How To Make $5000+ a Month Building Websites Part-Time
I had a problem. Two problems, actually. The first problem was that my wife and I needed to come up with just over $26,000 to meet our goal of getting out of debt in the next 3 1/2 months.
That was a problem because I was making just enough at my day job to get by. Which leads to my second problem, time, or rather – the lack thereof. Between a full-time job and a family, the time I had left to work towards our goal was limited.
We did it though. In the beginning of December, 2011, we paid off our last debt and, for the first time in our marriage, we were debt free.
How? On weeknights and on Sundays I built websites for clients. My time was limited and the amount of money I needed to make was high, so it was important to maximize the time that I spent on task. It meant a lot of late nights and sleep deprivation, to be sure, but we made it through and, looking back, I only regret that I didn’t do it sooner.
As I recently reflected back on that experience, I realized that the lessons I learned and the strategies I used to get my family out of debt were applicable beyond my situation. You can use them too.
If you need money and you’re short on time, I can’t think of anything better than building websites part time. Let’s look at how to do that efficiently with maximizing profit a top priority.
Make Yourself Available
Your clients need to know that you exist. If potential clients don’t know you exist, your work is going to be a bit harder. Odds are, though, you are connected to more people than you think. It’s important to start with those people and let them know that you are now available to build websites.
I made my availability known on my personal website (if you intend to build websites for others, you do need to have your own). I emailed folks I’d done work for in the past and let them know I was available again. I maximized my existing networking connections and, out of that, I began to line up the first few projects.
If you haven’t had any past experience building websites, that’s okay. We all have to start somewhere and I can’t think of a better time than right now. Learn how to get your first web development client.
Get Gazelle Intense
My wife and I started our journey towards debt freedom with Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Early in the program, Dave talks about the importance of what he calls “gazelle intensity.” When a cheetah takes off after a gazelle, that gazelle runs and it runs because it’s life is on the line.
When a cheetah takes off after a gazelle, that gazelle runs and it runs because it’s life is on the line.
I realized that I couldn’t be any less serious if we were going to achieve our goals. I cut out anything and everything I could in life, I sacrificed, and I made the small amount of time that I had available to me as productive as I possibly could. It meant late nights. It meant working on Sunday (Saturday was my one day a week off). It meant giving it everything that I had.
That sacrifice and the intensity with which I worked paid off. If you’re going to make money building websites part-time you need to be intense about it and maximize the limited time you do have available.
Use A Platform
To make $5000+ a month part-time, you’re going to need to be fast. If you don’t already know how to build websites from scratch, now isn’t the time to learn. If you do know how to build websites from scratch, I highly recommend that you set that knowledge aside for now. You need to use a platform.
WordPress is my favorite and I recommend it highly. It has a proven track record, open source development team behind it, community support, diverse theme options, and momentum.
Don’t go out and buy any books on web development (yet), don’t enroll in any classes at your local college (unless it’s a fast class and someone passionate is teaching it). You need to focus on getting results as efficiently and as effectively as possible. There has never been a better time than right now to make use of a platform that’s already been built, and is well past the tipping point of quality and popularity.
Use Pre-Built Themes
The WordPress default theme is probably not going to cut it for your clients and learning how to customize it isn’t the best use of your time (right now). Envato, FreelanceSwitch’s parent company, has ThemeForest, a fantastic theme marketplace for WordPress. I use ThemeForest for the majority of my smaller, $1500-$2500 projects.
Should you ever build your own themes? Sure, if you want to. But not while you’re working part-time. If I’d written this article 2 years ago, my advice wouldn’t have been so strong, but the options these days are amazing. For someone starting out – especially someone with a limited amount of time — using pre-built themes is the best way to go.
Charge The Right Price
If you’re going to make $5000+ a month, you can’t be building websites for only a few hundred dollars. You’re doing yourself and your clients a disservice. You need to charge a fair price. Consider the value that you’re able to provide by leveraging a platform and by helping them put that platform to use.
If you’re going to make $5000+ a month, you can’t be building websites for only a few hundred dollars.
Wrap your mind around the value and focus on what building a website can do for your client’s business. I recommend that you charge $2500 per project. Don’t go for less than $1000 per project and make sure that you can finish the project with an average of over $75/hour (that’s what it takes to make $5000+ a month working part-time).
