the horror of pricing freelance (design) jobs

last month i noticed they had someone else redesign the whole thing. dick holes

I want to get into this whole photography thing, but I'd be offering more than the usual portrait type service, so I can't simply see what other local photographers are charging, however I want to be able to pay the bills, so I don't want to charge beyond what people would be willing to pay. Ties my head in knots it does.

story of my life.

i think with anything when you start out you just have to start somewhere. even if it's really wrong. and then you get more confident and realistic. there are some guides for pricing creative work like this, but they're confusing too. the prices are usually high and unrealistic, especially for people starting out with friends and small local clients. i'm glad to still have my full-time job while i figure this stuff out.

also, if you charge more people will think you're worth more. if you undersell yourself (or work for free) people will assume you're just starting out.

my dad showed me his most current site and it was a piece of shit and he payed upwards of 10g's for it. i thought about telling him to come to me next time but then i thought better of working for my dad

xpost

Yeah, it's going to be her mortgage business website. With easy pre-approval online! Easy for them, not so easy for me.

Write off or no, I feel weird charging my mother. I mean, the woman gave birth to me! And this is the thanks she gets?

Spencer OTM. i was too paranoid so always quoted dirt cheap, below industry standard because i was scared they'd just go get some 15 year old genius kid to do it for peanuts (there are enough sites out there to make you think they hired a 15 year old only to realise they were far from genius, but still paid them hundreds-thousands anyway). so like him i now have a 9-5 (well, 10.20-7.30 half the time) and do what i can on the side. Only through having the full time job for long enough do i now have the confidence to charge a higher rate.

most difficult part is time estimation, esp. as clients always want to know how long it's going to take without factoring in their own dithering and failure to supply copy anytime soon.

OTM. Eventually some of those freelance assignments may become regular enough for a designer to quit the day job and then build a business from that (eventually with own office, support, biz dev, more designers, etc).

Not quite my path -- library work doesn't per se help in freelance writing work unless you take advantage of the resources -- but yes, this is the best approach, to have a regular solid anchor on the one hand that hopefully allows you to use some skills regularly (or develop a set of complementary ones -- which I have, and I am grateful for it) while the option to do more elsewhere also exists above and beyond the billpaying factor.

Another obvious example - In LA, a lot of actors obviously do regular things like wait tables.

currently i'm trying to figure out how much a band site should be for a kinda major/yet alternative label. some flash, backend, etc. are there going rates for this stuff? 5k? 10k? 15k?

OTM

if she thinks you're going to make her a business website for free, k3nan, sorry but seriously

She really does. That's why I need to get rid of this hot potato quickly. Who wants to design my mom's website?

I would not be successful at it. I am the world's biggest pussy.

"I think I could do that for $1000."
"How about ten cents? Is that okay?"
"Um... sure!"

although the reason i took a full-time, 'semi design' job cos the guy i do regular freelance for is a total arse (and i'm thinking of cutting myself off from him). i'd be curious to know from other freelancers whether you're treated on the whole with less respect from clients / employers, as opposed to working as a full-timer?

Yeah, no kidding. If I'm going to do something for free, it better at least be fun. I'd rather make a spreadsheet than do this.

sorry this has fuckall to do with pricing, but i am sympathetic in that i know how frustrating and cruel freelancing can be.

Fucking hell folks, you get what you pay for.

Anyway, I haven't really come up with a decent formula for design jobs. For network/system debugging I charge $75/hr and that weeds out the ones that aren't work my time. I charge a little bit more for database work and that seems to work fine. I just wish that word of mouth grapevine was faster.

I just about lost my mind trying to do basic computer tasks for an academic department, for whatever pittance they gave me, the secretary wanted me to put together a massive web-based searchable library style database of their film inventory, except only accessible to the department, except she didn't want to pay for any new software, or a server, or anything.

Not to mention my last boss who brought me in over winter break once to do some freelance coding and cleanup tasks, and after I asked if they'd up my rate a bit for future projects, said if they did that they'd have to just get someone else. Then, they never called me again anyway. WTF.

I am kind lucky my best mate never went through with her plans to start a small business. She was like, oh, and you can set up a website for us, hooray! OK SURE you have tens of thousands in savings and I am flat broke and in debt so why don't I just WORK FOR YOU FOR FREE?

A few years ago, my boss had a friend - an academic - who wanted someone to set up an email server to run a couple of mailing lists on an old computer he already had kicking around. The boss passed him on to me, and I quoted him the very low price of £50 for (at most) half a day's work. I never heard a thing back from him. What I didn't realise then - but do now - is that for *most* consultancies in that sort of field the going rate seems to be about five times that.

Similarly, I once worked for a company who were paying £300 for web hosting. "That's a bit much," I said, "with the package we've got, we should only be paying about £150 per year at the most." "No," said the manager, "£300 per month." They'd gone for that company because they sounded "very professional", and hadn't got many quotes. They didn't realise - because the management never had to deal with it themselves - that this company's tech support was *far, far* worse than that of companies charging a tiny fraction of the price.

