How do you set pricing for website design?

Don't under-sell yourself. You need to take into account both the value of your time, and the value of the site to him. Does it generate a lot of business? Either way migrating 150 pages will be a huge job, so calculate how long you think it will take you (if you always underestimate this, then double it at least), and figure how much money you need for that amount of time. For example, 2 weeks at $35 p/hr (which is pretty low for web work), and a 40 hour work week would be $2800 USD, if the company is large and can the site is more valuable to them, then be sure to take that into account & adjust accordingly. If it an eCommerce site that hosts the majority of their business, then take that the earning potential into account as well.

Stop charging for your time and start charging for your knowledge.

They aren't coming to you because they know how to do it already and just want to pay for your labor... they are coming to you because they don't know how to do it themselves. That's the real value you bring.

If you were to hire my firm, even a basic Wordpress site would be in the $4,000 - $7,000 range. It's not priced based on number of pages or the visual appeal of the design, it's priced based on the knowledge of different industries, user experience, and "brand essence" - not the number of hours it takes to do it.

The biggest thing is just to not be afraid to ask for the money. Many web designers think they need to be low-priced, I've seen guys doing sites under $1,000 that they could be getting $5k for. Don't fall into that hourly mentality trap. Your value is what you KNOW how to do, not just doing it.

Oh this is so true,

I want to tell you a story.

Just over a year ago I was building websites for fun when a friend said they needed a website, I said £50 ... That turned into a 12 page flash website which was terrible but they paid 800 total, only because he was a good friend.

I then started learning more, still building in HTML and not even dynamically, one site I needed to change a menu on nearly 50 pages

Through all these lessons I thought how can I charge when people can just download a template, I build 3 websites for FREE, destroyed all 3 relationship, got into debt avoiding paid work because I didn't value myself and had a breakdown.

Someone once asked me what my hourly rate was, I told them £10 he told me to make it £200 and I laughed.

I learnt some more determined to better myself but went back to driving lorries and building websites for fun. Much happier and progress was great.

I landed a job in London earning better money to build a website over three months. This is where it started.

I valued my time at x per hour and thought I was doing great because he was paying me well.

What I dint know is he was outsourcing me at £200 an hour. I've never looked back

I now charge per project, regardless if it takes a day or a month. I know the power of a good brief and unless they are prepared to do the plan in detail them I'm not touching it.

DON'T EVER UNDERVALUE YOURSELF

Think what you are worth then at least double it, my biggest lesson was learning to say no and not being scared to sack a client

Reminds me of an analogy

Wisdom is useful knowledge that is gained through experience which reminds me of a story told by one of my mentors, Tony Robbins. If you haven’t attended any of his live events, I highly recommend it because the tapes and audios do not do him justice to what he delivers on stage.



Years ago all the machines and conveyor belts stopped working at a distribution center.

This was disastrous to business for 2 reasons:

1) All packages get shipped out all over the world

2)They guarantee that it will be there when you need it the next day.

Reputation and hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars were on the line. So they called a technician to come in to see if he can fix it.

The technician comes in and glances at the facility and goes to the center beam and turns one screw a quarter inch. And like magic everything starts working again.

Now the founder, Fred Smith was ecstatic and asked technician, “what do I owe you?”

The technician said “$10,000.”

Fred replied “What $10,000? You were only here for less than 5 minutes.”

Technician replied back “Yes, it’s $10,000.”

Fred asked “Can I see an itemized receipt?

“Sure, give me a napkin.” said the technician and wrote an itemized receipt on the napkin.

Fred Smith looked at the napkin, nodded his head and smiled and went straight to his office safe and got him $10,000 in cash.

On the napkin it stated: Turning Screw $1, Knowing Which Screw to Turn $9999

Ah well...

I am very knowledged regarding HTML/CSS and frontend performance optimizing (making websites loading FAST).

I know companies that charge a LOT when they just put some "crap computer" before your own webserver to cache/gzip files and stuff.

But when I am telling someone it is $997 per site they say "What? Too much... not in my budget."...

At the end they are losing visitors/clients that would have paid for their offers/services on their sites... but they lost these sales because their webserver did serve a blank page.

Now tell me... saving $997 is worth much more then having paying and happy clients?

Go with other companies that charge $4000+ per year... they do not optimize your website, they just use some simple tricks that I do ON TOP of optimizing your website.

I build websites as well and have a team too. But times have changed, India and some of my Filipino countrymen are lowering their standards for their services. There was this one time I spoke to a client proposing our services to him. He turned me down and said that he could hire one person from India or Philippines that would just do it all for him for a lower price. The standards set for pricing are different when you are on different countries.