How much should I charge for Website Service?

As I haven't run a website service myself, I cannot comment on the pricings, although I can perhaps offer some ways of approaching the problem.

Firstly, it is definitely a good idea to charge seperate amounts for personal and corporate websites. A corporate one will typically be used to increase the profile of their business, and thus their profits, and as you are providing them with a means to further profit, you should be able to charge more accordingly.

Secondly, if you are just starting out, getting good feedback and clients should be a priority, and offering your services at a cheaper cost initially is a good way to do this. Its better to have 10 clients paying you $100 than only 4 paying you $150.

Also, if you are designing the site for them, then instead of charging a flat rate, it would strike me as being better to charge based on what the client wants, although you'd need to establish some sort of base charge from which they can build off if they want additional content to that provided. Offering a basic package, with options for upgrading to suit a client's needs would be a possible model to go with.

Hopefully that gives you a few ideas, and also that someone else better versed in this can fill you in on appropriate pricings. Good luck!

You have to keep seperate price tags for them. Remember you'll have to offer support for your site too!

Seeing that no-one else seems to have posted about the actual cost of designing/hosting a website, I decided to have a look myself (as much for my own interest as yours), and here's a brief summary of what I found.

Firstly, might be worth having a look at this site, as it does provide some insight into the pricings of web pages. However, I personally view the prices given by the calculator to be quite exorbitant (especially for lower-standard web pages), but the list of the costs associated with web page design is quite enlightening, and might give you an idea what to charge.

However, I'm typically seeing that prices for website hosting, design and maintenance for a year will at the least cost around $1500. I think this may be corporate pricings though, as I don't expect anyone to pay this much for a personal site.

So, from what little information I've gathered, I would probably be leaning, as you said, to prices in the $150-$250 range for personal websites, with the price varying based on the amount of work needed. It would also be a good idea to introduce an extra cost you are required to do excessive maintenance on the site, as this is using up your time, and as the saying goes, 'time is money'.

For corporate websites, I'd say you could probably get away with asking for $1000-$1500, and negotiating from there. Increase this as you get more experience, and depending on the client's needs.

Please, don't take what I've said here as gospel, and do a bit of research into it yourself, but I do hope it gives you an idea of what might be a reasonable goal to aim for.

All the best!

Firstly, who are you using for hosting? Those pages took ages to load. In fact, only the first one has partially loaded, and its been over 5 minutes. It's not my connection, since I can load other pages just fine. Maybe the host is down, or crippled for whatever reason, but no-one is going to wait this long for a page to load.

Anyway, looking at emohealindo.com, I can immediately think of a few changes I'd make. Firstly, never use blinking text.. ever. It is distracting, and looks very unprofessional. Secondly, you have a whole bunch of images running down the right hand side. None of these are captioned, nor are they the same size and all lined up. The right alignment makes the inner edge look jagged. If possible, I'd drop a divider directly to the right of the image column, and make them like a side-bar. Then I'd try get all the widths the same, and center align them in that sidebar. Dropping captions under the images to describe their destination (many appear to be hyperlinked) would be a good practice, as no-one likes 'mystery meat navigation'. Lastly, I find myself having to scroll down almost an entire screen length to see the actual blog content. Its pushed down by a pair of images of an audio CD (one of which took more than 10 minutes to load - looks like it only just finished doing so) and some text.

For a first website though, it is not bad (and I can tell you, I've seen A LOT worse). And for only $100 a year, you're not really obligated to do much more than make a functional website. But for your image and reputation, might be an idea to polish them up a bit, but only if you want to use them as show-pieces.

Also, if a client requests a design you've already come up with, it would probably make sense to give them a discount of sorts. After all, its less work on your behalf. It doesn't need to be anything drastic, but just a small incentive which in turn makes your life easier as well. And don't worry if your first client buys cheap. You can always adjust the pricings for subsequent clients.

Also, I simply cannot load any of the other web-pages. I'm assuming the host is down, as not even the first one has finished. Might be an idea to seek another host, especially if you are planning to make a corporate web-site. You can always work any increased costs into the price.

Hope that helps a bit

Just as a thought you may want to provide wordpress as well. If these are personal sites it will be easy for someone without knowledge to screw it up. Then you will be looking at additional fees for fixing their mess.

I also strongly recommend you don't start off running "friend discounts" In regards to pricing I would say if you are doing original design them $100 is entirely too low. even for a personal site. I would only charge that low if you are just using a template and making a few modifications.

For an all out personal design it really depends on what they want eg the complexity, features and the time it will take you to develop it.

For commercial you shouldn't ever charge less that $500 IMO. If the company is for real than they will have a budget for web development.

It's all depend upon clients requirements and functionality of the web site, dude! don't go for overall charges, bcz there may be too top to implementation if it's dynamic.

Hi Richest,

Well, always do what your client wants. It saves arguments down the track. However, if they want something really stupid, do feel free to nicely suggest that it might not be a good idea, and put forward a viable alternative. Also, the local hosting is probably why I can't access them easily - they obviously don't concern themselves with international availability of the website.

Also, there's nothing wrong with discounting for friends. It's something I'd do, although that said, only for close friends, not any acquaintance.

Personal sites offer most scope for discounting, as these typically are quite simple, and concerns such as traffic and customers are usually low or non-existant. Its the corporate pages you need to worry about - if they are serious about promoting their company, they'll have a budget for this sort of thing, as samclarke said.

i remember starting off at $100, then i doubled it (and people paid), then i added $100 (and people paid) then i doubled it again (people paid). each new build i just charged more. now the min is $1000 and up. and i refer them to hostgator so i dont have hosting headaches.

After waiting approximately 5 minutes for my 20MBPS internet to load each page, I have come to this conclusion.

-You are most likely using a template that you have modified to suit your needs, correct?

-Your logo design is a 3 on a scale of 1-10. I suggest using Adobe Photoshop and viewing some of the top design organizations websites to get a feel of "quality" work.

Your sites are not that bad. They just need to be touched up and uploaded to a "reliable" hosting server.

Server you are using is slow, I have 50MBPS and it is hardly loading

You really have to charge based on the work to be done.
A flat rate is a good place to start

Determine your hourly rate for design and then determine the hourly rate for development. This will give you a good idea about what to charge for what. Then,... go to work. Just don't short yourself. There's nothing worse than undercutting yourself, then the design doesn't pop cause your frustrated.

And,.. Screw the "friend discount," you'll regret it every time. Most friends won't appreciate all your hard work. They think that you click a few button and Viola! This is a business so treat it as such.

One idea is to charge nominally more, say $25 more; and then outsource some of the easier tasks to a friend/coworker of yours. Then you can have more time to take on more work (still being very competitive price), and focus more on the finer designs detail. And ultimately making more money.

Asking how much to charge for a website, is kinda like answering "How much is a car?" It really depends on what you are offering, your experience, and your overall end product. Most web design companies start at $5,000. This obviously is not what you are offering. I would check the competitors that are offering similar services, and see what they are charging. That would give you a better idea.

If I think of anything more to add, I'll be sure to let you know

Thank for you advice.