How much does your hour cost?

Well, what about paying by the project? If one was able to provide content and concept and leave the development and building to the designer couldn't a price be negotiated base upon a completed project? I do realize the quality is determined by the expertise of the designer and therefore the price would be adjusted. If this doesn't work then why? Is it because there are too many variants that could be made if say the client wasn't satisfied? Wouldn't you do that anyway even if paid an hourly rate? I am only asking because I have been in the hosting industry for about 10 years and always had a hard time getting what I was looking for. What I end up doing is using a template and modifying it to suite my needs. The problem with that is it usually looks like a template. So, what I am asking is would a web designer here be willing to design a site at a set price if the site was a header/footer layout with complimenting graphics contained in the site?

$1 per hour, does this count? Hehehe. Cheaper than outsourcing. But then again, the last site that I designed was 7 years ago. So expect some crappy designs.

I think my rates are a little low for my area but I am kinda new as well so I give a discount

Thanks Megan. I was thinking around $20-$25 an hour, so you pretty much confirmed that.

But I won't tell the Price Fixing Police

Wordplay - it varies a lot depending on your experience, your market, and the quality of your work. We're actually not supposed to be talking about how much to charge for something because it could be considered price fixing, which is illegal.

Given all the variables involved it is hard to put a price on how much your hour is worth. You can look up salary surveys online and get an idea from there. However, if you're just starting out doing HTML then you'll probably want to charge less than an established professional would. As a ballpark, and I think this is broad enough to avoid price fixing, I'd guess around $10-$20/hour for someone of your experience (guessing about that too!).

for my business my fees are results based. I can gte anywhere from £4/hr to £15/hr depending on the client. It usually averages out to £7/hr.

Wordplay, there isn't really such a thing as a set rate for webdesign. If it is your sole income then charge enough to pay the bills and have a few bucks in your pocket, once in demand you can charge stupid figures.

A perfect example, a year or two ago The NZ govt. paid some web design company to make a site, they charged over $30,000 for it and a child could of done better, was done in dark green ... and looking at it you'd think front page but it wasn't.

If you are starting to get into web design, start small, charge enough to pay your expenses and use the sites as portfolio sites to build up your reputation. Once you have a few sites under your belt you will start to get an idea of whats really involved time wise and you can adjust your charges to suit. Quite often people getting into the business do a lot of sites for free to build up their portfolio.

Hi all - I'd appreciate some feedback on this: I'm primarily an illustrator/cartoonist, and don't generally do websites. However, I'm about to do a couple basic HTML ones for some clients. What is the going hourly rate for something like this now (ballpark is fine) ? I have done a number of them before, but it's been a couple of years. Thank you in advance.

That's the difference you see. I mainly deal with customers who have already got a site or have been site owners for some time. The development work I do is complex in it's nature and the end result is worth the money imho

I didn't start up charging those prices, it's increased over the last three years and is indicative of the market I work in. I don't see why I should work for peanuts and try and compete on price when I would rather go for quality long term clients rather than quantity short term fixes...

Assuming you're worth that much! Not that I think you're not - I'm just suspecting that a lot of people will see that and think they can charge as much as you do. Website work is such an individual thing. It all depends on your skill set and your market - you can't really compare to what other people are charing in an abstract way like this.

There is also a line between paying yourself what you're worth and rippping off unsuspecting customers.

It depends. For example, I am starting a cartooning site, and am charging less than I normally would to kick it off.

its not anti-trust is it? but then again I agree its pretty low. Although you can sort of have an alternate deal with prices like that...

$4 us = (approx) $8 nz which is below the minimum wage but reckon students etc would take it on, although delivering plamphets pays very well so you'd have competition.

$30 us = $60 nz so would capture a bigger market.

Depending on the job and if there were any spin offs, I'd consider as low as the $8 us range.

I love being paid in US dollars, double your money, although being paid in pounds is even better - triple

I would suspect that you could at least combine the first two. Personally, I made more than that when working on a website as a student worker (sort of an intern) before graduating college.

$30 - that's £16.50 / hour. I strongly suspect that we need some higher numbers in those options. I bill more than that for our junior staff.

In what other industry would you pay that little for a professional service? Our average billed hour (with my work hat on, not my shirthead one) is over twice that - 4 times for one of the most exprienced staff and many customers say we are too cheap. I don't think that $30/hour would even cover the wages and office rent.

I wouldn't really hire anyone for that little, Megan. That's what the big grin smiley was trying to convey.

Ah, the internet and it's utter lack of ability to convery tone...

Really? You want to buy web work for $4/hour??? I can't imagine what kind of quality you'd be getting for that!

I do think that the going rate for a quality designer would be over $30. I wouldn't hire anyone for less than $15 or $20 .... you can't pay that low and expect a good quality result. Pay cheap, get cheap Depends what you're buying but even for basic mark-up work or something like that I'd expect to pay more than $10.

I'm a little bit hesitant about even allowing this thread because of the whole price fixing thing...

Oh, and I'm assuming you're talking US dollars here. I'm expecting someone to come along and convert that to pounds ....

I can't believe you started the numbers as low as you did. If anyone votes for the low categories, contact me, as I'd love to subcontract work out to you.