[Luke7492]

How do you convince a small business or individual that $1k is a good price for their website? As someone that has learned web development as a hobby many years ago, I’ve helped build sites for several people through word of mouth but I can never seem to ask much for the work I’ve done for some reason. I work really fast, it’s easy, and even fun for me. This idea sounds great and I even have access to create unlimited sub-accounts on a CRM platform paid for by my real job. I can make full websites with storefronts, blogs, forms, galleries, email/sms flows, you name it. My issue is knowing how to convince others how valuable the work is. Any suggestions?

[quickthrowman]

You can charge a lot more than you think. IMO, $1,000 for a website is too low. I provide commercial electrical services and $1,000 would get you one of my electrician’s labor for six hours, which does not include material. For specialized electricians who do things like work on generators and do switchgear testing, $1,000 only covers around 5 hours.

[Luke7492]

This has also always irked me when thinking about switching to web development full time, knowing how much to charge. I've never been able to get a clear answer on how much is enough or too little for projects. OP suggested $1k for a small business site and honestly this seems pretty fair to me, although I think I just interpreted their other comment to have meant $1k annually... I think I'd rather have an initial project fee and then a monthly for any maintenance or changes, but then how much should that be?

[grugdev42]

Well the first point is don't ask for payment after the work is done. No one will pay because you've already solved their pain. You're in a weaker position at that point.

Tell them how much you charge before you start work and ask if they want you to start work. It can only go one of two ways.

The easiest way to convince them is to compare it to sales. If they are an electrician with an average job of $500, that website only needs to earn them two extra jobs per year to break even.

But the easiest way is to be a sociopath and not care. Ask the question and they will either say yes or no. No one is going to assassinate you for pitching a marketing website to them.

If they say yes, do you care where the money has come from? Would it matter if that was their last $1k? If they're loaded would you feel more confident? What if you do a great job and then it turns out that money came from illegal sources?

What about if they say no? Will you stay awake at night worrying that their business is losing work because people think they're weird for not having a website? What if your marketing website lands them a big client because of the "authenticity factor" of having a professional marketing website?

None of these things actually matter. But getting paid $1k feels good, especially if you've done a good job and earned it. :)

[Luke7492]

Thank you for the new perspective! I was looking at it the wrong way. They're not paying for the website, they're paying for new customers. I think I can manage taking a bit of time to understand their business a bit and then explain how a site will be valuable to them.

EDIT: Did you mean $1k annually or just for the initial project?

[grugdev42]

It's been a while since I did these, but I used to charge $1k to get it set up, then $500 per year to keep it going.

I will say I was very cheap though. But I made my money on quantity. I would do two a month on the side of a full time job.

They were very simple websites though. But most of the time that's all people need.