Create a “Wow” Experience
In Michael Hyatt’s new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, (great book) he talks about the importance of creating a “Wow” experience for the people you serve.
I can’t stress this enough. From the first point of contact, whether by phone, in-person, or via email, all the way to after the website is launched, focus on creating an experience that exceeds your client’s expectations. As the adage goes, under promise and over deliver.
It takes time and energy to create a “Wow” experience and, on a part-time basis, your time is limited. Focus on the energy. Go the extra distance, maintain a positive attitude, and be intentional about looking for ways to create a great experience.
Think about it when you’re in the car, laying in bed, or taking a shower. Ask yourself, “How can I create a great experience for my client?” Take a few minutes after each project to reflect on what you’ve learned and write down ideas that you can apply to the new project to cultivate a “wow.”
Ask For Endorsements and Referrals
When the work is done, ask for an endorsement. Keep it simple. Ask your client to write 2-3 sentences about their experience working with you. Take their endorsement and put it up on your website. Then, ask them for referrals!
Ask if they know of anyone else who needs a website, then take the initiative to follow-up on any and all recommendations they give you. Referrals are the best way to grow a business and it’s important for you to ask your clients and give them an opportunity to contribute to your success by referring you to others.
Master Your Craft
As you begin to develop traction and experience, it’s important to invest in your education and focus on mastering your craft. Now is the time to start reading books and blogs on web development. Enroll in some online courses. Pick an area to specialize and begin to focus on developing your skill set further.
Attend events in your area of interest and network with others. Ask questions and learn from the experience of those who’ve gone before you. As the demand for websites grows, so will the number of people trying to meet that demand. If you’re going to stand out, you need to constantly work towards a mastery of what you do.
As your success allows you time to sit back, go ahead and enjoy a short rest, then get right back to it and work continually towards mastery.
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Talk about great timing! I have my very first two client meetings tomorrow and after a bit of research, I realized I was about to WAY undercharge them. I upped my prices and vamped up my proposal so it should work out to about $75/hour. Wish me luck!
Bests of luck to you tomorrow. Hope everything goes well.
Excellent! Glad to hear it! If you’re up for the follow-up, do let us know how it goes!
Thanks guys, it went AWESOME. I did mock-up sites with some of the information they gave me, and wrote detailed proposals with two different options. First I talked with them about what they were looking for, then I went through all of the ways the site would add value to their business and showed them the mock-up, and then went through the proposal with the prices at the very end. They were both really excited about their sites and both accepted my proposal – one for the more advanced site and higher amount, the other for a lower amount than what I proposed but she also identified some things she didn’t need that will save me time in creating the site.
There are a lot of awfully cynical people commenting on here, but the fact is, what we do adds tons of value to the client’s business, and even if it is easy for us, it’s not necessarily easy for them. I want clients who want a great site to develop their business and who are willing to pay for it. I DON’T want clients who want a cheap, crappy site that *looks* like it took 5 minutes to make.
Wow! Nice hustle and congrats on becoming debt free. That’s a life changer.
Good article Jonathan! I can totally relate to most of the article…but I’m curious, how do you deal with clients who end up eating enormous amounts of your time (scope creep, dealing with revisions, etc…). I know from years of personal experience that the “$2500″ client is going to be much more difficult the ones that are paying a lot more. It’s one of those weird things where the smaller clients are much higher maintenance the bigger ones…
You also mentioned charging $2500 per project. Do you have like set ‘packages’ that include only X Y & Z for $2500….websites are so variable and functionality is different for so many clients; how do you figure $2500 is the ticket price for projects?
Thanks!
Adam – You hit on some important points. When I am offering a $2500 website, it includes a tight scope that identifies all the major areas where time is spent and defines what I’ll be doing versus what they’ll be doing.
I have had *plenty* of past experience working with clients who take up lots of time. What I’ve discovered is that while in some cases it’s just who the client is, in most cases, the key has been how I’ve presented and conducted myself and the expectations that have been set from the beginning.
