Brettia

I just saw a web design company with hourly rates as high as $120/hour! Does anyone else think that’s unbelievable? How can they even charge that much without driving customers away? I only charge $15/hour for simple HTML/graphic design, and $20/hour for complicated HTML/PHP. Am I really that cheap? Or is this particular company just really expensive?

There was also a list of design packages, one of which was very similar to the website I recently did for my aunt and uncle (feature-wise and such). The package was listed for $650, including costs incurred for web hosting and a domain name (only about $75). I charged my aunt and uncle $100, for a net profit of about $50. Sure, they got heavy discounts for being relatives, but still…my price is less than 20% of what Keystone Websites, the company I discovered, was charging. Am I cheating myself by offering my services so cheaply?

The problem is, I have no way of gauging where my prices should fall. I’ve never had a real job before, hourly or anything (being only 14, a job can be hard to come by). So how am I supposed to know what to charge people? I know that wages for clerks at Osco Drug stores in California start at $17.00/hour because of high cost of living. Does that mean I should charge more than $17/hour for even basic work? Designing and building web pages is certainly more strenuous and requires much greater skill than simply scanning items over a red laser.

Another problem is that most of my clients have no appreciation of higher-level site design. A friend of the family who runs a golf business generally can’t seem to accept that sites can look good without looking as if they were made by a seven-year-old. So whatever I design for him has to be “dumbed-down” a bit. Meaning that I’m not using my more advanced knowledge, meaning that I have to charge less. The same thing happens when dealing with another client, who uses me to design websites for his design company when he is flooded with work. He uses Dreamweaver for everything, and wants me to do the same. Though he’s a nice guy and easy to talk to and get to know, he can’t accept that my way of doing things generally will generate more detailed, pixel-perfect layouts as a result. It’s all in the control the developer has over their code, and Dreamweaver and FrontPage don’t give me nearly enough control for me to be happy. For this client my rates are low too, since I don’t feel comfortable with charging him much for work that I myself am not satisfied with.

I don’t want to scare people away by raising my prices, nor do I want to feel like I’m swindling them. It would be nice to have enough money for my dream computer after only two or three sites, but I don’t know how I’d be able to bear looking at it, no matter how pretty it might be, if I have it only because I took too much money from people who didn’t know the business well enough to know that they were being overcharged.

Computer Fund

And here’s my latest earnings report:
Current Holdings: $302.08
Accounts Receivable: $738.50
Earnings Between Now and My Birthday: $310.00
Earnings Between Then and August 16: $320.00
Estimated Total By Summer End: $1,750.08
Realistic Total: $1,350.08