How much should I charge?

[Fantazia]

A friend of mine asked me to create a website for her company and I don't know how much to charge. The website will only be about 5 or 6 informational pages and won't necassarily involve much updating during the year. I'm not in the habit of making a killing as it were, but they have said we will pay you for this work. So..... how much do I charge? How much would a web design company charge for a 5 or 6 page site?

I've also spent a couple of hours taking pictures of their venue for advertising purposes and for the pictures to appear on the website. Again... how much should I charge for this service, as they were going to get a pro photographer in, but I said I'd give it a go, and they're more than happy with the pics.

Thanks in advance.
Glen

[Joyous]

Is it not possible to quote on a time basis, ie estimate how long it will take you to do it and multiply it by your required hourly rate?

Chances are you'll come in cheaper than a web design company as presumably you don't have their overheads.

Alternatively check the web. There must be loads of web designers who publish ball park quotes on their site.

Regards

Joy

[bizNorthEast.co.uk]

companies up here charge between 500-2500 (some even higher) for a site like you described.

[BowBiz]

I paid around £500 for my Bowbiz site and that included everything. I think mine is classed as a cheaper site compared to some, but it should give you a rough idea.

Jayne

[lemontart]

Try a google search on websdesigners and have look at their rates to get an idea of the going rate, but given that forgive me but you do not sound as if you have a lot experience which may possibly be reflected in your rates.

Beth

[BlackBerryUK]

£500 sounds reasonable..
just make sure you use CSS and always bare in mind while your designing the SEO element.

Good luck

[james2505]

We used a company called geminidigital.co.uk. They charged us £299 for a complete site including domain name, hosting design and build. We got 12 months technical assistance and are over the moon by the service

[csadmin]

Glen,

Just as an aside, if you can develop web sites and you are looking for extra work please take a look at some of the contracts that we have at www.contractsandservices.com. We have a very simple bidding process that allows you to win contracts easily, for as little as £8.

Good Luck with your next contract.
Anthony

[robert05]

You could charge semi-professional rates as others have suggested. But unless you want to turn it into a p/t business? Ask for a few beers or get a discount from whatever their product/service is or a recommendation to the clienst that they meet..

[sjc]

I'd suggest you come up with some terms of business before you start the work to cover you incase things get a bit tricky. For example - you'll provide 4 layouts, two revisions before the build and once design has been signed off there will be additional charges incurred for design changes. Clients will sometimes try to see how far they can push you, if you're just a friend/freelancer in a way that they wouldn't do if they were dealing with a larger company so it doesn't hurt to state what's what before you start.

Work out an hourly rate, think about how long you think it will take you (a couple of days I dare say) and multiply the two. I think charging between 300-500 for a small static site is fairly reasonable.

Bear in mind that if you're hoping to get referrals from it, you'll need to make it not only attractive but make sure it complies with web standards and you do a good job of the SEO too. Not to mention, since we're at it, that it's cross compatible with IE and firefox at the very least, but you should really test in opera and netscape as well.

It's very easy to throw together something in frontpage (*shudder*) or dreamweaver and call yourself a web designer but there's a lot to take into account to make sure you do a good job of it. If you need some help, have a look at http://www.w3schools.com/ for tutorials and ask about on the forum there as they're usually pretty helpful.

Good luck.