Most of my clients nowadays tend to be hands off, trusting in my experience and the expectations that I’ve set to go in, do great work, and meet their objectives. The clients that tended to take up a lot of time were those who, for whatever reason, felt they *had to* in order to meet the project’s objectives – which usually means that I didn’t present things clearly or that expectations weren’t being met.
I determine the price, internally, based on the time that I’ll spend on the project and, externally, on the value that I can bring to the table.
Is that helpful?
I do this right now! My wife and I are in a similar poisition, first year of marriage with a goal to rid of all out debt within the year using the same Dave Ramsey philosophy. It’s such a freeing experience and I resonate with you so much on this!
As a designer, Light CMS (http://www.lightcms.com/) is a great resource to do this with. It’s built with the designer in mind, only requiring a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, and they have a ‘Starter’ file which allows you to modify the framework based on your design. Best of all, it’s free to sign up and create 3 page sites for your clients. The only costs come in when you add more pages or want to link-in the domain.
All the best on your journey to debt-free-dom!
That was a good quantity of money and very quick!
I think one of the best arguments you have there is that we need to charge a reasonable quantity. If you’re going to charge $100 for a website or make it for free just because it’s for your friend or your neighbor, then don’t do it.
I’m not really sure about this. We’re not really designing/developing anything, we’re just installing WordPress. Most devs/designers do this for about $100-$200.
Maybe I’m missing something though…are we adding features or customizing or something?
John, great question. I am very upfront with clients about what they’re getting. From my perspective, I am a developer and I don’t make any pretense about offering design services.
The value that I am bringing to the table, and what I suggest you do as well (if you go a similar route) is as follows:
1. Helping them make good choices – The right theme, the right plugins, etc.
2. Guiding the project – Helping them decide which pages go on the site, giving feedback and basic direction on content.
3. Providing training – Teaching them how to manage WordPress and make updates on their own.
Those are all things that are high value to a client. Aside from that, my *time* is spent customizing the theme to their needs. In some cases, it’s only a few minutes of work. In other cases, I may spend a few hours making updates to the theme itself.
Do you tell your clients when you are using pre-made themes?
I still charge my hourly rate for the set up, any design changes and tutorial when I set up sites for clients with pre-made themes, but $2000 for a $50 theme and 5-6 hours of my time seems a bit dishonest.
I’m with you, Laura. If I’m not doing custom design — which seldom happens these days — a theme installation isn’t worth $2k.
Hey Laura! Yes – I let clients know up-front that they’re using a pre-made theme and, in the majority of cases, I involve them in the selection process. I’ll go out and narrow down the list and give them anywhere from 2-5 choices, along with my recommendation.
I’m also never offended if a client takes my recommendation for a theme and goes and installs it themselves. I don’t try and make it sound difficult.
More often than not, though, I *am* making customizations to the theme and while those customizations may only a few hours at most that’s because of my experience level. The clients I’ve worked with don’t have an interest in figuring it out themselves, though they certainly could.
At the end of the day, clients are paying for results. A smooth process with their business objectives clearly being met is worth the money to them.
As for hourly, I usually bring that in when I’m doing highly custom work or providing extra training/consulting, above and beyond the scope of the project.
Is that helpful?
Well, if the client gets only an installed theme throughout the project, than $2k for a few hours of commodity service could be expensive.
However, in typical scenarios, it is about the solution, you, as an expert give to the client. Theme installation is only a tool here.
Bookmarked this! I’m a blog & website designer (http://purelysensibledesign.com/), and I think I do undercharge. Thanks for the encouragement to up my rates a bit.
I do try to create a ‘wow’ experience for my clients, and I look for little ways to make their experience with me a little more special.
I have been rewarded with my clients returning back to me with their business, which I appreciate.
You are welcome, Sandra! Repeat business is one of the best indicators that you’re doing something right and, you’ve already caught on – the secret is in the details – it’s the little things that matter.
As for undercharging – do you tend to charge more by the project or by the hour?
Hi Jonathan, great article to read. I’ve a couple of question and i hope you can clarify it for me. In the article you mention using a platform with ready made themes for building website. How do you justify to the client that you’ll be using a template and more than $1000 will be billed to them. They must be wondering what’s left to be done except new contents, logo and banners?
Asrul – Great question. While that range ($1000-$2500) is accurate, what I am *doing* for that range does tend to vary from client to client.
