Having trouble deciding what to charge your client? Here is a little guide that I made up to help out people new to charging for web services.
1. The cost of your past projects.
In your portfolio you will display past projects, they play a factor in price of future costs - Normally this works because - if you are working for “mom and pop shops” - they will pay very little - and the website will normally be simple, the more expensive sites, seem to be bigger and more impressive.
therefore you end up working uphill - the bigger the project is, the easier it will be to get another big project because you will have something in your portfolio that shows that you have experience.
2. Technology.
Depending on what the client wants, you can charge them more. A common example is charging larger amounts of money for flash elements, or if you need to write a custom ajax script for the website.
The way I handle this is by charging by time - and the cost is different depending on what technology I’m building in.
Here is an example :
The Client - “Build me a 5 page website, you need to design a logo and a template, a flash header, and I want to be able to update the page content.”
Basic Design - 9 hours * $20/hr = 180
Flash - 5 hours * 35$/hr = 175
HTML work - 12 hours * 15/hr = 180
PHP - 5 hours * $30/hr = 150
mysql - 2 hours * #30 /hr = 60
Documentation and client communication - 4 hours * 12/hr = 48Total Cost = 793
3. Bigger Clients = Bigger Money
Sometimes you get lucky and land a client that is huge. Bigger clients are trying to buy the best they can get and are expecting to spend a certain amount of money - Under charging them might even make them think less of you - so when working with a company grosses a large income a year, make sure you adjust your pricing accordingly.
4. Experience and Contacts
The more experience you have, the more you are worth an hour. Normally it is because you will be more reliable and have more capabilities than those less experienced than you are. Also having contacts and resources, that are beneficial to your clients, could also be a factor.
If you know a developer who has 4 years of flex experience - you could outsource to him for ( example ) 500, and charge the client 1200 - you get the project done - make money - and have a new technology on your portfolio.
5. New Clients with Long Lasting Projects
Sometimes you will get a client that is looking for a developer to fill a role in a long lasting project. Sometimes it’s appropriate to charge less on the first project for these clients - once the first part of the project you would charge them normally - this will help start a good client relationship with them that could last years.
I hope you find this little guide helpful - Good luck out there