What to charge for additional pages?

[vfaulkner]

I created a website for a photographer client, for which I was paid my standard flat business rate that includes minor updates.
Now, the client wants to add image gallery pages to the site and wants a quote to do the work. This may be an ongoing assignment; she is not sure yet if she wants 5 pages or will need 20+ for her pics.

My question is: Should I charge her a flat fee, hourly, or per page basis?

I know I could make a 'template' to input images into to make the process easier, but there still the image manipulations, tags, text, etc., to deal with.

I don't want to price myself out or undervalue anyone's work.

[morestar]

I would charge a flat rate. I went the route of quoting for quite a long time and found I screwed myself many times, in the end...

With the flat rate, you can feel comfortable knowing that as each hour is passing by, you're going to get paid. As developers/marketers/designers we all know how it feels to work endless hours on projects while going over our personal budget and feeling jipped in the end.

Go for the hourly rate, set the rate with the client upfront. Since you're not going to be as expensive as the bigger firms I'm sure your client will have no problem accepting your rate.

be done with cat food for chip dip! = )

[mohsho]

Shouldn't you be giving her a quote on setting up some sort of php gallery for her? ie. Gallery2 or whatever gallery software you prefer.

[morestar]

No I wouldn't.

I created a site recently for a company that does eavestrough replacements, with a better product, and after about a month or so, they wanted a gallery. I told them I would do it but at my same hourly rate. They were fine with it. Developing that part of the site took much less time than I anticipated, not even 3 hours. If I had quoted them I probably would have quoted over $200.00. In the end I only charged them approximately $100.00 - client's like that.

You tell me - why would you want to provide a quote over charging an hourly rate? Do you get more from it?

[claybutler]

The reasoning behind flat fee versus hourly is that it puts the emphasis on value received. Hours worked is a commodity. It's best to avoid being a commodity.

Here's an old story to illustrate.

The computer system crashes at a Fortune 500 company. They loose tens of thousands of dollars every hour it's down. They call in an expert. He fixes it in 15 minutes and sends a bill to the CEO. The CEO opens the bill and it say's $10,000. Upset he calls the expert and asks him to explain the bill. After all it only took 15 minutes to fix the computers. The expert says I charged $100 for my time and $9,900 for the 20 years of schooling and experience it took me to know how to fix your very costly problem.

The CEO realized that because the expert knew how to fix it, it actually saved him over $100,000 in downtown and was satisfied with the bill. For hours work it was an outrageous bill, for value received it was a bargain.

This story illustrates the value received concept.

I only charge hourly when their is no other way to do it. Routine maintenance and and opened ended projects that don't have a traditional beginning and end are good examples.

So price your services depending on the circumstances and your long term branding goals. Just keep in mind that when you charge hourly or itemize, the emphasis shifts from the value received to the labor you invested. Sometimes this is appropriate and sometimes less so.

For new clients with a clear project with tight specs (like a website or logo design) perhaps go with flat fee. Then switch to hourly for all the little add-ons that will pop up. This gives a good mix that I've found works well for both me and my clients.

On a side note, the idea that you will always get paid for your time if you charge hourly is not that accurate in real life situations, particularly with long term clients. We all know that if something ends up taking way longer than expected, you're going to shave hours off that bill anyway to adjust it closer to your client's expectations. This is just smart business. Everyone does it, especially businesses run by individuals that don't have a payroll to make. You just can't drop a bomb of a bill on your client's desk and expect them to be happy, no matter how justified. So you make adjustments to the bill.

[morestar]

I like your style Clay and you made a great point!

It's much better to charge a fee rather than an hourly rate but the person setting the fees has to have the courage to charge enough to cover the 20 years experience too.

Not that the OP is new at the game but for a lot of people who are just beginning to build their clientèle and prove their skills & experience, it's hard to get the courage to charge what their time is worth. Also, sometimes if a client can sense one's weakness they try to get the best deal they can and end up pressuring the person to accept deals where again, they don't get paid what their time is worth.

I even have problems to this day in this area but when it comes to designing the site let's say, I usually charge a flat fee and throw that into an agreement with a clause indicating that any work that needs to be done after the project is complete will be charged an hourly rate.

In the case you mentioned above it's a slight different that making a few addons (new pages) rather than saving an entire network!

[mjtaylor]

Personally, I charge an hourly rate unless someone asks for a quote. If I am asked for a quote I estimate the number of hours I believe it will take and multiply that by my hourly rate. Then I add 15-20% depending on how confident I am in my estimate.

[claybutler]

For mjtaylor. What if a Fortune 500 company wanted to hire you, and the job, if done correctly, would be worth a million dollars in additional revenue for the company. But, you ended up completing the job in 10 hours. Not a likely scenario, but within the realm of possibility. A great tagline could be created in 10 hours. So could a logo or a paragraph of killer copy. Depends on how quickly you nail it. What would you charge? $1,000 per hour? They would laugh. But if you said it would be $10,000 and you estimate it will generate an additional one million in revenue, well then that sounds reasonable.