Here’s a quick example of how an ideal conversation tends to go:
Client: I need a website for my business. How much will it cost?
Me: That depends – Tell me about what you have in mind.
Client: I just need a basic site for my business, to describe my services and get them in contact with me.
Me: Ok, great! There are a few ways we could go with that. One route is a custom design [explain the benefits]. Another route is to customize a prebuilt WordPress theme [explain the benefits].
—
Now, I then let them know what a custom design would cost (since I’m not a designer, it means bringing in one of my teammates) and I compare it against an existing theme – where I tell them the range for the finished project is usually around $2500.
At that point, they usually want to know what’s included in that and I explain that it covers everything. I work with them in the planning stage to figure out what goes up on the site, then I guide them through it. They write copy and, in my case, I provide basic copyediting – which doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, but is a high value to them. I also work to make minor customizations to the theme we chose, adding in their logo and making minor tweaks, etc. I work with them to get the content up and running, then provide training on how to manage it. Then, we launch!
One more thought to keep in mind – I am *not* a designer. My brother, Joshua, does similar work and *is* a designer. In his case, he also customizes existing themes for smaller budget projects, but puts more of an emphasis on the design work and may even develop creatives for the site (graphics, illustrations, etc). He also tends to do more work with child themes.
Is that helpful?
Yeah, that wa very helpful indeed! Thanks!
This was definitely a great read. Where would be a good place to learn WordPress Development? Is there a course, or an e-book that someone would recommend?
I wrote an article on Smashing Magazine that touches on a lot of the more technical aspects. You can read it here:
http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/23/how-to-become-a-top-wordpress-developer/
There are some *excellent* books and courses out there to teach WordPress development from the technical side.
If you’re interested in the business side keep an eye out for a course I’m planning to release next month.
Free:
1. http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
2. http://wp.tutsplus.com/
3. http://blog.epicerastudio.com/2010/06/the-top-five-places-to-learn-wordpress/
4. Youtube.com
Premium Series:
1. https://tutsplus.com/course/wordpress-plugin-development-essentials/
2. Premium Tutorial: https://tutsplus.com/tutorials/?q=true&filter_topic=44
3. Premium eBooks: https://tutsplus.com/ebooks/?q=true&filter_topic=44
Lot more with some Google
Brandon, I find lynda.com to be a good resource for starting out with WordPress, though it is paid. Also, I look at http://wp.tutsplus.com/, http://net.tutsplus.com/?s=wordpress, and actually any of the tutsplus networks for other tips. Hope this helps!
Awesome! Thanks. I will try to look into some of these. It is definitely something I want to start learning.
I would love to add this as a service for my company sometime within the next year.
Do you tell your clients that your going to base their website on a template? I’ve been doing that so they can have a chance to choose the one they like best based on choices i give them. Is this right or wrong?
Joy – Thanks for stopping by! I do tell them and explain the benefits along with the reasons why they may want a custom design (there are some great reasons to go custom). They typically choose to use an existing theme and, then, I help them choose the right one.
One suggestion for you is to give them your recommendations for themes along with your reasons for why one theme is a better match than another. Focus on what a particular theme does for them and their objectives for the project rather than its specific visual appeals (you should always be recommending themes that look great and, if it needs help, you can customize it!).
Wow, so happy i found this. I’ve been considering starting a freelance business where i set up and manage websites for people but using pre made themes because my coding and web design skills are way too poor (i’m just starting to learn) i do have great cm and manager skills, i just wasn’t sure if it was the right call.
thanks for this article!
You are welcome, Maria! The heart of the matter is to focus on accomplishing your client’s objectives. Choosing a well designed and well-built theme is a great way to do that.
I do recommend that you make your expertise clear to the client. If you go the pre-built theme route, let them know that and explain that you are helping them leverage the skillsets of other designers and developers. That keeps the cost lower and lets you focus on using your skills to guide the project and help them meet their objectives.
Very good article and thank you for the pricing information. It’s always tough trying to find a good pricing strategy. I do design/development myself. It helps to remember that you need to value your work and charge accordingly! Did you have difficulty with multiple clients at one time, or did you keep it to one client at a time?
