Help pricing a flash site

[puppetmaster]

This might be a difficult question because everyone charges differently but some ballparks answers might help.

I’ve been designing websites for about 4 years now mostly html sites. I know what to charge for these types of sites.

I’ve been offered to design a site in flash. I know flash well and I know what to charge for a flash intro and simple flash throughout a site but I don’t know what to charge for a full site. It’s going to be about 13 pages, everything will be animated.

Any help on what to charge would be of great help.

Thanks

[poab]

The technology used is irrelevent to a client, it's just a tool, and it's the end result the client is paying for, so it's the end result you should be charging for.

Personally I'd charge the same as you're charging for an html site. I know this is often difficult, because the notion of 'pages' is often irrelevant to a flash site. What I do is break it down by hour.

Most print design companies work things out by hour then offer a time estimate, and price based on the per-hour system. If the company you're pitching to has a marketing department, or any experience of proffessional promotions, this is a format they'll be used to getting quotes in.

In terms of working out an hourly rate, look in your local press or online for adverts for web designers with comparable skills to your own. Assume that refers to 40 hours a week. Then double it to take account of the fact that you won't be working all the time. Then add on another 25% so that you can either make a nice profit, or have room for negotiation.

So for example, if most adds for your skills are offering $30,000 per annum that's $15.63 per hour, doubled is $31.25 per hour, plus the extra 25% is $39 per hour. So, you start at $39 and never go lower than $31.

cheers.

[puppetmaster]

Thank you for your answer. That helped a lot. Maybe it's not the price I'm looking for, but how long it take others to design a full flash site around 13 pages.

Thanks

[voodooboy]

Now your asking two completely different things. First you can figure hourly, but you need to show a project price to the client. A lot of people are very leery about paying by the hour for something like a web site. (at least in my experience)

As for how long it takes depends on the complexity of the site. Are you working with a database or is all the text imbedded? Is everything created within Flash or do you need to optimize outside image sources? Are all the site functions going to be internal actionscript or will you need to implement external xml, php, asp or JavaScript? Will there be audio elements? How complex is the navigation? Is it going to be one multi-leveled navigation, or one main and then multiple sub-directories?

You see, this is a very open-ended question. Your best bet is to look at your own skill level; take into account how long it takes to make one page in HTML, then figure that into one page in Flash. Keep in mind that high end Flash templates go for 600-2000 USD depending on complexity. So you need to stay competitive.

I wish you the best of luck.

[ferret77]

they have flash templates for less then that at template monster

[voodooboy]

Yes, they do if you are buying a usage license for the site instead of buying the single purchase (nobody else can have it) price. That is where I got the price reference from. I don't think this guys client would want to pay for a designed site that he finds a competitor using 3 months later.

[rumblepup]

It also depends on skill level. If this is the first flash site your going to make, your gonna loose money, because the hours spent just learning how to do something is going to chew away your time estimate.

Price is relative to skill too. take a look at http://2advanced.com. Guess how much they charge for a flash website. between 5,000 and 10,000 I can asure you. Now, can you make those kind of sites? If your answer is no, then you have to consider this job a learning experience, price competitive, but low, in the 1000 dollar range, and go for it. Learn what you can on someone else's bill, but give them full value.

[lutenegger]

Pretty much everyone is right here. Most companies use an hourly method to estimate. At my company we have a spreadsheet used to calculate estimates, that breaksdown projects by skill.

There is no way for anyone to estimate your time, we simply don't know your skill level. My suggestion is to always use the same hourly rate and estimate time. Present the total cost to the client rather than the hourly cost. The only time you really need to do that is when its a small project, and have a client thats really interested in the detail. Also, I generally have a minimum time allotment for a job, and estimate in half hour blocks.

Always...Always...be sure to put extra revision time in for a flash site. I've run into clients that in the middle of the project decide to scale back menu items. While its easy to explain why an addition costs more, its much harder to explain why a retraction costs more. On html or dynamic sites its usually 10-15% additional time for revisions. On Flash I go with 20-25% depending on the client and past experience with them.

Often my company will tell a client that they have a set number of hours built into a job for revisions, and let them know as they are using them up, this method work particularly well for larger projects.

You can really end up getting screwed by being the nice guy. Just be honest, people will respect that, and always have paper or email trail.

Like everyone else has said, price varies greatly on producer. What I might do as a freelancer for $2000 my company would charge $10000+ for.

Good luck.