I am dying -- dying -- to get a job at one of these companies. They might just start overpaying me, too! This is in sharp contrast to my boss, who when we decided to start a new organization, refused to pay the $15 a month I had suggested for a moderate-but-not-fancy web hosting plan. No, no, too much. "That's ridiculous," he said. What? What's ridiculous about fifteen dollars? It's fifteen measly dollars!

We have a $4 a month plan now. It goes down every few days for several hours.

that's something you have to figure out though, because if nothing else yr client's going to be interested in when it will be finished.

2. and then corporate/marketing rate is way higher than individual/art project rate.

that's true. i guess i'd say just fleece them if they're corporate/marketing, and don't if they're not. it's not an exact science i agree but it's not some impossible task to say "okay they get a $10 discount per hour off the normal rate because they're a nonprofit."

talent/experience value is hard to be objective about. how long does a good idea take? (logos are the worst nightmare - all conceptual time and inherent value guestimating)

FORGET "INHERENT VALUE", this is the whole point of what i'm saying. the finished product will have a some "value" i suppose, but forget about that. just think about what value your time has, doing a particular thing, per hour. yes it's impossible to estimate how long it will take to come up with a good idea, but a ballpark figure is doable. say, three one-hour meetings w/yr client, plus four 8-hour days? is that not enough time, is it too much?

every job is so different. and then figuring in subcontractors - oy!

subcontractors is something i have no experience with, but i don't see why this would need to be any difft - how much time will they spend doing what they're doing, and how much are they asking for, and just tack that onto your own time.

Basically what I charge has almost doubled over the last 3 years. I had taught myself web design and been accustomed to a cushy job at a big agency where I did no production work and had a CD holding my hand with most jobs. So at first I was charging v little. Now I'm much more comfortable with web work and am at a new full time job where I've learnt a lot more about the industry. If a client doesn't like my rates, TS! I make enough money that I'm not going to waste my time with someone who's either a moron or who's going to nickel and dime me at every corner. I will augment my quotes on a client by client basis tho. if I think they are disorganized tools I will charge hourly - if they are organized and require something straight ahead i will (although rarely) charge a flat rate (this is usually for web design on a per page basis). If it's a small business i tend to charge less because usually they're a lot more finicky about prices and have a hard time seeing the "big picture" in regards to the value of quality design work. But I'm not going to bend over backwards to please someone who won't appreciate what I'm doing.

Pricing it was a terrible thing to have to do - I knew it was worth more, but I knew they couldn't afford more. But now, as they keep "forgetting" to pay me, what can I do? Certain friends think I should just pull down the site, but that's highly unprofessional (although I do not do this for a living).

I'm tired of firing off e-mails and hearing bullshit back - should I take them to Small Claims?

See, teeny, the graphics thing is my strong point!

Ha ha.. union... not here, but I could become a Registered Graphic Designer after taking some insane test and paying a wad of cash. Not sure if I'm going to go through with it or not; I'm only going to become eligible this year.

Media Bistro guild -
http://www.mediabistro.com/avantguild/?lsrid=113

This is a potentially brilliant idea. I'm in on this

my latest work (done to client spec i.e. blog-structure so not particularly exciting or as dynamic as i'd like it to be - i'm getting the urge to do something more experimental again. maybe we should all just throw some ideas together onto a page hosted on one of our servers?

Thanks for all your advice on this, I shall take more stern action. Although I believe if I threaten to take the site down, they can just change the FTP passwords so I can't, and I'll look like a bit of a prick.

Alternatively, bitter and conscientious ILXors might feel inclined to leave anonymous angry postings on the forum of The Website In Question

xpost with Hurting: yeah, any less than $25 isn't on, unless you're doing someone an explicit favor. People get paid $20 an hour just to take dictation.

OTM. Having more than one designer in a *room* is a potentially disasterous idea.

i'm not sure what this means. wieden kennedy hires freelancers, time magazine hires freelancers. many people who've made a name for themselves in any given field are freelancers. and even among indivuals or small companies who buy websites, a lot aren't start-ups - they're just expanding to online.

but yea, it's funny ilxors don't collaborate more. or maybe we'd all end up hating each other. heheh.

but i am amon duul.

So... tell me what you think. Help me explain to my CD why his vision for our site makes me want to puke - or help me see why he thinks his changes are the best thing ever (which I'm sure - you'll all agree with me - they're not).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/home1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/home2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/portfoliosample.jpg

It looks to me like your designer wants to use the colors in yr company logo as the palette for the site. The problem is that it's just not lively, it looks vaguely rusty and dead, rather than alive, like the palette in yr first image is.

cross spots

xpost - I just suggested using trying a green hue instead (for the banner) i think that might play well off our logo.

Basically I want to find whatever will play best off this red.

So this is the compromise I offered up. I think it looks pretty darn good.

No flash, only HTML, fun project, okay money.

I fired a client today. There's so much weight off my shoulders now I can repel gravity.