I usually had more than one client at a time and, yes, it was (and is) challenging to manage. It’s meant a lot of patience of my wife’s part when it’s meant working late nights
.
Thanks for encouraging words… I have few blogs and use Word Press themes…. Now I started earning income from placing ads and adsense… Now I am learning theme design and working for MagentoCommerce Themes
Jonathan,
You mentioned using pre-built themes and that is great. Do you send clients to pick one or get what they are loking for, buy the them and then modify it to fit your/their needs? I imagine that you can spend a lot of time looking for the right theme.
Great article. I just happen to be looking to do the same thing you just completed. Inspiriing!
Mike – Yes! Choosing the right theme can be very challenging at times and all the great options don’t really make it that much easier.
What I tend to do is pick 2-3 themes based on what I know that they’re wanting to accomplish. Recently, when I don’t have the privilege of a face-to-face meeting, I’ve been preparing a screencast walking them through my top 2-3 choices and concluding with my recommendations. I give a clear recommendation and leave the final choice up to them.
Is that helpful?
Excellent article!
Thanks for sharing your experience. His ideas have inspired me a lot because I’m living the same challenge to increase my earnings.
However I have a question about using the WordPress themes ready. Should I reveal my clients that creation is not mine? They could not find me or just creative? Does knowing where he got the topics they decide dismiss me and take over the project?
Please help me with these questions.
Thank you!
Alex Vilela
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
Alex – When it comes to working with existing themes, I recommend that your value to a potential client is in your ability to help them find the right theme and then customize it and the rest of the site to meet their objectives.
Yes, there are some clients who might just want to do it themselves.. And they probably aren’t the kind of client that you’d actually want to work with.
Does that help?
Jonathan,
Congratulations on your success, and kudos for writing a genuinely meaty article with some really inspirational business content.
Question for you: exactly how do you handle the content needs of the sites that you develop for clients? One of the pet peeves of web designers is clients who do not provide copy in an expeditious way.
The reason I ask is that I write copy for B2B businesses – and so far I have partitioned my work life to exclude the nuts and bolts of web dev and to focus on the content exclusively.
Your article opens my eyes that perhaps I could do *both* and provide one stop shopping. I have the technical chops, but I considered the nuts and bolts lower-value than the content. Perhaps that is dead wrong.
And I find in reading your article that your experience with WordPress and your web design philosophy specifically mirrors my own experience: WP is quick, easy, and has an awesome ecosystem of available templates.
Thoughts on combining content services and web-dev as a single provider?
Don, in my experience I actually do enjoy copywriting, but have leaned away from offering it as an actual service. What I’ve done thus far is, in *most* cases, make the client responsible for initial content and then I take the responsibility of copyediting it.
What that typically looks like is this:
- I work with the client to determine what pages should go on the site. I ask them questions and then recommend a sitemap.
- I assign the client to writing a draft of each page of content. I’ve even done this with clients who consider themselves really bad writers. I assure them that I’ve got their back – their objective is to convey the heart of their business or organization – the important things that they would share if they were talking face to face.
- Then, I go in and do the copyediting and make it shine.
In your situation, combining content services and web dev, using WordPress themes, sounds like an *excellent* match. You can let them know up front that you only provide “basic” customizations and, if they have advanced needs, you can send them elsewhere (or contract a developer).
Does that help?
Jonathan, the war stories I have heard from other web designers is that obtaining decent copy just to fill the site is a pretty daunting task. I’ve heard one shop describe an approach where they keep charging a monthly fee for every month that the site is “in production”, thereby penalizing the customer for delaying the content. To me, that seems very adversarial. Although the customer shouldn’t be able to just force the web developer to fail on the project through inaction, either.
I see an opening here for an integrated web development service that solves all of the clients’ problems.
I really like how you lay out a possible approach to handling special cases. I’ll throw maybe one call to a PHP date function into a site, but beyond that, I don’t want to mess with plugin coding.
YES, that helps. Thanks for your encouraging post!
Thank You very much for posting this,very informative and useful one,thanks a lot.
Do you let the clients know that you are using a theme?
If so, how do you convince them to go with it, and get to charge them a premium price?
Hello Jonathan,
His guidance helped me a lot because it made me realize how much time I save using good themes ready. Furthermore it is not very productive to start from scratch each site. I will have more options to offer to my clients.
