originally planned on and I completely understand you not wanting to share for that reason so don't feel bad at all.

It should not be based on what it is worth to you......but what it is worth to your potential client.

Ask questions (if you haven't already) about his business. You can get a feel for what a customer is worth to him. If the website drives traffic and creates new customers for him and each customer has...lets say a $100 value to him, and it draws in on average 5-7 new customers a month......over the course of the year that brings him between $6000 - $7000 and repeats every year after. So....a $1000 or $1500 website will show him a nice ROI.

The trick is to make your client see it that way....

Another way is to use the same basic theory, then charge something like 15%-20% of the expected yearly take on new business for them...works out to be somewhere in the same range.......do not undersell yourself. A good website is a valuable marketing tool to a local business and they will pay if you can show a decent ROI to them.

Good luck....let us know how things turned out
~Ken

Charge for a website is depends on website' structure,no of pages of website,storage space of website and design of website but there is no set price.

The monthly charge should be much higher. Don't think of it as you are going to be building a website (a lot of work) in the first couple weeks so the first month is high, then you are going to let it go so you only charge for hosting. Sell it as you are building the website so the initial cost of designing and constructing a website is very high, then you take the time to maintain and run the website and continue to get them customers so it still costs a lot per month. Ex) $995 startup cost and $295/month after that.

It really depends though on the business and how fast you can pop sites out. If you are able to outsource and build sites faster, you can charge $495 startup and $95/month.

REMEMBER: You have to promote the worth of the site. You won't believe how much brick and mortar businesses spend on advertising each and every month with little to no results. $500 and then ONLY $100 a month for essentially advertising their company on the internet. That's a no-brainer for any business owner.

Slade, the initial price you are thinking of asking ($400) should be an absolute minimum. I would definitely ask for more per month for hosting/upkeep on the site. That varies depending on how much updating you may have to do. Many Warriors give 1 hour per month included in the monthly fees for additions/revisions. Anything more is charged at your hourly rate. Figure out how much you will be charging an hour for your time and price accordingly.

I think it is good price.I also charged same for my clients.