A logo design for a mom and pop has less value than the same logo for a big corporation. With an hourly rate you can paint yourself into a corner because at a certain point an hourly rate will just sound ridiculous, where the same total fee, when presented as a flat fee, sounds reasonable because it focuses on value received and not the commodity (hours).

Imagine going to the doctor and he says he can cure your cancer in two hours but the hourly rate is $5,000 an hour. You'd go "holy cow, why should I pay that much, that's ridiculous!". Because at that point you are no longer focusing on value received (curing your cancer) and instead focusing on the commodity (hours worked). Now if the doctor just said I can cure your cancer for $10,000, you go "wow, that's a bargain!" because now you are focused on value received.

Not saying never charge by the hour (I do it myself depending on the situation) just be careful with it because at a certain point the psychology of pricing will work against an hourly fee structure where as a flat fee is infinitely scalable.

My own dentist recently filled a tooth that had a hole in it. I was in and out in 15 minutes. Total charge..$240. That's $1,000 an hour! But not really. I paid $240 to fill a tooth. How long it took is really irrelevant. Still, it did feel like too much, but not because of the time, but because it's hard for me to judge the value received. I wasn't in any pain and it wasn't a cavity. Should I have just waited and rolled the dice? Could I had waited another year? Would waiting ultimately cost me a root canal in 3 years? I don't know, I'm not a tooth expert. Because the case for value received was not clear I wasn't quite comfortable with the price.

Now if I was in raging pain, the $240 would be a bargain because the value received is quite clear at that point.

[thebadhackerz]

hourly rate is fine when you are not sure about the volume of work and keep updated your client about your hours

[mikeewart]

We typically use a combination of hourly and flat rate. I agree with Clay's line of thought.

When we do a new project for a new client, 98% of the time we charge a flat rate. Most of the time, we then switch to an hourly rate for tweaks, regular maint. etc. If we do any sort of a redesign, most of the time that will be on an hourly too. We price the benefit of the "20 years of knowledge" into the flat rate project and but maybe only "10 years" into future things to keep the client feeling they got a fair deal. Both sides of the transaction benefit.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by claybutler

For mjtaylor. What if a Fortune 500 company wanted to hire you, and the job, if done correctly, would be worth a million dollars in additional revenue for the company. But, you ended up completing the job in 10 hours. Not a likely scenario, but within the realm of possibility. A great tagline could be created in 10 hours. So could a logo or a paragraph of killer copy. Depends on how quickly you nail it. What would you charge? $1,000 per hour? They would laugh. But if you said it would be $10,000 and you estimate it will generate an additional one million in revenue, well then that sounds reasonable.

Most likely scenario: I would charge them whatever I quoted.

A great tagline could occur to me before I got the job - but if I'm a professional I will have a general idea of the average time it takes me to complete the work. I'll have already established a value for my work based on my creative reputation. It's not unheard of for good copywriters to charge $500, so your example is only twice the rate for the top guns in this field.

Originally Posted by claybutler

A logo design for a mom and pop has less value than the same logo for a big corporation. With an hourly rate you can paint yourself into a corner because at a certain point an hourly rate will just sound ridiculous, where the same total fee, when presented as a flat fee, sounds reasonable because it focuses on value received and not the commodity (hours).

Chances are if my market is mom and pop, I won't have too many corporations asking me to work for them.

I do SEO and I also update websites for my clients. An hourly rate makes the most sense for what I do. I do have a $599 fee for an initial consultation; sometimes it takes me 10 hours, sometimes 2 or 3. I didn't base it on my hourly rate; I based it on what I think it's worth. But what I do would be worth a whole lot more to a corporation and I could probably charge them several thousand for the same number of hours of consultation and services rendered.

The OP is in a position where she doesn't really understand her market and what it will bear and what she is worth.

And I can't really tell her what she should do; I can only offer what I do. I've been doing it more than 10 years and I have more work than I want to do in a day ... so I'm probably underpriced.

[morestar]

I have to say that although I will still charge hourly for some situations, as recent as Thursday of last week I was asked by a potential client to figure out why he wasn't even showing up on Google at all...to make a long story short and discreet, I analyzed his site for about an hour and found a few of the problems. I then (taking Clays advice) sent him an invoice for $70.

He didn't squint and happily paid me. If I didn't have the ten years plus experience in this game I wouldn't have been able to help him. The help I did give him is surely going to be worth much more than the $70 in the years to come.

So it depends for me really. I'm going to have to decide now; when he comes back and asks me to take care of those things that need to be fixed, will I charge hourly or just give him a quote?

decisions decisions...

[WordNerd]

The tough thing is writing your site copy so clients understand they are paying for experience before they call/contact you.

[morestar]

I was seriously just thinking that as I walked in the door...our work and especially SEO brings in a lot of money for certain businesses, especially if you're successful at it so our costs should for the most part reflect the return. Our costs or our hourly wages.