Quotes or hourly rates? Your pricing, how do you value your time?

Originally Posted by Julian An amazing thing happens when you quote high, businesses start thinking "wow, they must produce absolute top quality work, we want the best, so let's get them!". Quoting low generally means what it means, cheap and nasty.

Very true. Its all down to perception. Usually clients dont have the technical know-how to properly decern who's really the best guy for the job, so they use other cues such as pricing, the designers level of professionalism etc. to determine who they should go with.

Originally Posted by Moni-Q Very true. Its all down to perception. Usually clients dont have the technical know-how to properly decern who's really the best guy for the job, so they use other cues such as pricing, the designers level of professionalism etc. to determine who they should go with.

Yes, many noob designers use this trick to get more customers..and that's bad.

Originally Posted by Julian An amazing thing happens when you quote high, businesses start thinking "wow, they must produce absolute top quality work, we want the best, so let's get them!". Quoting low generally means what it means, cheap and nasty. Even if I don't produce the absolute best sites, I definately give the best service

This is true even if you suck. People, especially businesses, think quality is relative to price.

This was a very good read Julian, a great post. I must say it looks somewhat that undercharge, doing templates (1 page .PSD) for 55$.
But when i look at it: $13.75-$22.00/hour - hourly rate.
I'm really not underselling if i have such a short turn around (2.5-4hr average). Then again, i'm a youngster doing this as a hobby in the room down the hall from my parent's bedroom, so really this is just mad money i can spend on frivolous things or save for more serious expenditures.

And on top of it all, i'm really not doing templates and such for businesses that "hardcore" freelancers would be doing work for, i'm doing templates for those people starting up some random sites to make a bit of money off adsense, hosting or just a personal site for their blog or gaming clan.

I can't say that people "underprice" when they make a template and then try to sell it for $200, it's rarely going to happen. If no-one buys then you have "wasted" time, it's much better for you (money wise and portfolio wise) to sell work, even if it is underprice.

Making something completely custom and involving the client allows you to charge higher, for the support during and after, I pay low fees for designs as I just get sent a file and that's it.

Originally Posted by VIZ I can't say that people "underprice" when they make a template and then try to sell it for $200, it's rarely going to happen. If no-one buys then you have "wasted" time, it's much better for you (money wise and portfolio wise) to sell work, even if it is underprice.

i can say it's underpriced. the only way a design is justified @ $200 is if you spent less than 5 hours on it, which is rediclous when looked at from an industry perspective.

designing ins't just making something look "pretty". a design is a method in which a message is conveyed to an audience - even in traditioanal and personal expression (even random 3d renders convey some form of message though it's usually aaccidental). granted no one wants to say "we're ugly" to their audience, so looking good is part of deisng, but it's far from the core of it. design is imagery and imagery has meaning. it takes more than 4 hours to create imagery, analysize it from different perspecties and compare all connottions, then revamp to eliminate any unwated possabilities and strengthen your goal as much as possible. the choice between red & black as a colour scheme over blue and orange can have HUGE effects on the final outcome.

if you just slap something together in an afternoon and try and pawn it off as an empty shell, it lacks meaning and doesn't do anyone any service. it now has no interpretation and revising applied to it, and it has no meaning because it has to be left as vauge as possible. be it for print or web doesn't say anything to an audience. and like you said, you've justed wasted your own time.

this is why i hate templates: they don't serve the customer, whoever they may be, much good unless they the skills to edit what they buy - which is rare because usually technical skills go hand in hand with creative skills (not evenly) so there's not much sense in buying in the first place, and it also wastes the artists time.

personally it's better to practice making specific designs (like for a dentist) and do nothing with them and just chalk your time up as practice. in the long run it will have really honed your skills allowing you to make the $16k calibre grade which will do a lot more for you than a hand full of $100 cheap ones when you were young.

if you want to try and make soe money off your efforts, do artwork instead of design (not in pace of my last suggestion, along side it). you'll still learn the technical skills (how to use the brush for example), and it's personal expression and will thus have a message and can be sold as artwork because someone else most likely agrees with your message and also appreciates the aesthetics of the work = sold. combined with the design practice you have a much better chance of making the grade for the big $$ we sites.

route a (selling cheap no name templates) vs route b (practice designing for specific things and hone communication skills): route b clearly offers a much more propserous future: anyone can make the no anme templates, look how many are doing it already. only a chunk of people have the skills to handle the big budget projects, that's what makes them so rare. so in the long run, yes, even though to a teenager $2000-3000 (even just $3000 could be really useful to me) over 4 years might seem like 100% profit, it's greatly unersold when compared to what could be a 5 figure deal.

if it's what you want to do, go for it. there's just no way i can be convinced that anything under at least $1000 is fair pricing for any market.

sorry if i hijacked your thread julian, but i felt the point really had to be made.


as for this whole quote vs hourly rate thing... using the definition of the word quote, "To state (a price) for securities, goods, or services." if i give someone a ballpark figure of $6000, they can quote me on estimating that price, doesn't make the bill $6000 in stone. i can give a project quote based on hourly estimates, but the actual invoice may be different from my estimate.

are you saying fixed pricing is better than hourly?

Valid responses guys, thanks!

All pricing is relative to where you are at in your personal circumstances, I am just trying to bring more awareness to pricing, is all

Hello,

Thanks for the post. 16k is a high price for a 5-page site, but that depends on what you do. Spending 4 weeks on it @ 40hour/week, then yeh, it should cost that much.

$100/hour is at the higher end, but not out of the range.

I might have missed it, but did you post any example sites that you charged $16k for? I can understand if you don't post any, but it would help put things into perspective.

If you can't post any examples, how about some sites that you DID NOT do but are representative?

Derek, hourly pricing and quoting are dependant on the client and the project. I know quotes are not set in stone, here in New Zealand a quote is allowed to have a maximum over-run of 10%, anything over that is at the developers own cost.

Originally Posted by m23 Hello, Thanks for the post. 16k is a high price for a 5-page site, but that depends on what you do. Spending 4 weeks on it @ 40hour/week, then yeh, it should cost that much. $100/hour is at the higher end, but not out of the range.

16k is not at the high end, check this thread out for an example:
125k for this!

Also $100/hour is not at the high end, it is average for my region, and please remember I am from New Zealand. $100 of our dollars is worth $60.82 US dollars or 35.03 British Pounds.

Originally Posted by Julian Also $100/hour is not at the high end, it is average for my region, and please remember I am from New Zealand. $100 of our dollars is worth $60.82 US dollars or 35.03 British Pounds.

Ah, I did miss that. Sorry! That is the same rate I charge, then: 60 US dollars / hour.

Except I am actually taking a job now for $25/hour, just because it's my only client at the moment. I have a fulltime developer job as well and I do extra work after hours, which is what I'm talking about -- the after hours work.