Topic: Review our price list... continued from Net Ninjas under site reviews

So, what do you suppose would be reasonable for the packages we are offering.

By the way... the $45 an hour is only to discourage them from not purchasing a package. I think if someone wanted something other than the packages, we would have to drop the price down to accomodate. Would you think that this is a sound tactic, or do you have other suggestions.

For those of you who are just joining us, the page, with price guides, is at NetNinjas.com. We are a company that is striking out on our own, and need process/price input.

Does anybody have any good scratch contract templates that we could borrow? Maybe as a reference or something?

I don't know how many times I can say this before it sinks into the entire world: hourly rates are your friend.

I worked for salary for a very long time. I put in long hours all the time. When I worked a 40 hour week, I was paid the same amount as I was when I worked a 60 hour week. This is because salaries fuck people in overtime. The same is true for flat-rate quotes; you end up, nine times out of ten, doing 40 hours of work on something you bid at 20--and you get no extra money. If you're going to do flat-rates (which are considered "professional," in some circles), then put a cap on it. For example, I bid out a project for $600, I put a cap of 30 hours on that cost. If I go over, it's an additional $40/hr coding, $80/hr design.

That being said, $400 for a single page is not only a silly idea in principle, but an incredibly gargantuan number. I do full sites for $600, and that's unlimited pages, full design, and integration into a server of some kind. I do full eCommerce sites for between $1200 and $2000, generally, unless it's something huge.

$400 for one, single page is outrageous--it also tells your customers that a single page is good, which of course it is not. We'll leave that for a rant on a different day, however.

And as much as I wish I could support new 'companies' out there, I have to say this: If you need help with contracts, bidding, etc....well, you're not ready for it. It may sound brazen for me to say that, but I've helped plenty of other people start up "companies," and most of them failed within ten days if they didn't already have a good idea on how to write a proposal, or bid a project, or sign NDAs.

s t e p h e n

Hey Twitch, why do you charge double for design compared to coding? Database design and complex page layouts, is that design or coding? Unlimited pages for $600? I am surprised. I am not criticizing, just curious; I thought you would have a limit of pages for that sum. I am doing a site for home builders, and they have around 40 pictures that go on there, and the site has 4-5 pages only. I charge $800 Canadian for that, does that sound low or high?

Thanks,
=rotren=

See, interesting point: for me, development is a whole lot easier than design. Design, in my definition, is anything that happens in Photoshop. That covers very few things, hence the larger tag on it.

And the purpose for unlimited pages is quite simple: I use PHP to serve up almost everything I code, so it's not straight HTML. Unlimmited pages means that it's, for the most part, just adding different content to the content area, defined by simple variables depending. So it's really very easy to do that. Another reason I tag unlimited pages for that amount is that I am always pushing for a v2, which means there might be some sort of eCommerce side, some sort of dynamic element--something--that might draw the price up further.

$800CDN sounds fine for that site, only because you've already won the project. It seems to me that a purely static, brochure site wouldn't cost that much simply because you could write your templates and do the image insertion through a simple PHP or Perl script; it doesn't strike me as that much of a time-consumer. But, of course, we might just work differently.

Myself, I'm bent on ensuring that actual technologies are used in the sites that I develop--otherwise, it's not a web project, but a typing project. And those are incredibly boring.

s t e p h e n

Twitch...Full e-commerce sites for between $1200 and $2000?? ARE YOU NUTS!? Do you realize how much it costs to run a quarter-size add in your local phone book for a year? IT'S RIDICULOUS!!! If an ad salesman can convince a business that its gain through running an add in the phonebook will generate even 5% of its income through LOCAL contact, you can BET that company will pay the frickin' $4500 it costs to run that add... Hence, if you have no perception of how to show a customer that his add will pay for itself soon enough, then you loose customers! I'd say you're selling yourself short. My tactic is to show customers that they are being exposed to the entire world, and they dig that. Your pricing can easily be justified by your marketing strategies. Twitch, I'd say YOU'RE customers are laughing all the way to the bank (corners of mouth slowly turn up when you turn your back). If I was surfing the internet and found that you could put my company up on the web and have complete purchasing capabilites for $2000, I'd think twice, thrice, and shudder at the RISK! Stop ripping yourself off dude!

I hear you twitch. I had to put up with salary myself, (Navy man). We would go out to sea for months, working 12 hours on, 12 hours off, round the clock. When in port, every four days, on top of our regular work week, we'd stand a twenty four hour watch. I KNOW about the salary issue.

Your plan below, with a cap. I understand that entirely. I was actually going to post that myself. Which tells me two things:
1) I am probably just too damn excited about this. Before I ask for prices, I should make sure that I will not have to explain them when I ask others to look over them.
2) There are some things on my price list thingy that I did not fully consider from a user standpoint.

That being said, let me tell you that the $400 dollar home page includes EVERYTHING. I would be doing exactly what you are doing, where you have navigation system in place, only cut and paste the content in there for the remainder of the pages. Or if, despite my efforts, they really only want me to do one page for them, than they may a) ask me to insert the links to their other crappy pages, or b)do the rest themselves. The point is that it isn't just a stupid bookmark page. However, there are issues that are being brought to my attention that I have not considered. Thank you.

I like your PHP idea. I've been doing that for one of our first contracts.

I'm not sure about our prices myself. All I know is that when we have talked to people thus far, we have been cheap based on the research that they have done. Most of the people we contact have not had the money to do a web page until we came along. However, the price list is creating so much contraversy here, and honestly, we've never used it, we're just going to scrap it. The phase thing too, I think.

quote
And as much as I wish I could support new 'companies' out there, I have to say this: If you need help with contracts, bidding, etc....well, you're not ready for it. It may sound brazen for me to say that, but I've helped plenty of other people start up "companies," and most of them failed within ten days if they didn't already have a good idea on how to write a proposal, or bid a project, or sign NDAs.
end quote

I appreciate your concern. We wouldn't have even considered this unless we were getting shitloads of business. I don't know why it's working for us, but it is. I don't think it's brazen. Who could know when typing in black and white anyway (or orange and black, as it were). We also are going to be merging with someone who has been quite successful at this. We know our shortcomings and we know what the asylum has been generous enough to point out on the matter (thank you). We are going to deal with them.

For all intents and purposes, I have gotten the info I need here.

Case closed.