[gremlinsinc]

Whats your hourly?

I'm more laravel/mobile/node/vue/react, and I find I under-charge, but I think if I were doing WP I'd need to charge even less... Currently my best-long-term client pays $40...but I feel I want/deserve 60-70 and trying to land that for my next couple clients... do people pay you more than $40/hr for wordpress or do you just charge per project?

[goatherders]

You are grossly under charging. The first advice I give any dev is to up your rates by 25%. Period. You will not lose any clients. I promise. But $40 an hour for those skills is nuts. In the US WordPress providers typically charge $80 and I tell all of them - ALL - that they should be at at least $100/hour.

[MrBra]

So how much will a finished WordPress website end up costing? Just considering 20 hours will make the website cost $2000, and after that work the client will usually ask for other features and little touches here and there. Are you sure that this is what you can ask for a smallish WordPress website? I've read many times that this segment is usually called the "$500 WordPress website" segment... I think that when you start going over $2000 people start expecting a custom built website with completely customizable design/structure/graphics... at least this is my impression regarding website market in Europe. Does anyone feel the same about it?

[goatherders]

There is a market that will pay 500 that I would stay away from unless you can also get ongoing revenue as well (hosting, support/updates, content creation, etc). There is also an segment that already knows "a few thousand" is the starting cost of a quality site.

[rograndom]

You are probably undercharging. Not parent, but my WordPress specific work was either a flat fee for standard stuff (setting up a site, installing and configuring an existing theme, plugins, etc), or $50/hr for customization either through writing new plugins or adding functionality to an existing theme via PHP or CSS.

Laravel or other custom work starts at $125 for clients I'm expecting volume from or $150 for one off projects, again given in estimates as a flat fee for the project. If I expect something will take 8 hours to build, then I'm giving them a quote of $1200.

You can scaffold up a lot of CRUD stuff in Laravel in 8 hours.

[gremlinsinc]

Where do you find clients? My bread/butter is basically reddit - /r/forhire, Upwork is total shit, so I don't even login there anymore.

I'm wanting to potentially do some sort of hosting/support plan...and work on a site that has a ton more inbound marketing related articles on my biz. Then hire some offshore or jr devs or techs wanting to become devs to support the easy issues, I'll take care of the harder stuff, or hire some tier 2 people to do that... basically have something like $200/month for hosting, unlimited non-coding issues, change fonts, update settings, fix white screen of death, etc...w/ backups/malware scans/etc... -- the idea being get some recurring income.

Then I can up-sell people who need custom apps, full-design, etc... But before I can move into agency, I need solid/steady income. I had a bunch of imposter syndrome/depression but I'm depression free since August (therapy), and I've lost 90 pounds, and just have more energy, and I'm a lot more focused now, and just want to take freelancing to where I know it can go.

[goatherders]

This business model is tried and true (WP Curve, GoWP). In fact GoWP has a great white label solution to handle all the maintenance you speak of at a fair cost. I used to combine their service with hosting on WP Engine (which included Sucuri for security) and have a ready made MRR model for WordPress.

[jason_pomerleau]

Depends - it ranges from 90/hr to several hundred or more. Some things aren’t priced hourly, instead I charge competitive market rates and focus on workflow/efficiency improvements for additional margin.

[danielvf]

If you are US based, you can charge more than that, even in a low cost of living area. There is currently quite a bit more work than devs.

[potta_coffee]

Question wasn't for me, but I charge $50 hourly and I know I'm undercharging because my clients end up being surprised at how cheap the invoice is.

[drewmol]

If you uped your rate to 75, they know your value and probably wouldn't jump ship. Even if 25% did you still make more with less total hours and more potential revenue for any referral business you get. You also get the benifit of not feeling under valued which can drive you to increase the scope of services you provide to existing clients.