Thank you,
Alex Vilela
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
Wow. Sometimes it’s nice to get a reminder that there are plenty of fish out there paying ridiculous prices for a comically simple service. This industry (as with every other) is more about finding the idiots with some cash to spare than actually performing a worthwhile service.
A couple of thoughts about that, Matt, from someone that’s been in IT for over thirty years.
Many times people think something is simple until they try to teach someone else to do it. They then realize that the task is “simple” for them because they’ve acquired a whole foundation of knowledge they now take for granted. They undervalue their own skills and marketability. For example, a WordPress five-minute is one thing, but knowing, from years of experience, what to avoid when evaluating template designs, or selecting a host, or evaluating someone’s business needs— well, that’s different. People don’t pay $2500 for the five-minute install, they pay for everything else.
The other thought is that many people just aren’t interested in learning how to do something that you might love or are interested in, or they might think that it is just more efficient to work at their own money-producing jobs and pay an expert to take care of the project for them, especially if an expert can do it in much less time and with much better results. For example, it’s much more cost-effective, and safer, for me to call an electrician than it would be for me to take time off from programming and learn how to fix most electrical problems myself.
Mike, really excellent post.
All of the comments we see in this thread that are critical of the “poor value” being delivered are rooted in employee type reasoning, that the value you deliver is based on hours of sweat labor. That’s how bosses reason. That’s not how clients reason (the few that do, you need to jettison as clients.)
The REAL challenge in delivering a service like this is the marketing effort, and finding customers. That is the wide gulf between the hacker who knows a whole lot of detailed knowledge but has no business of his own, and the freelancer who has a thriving business founded on what some may consider mundane, boring skills.
If the customer could figure it out on their own, they would. You’re supplying knowledge and a turnkey service and a completed product, not bits and pieces that the client needs to worry about.
That’s the key to the “obscenely poor value” arguments in this thread.
There’s an interesting focus on “value” in this thread from commenters. Many of them refuse to believe that this service actually has the economic value that it does:
> $2000 for a $50 theme and 5-6 hours of my time seems a bit dishonest.
> that there are plenty of fish out there paying ridiculous prices for a comically simple service. This industry (as with every other) is more about finding the idiots with some cash to spare than actually performing a worthwhile service.
> We’re not really designing/developing anything, we’re just installing WordPress. Most devs/designers do this for about $100-$200.
> How do you justify to the client that you’ll be using a template and more than $1000 will be billed to them.
> Should I reveal my clients that creation is not mine?
Here’s how I see it:
End users don’t *know* how “easy” all of this stuff is “supposed” to be.
If the first things you say to a prospect are “I will be using off the shelf stuff that you could buy with your own credit card but I will be charging you $2000 more for about 20 hours of time to put things together”, OF COURSE most end users will say “gee, maybe you’re charging too much.”
As a business owner, the LAST thing you do is salami slice your service to your customer.
Most techies overcomplicate things and most techies confuse “value added” with brute force hours of work.
I know a guy who has a web development business that is based on his own custom coded blob of classic ASP code and the guy is always a nervous wreck. I have known several other web development people and they scorn the simpler tools and their businesses suffer.
End users do not care.
To turn this around: just because you do a sh*tty job of managing your effort and you wind up turning a 10 hour job into a 100 hour job due to poor tools choices, do not expect that the client is obliged to pay you more.
The fact is this:
- Most smaller businesses really need decent web sites
- You can create a decent web site easily with off the shelf tools that is as good as (maybe better than) a custom-created site.
- End users couldn’t put their own site together even with simple tools in 100 years.
That’s the value you add that most non tech end users can’t create: a finished result that represents their business.
Don – Well said and thank you for sharing your thoughts!
$5k a month part-time for building sites? You either have mugs for clients, or you got very, very lucky promoting yourself from a personal website. Most people full-time struggle to get clients every month who actually pay the going rate – this is why you’ll find designers undercutting people.
Hats off to you if what you say is actually true, though, but in the real world of freelance web design, this doesn’t usually happen to people editing a Theme Forest template off the back of a personal site in under a month from start-up and walking away with any money in the bank, let alone $5,000.
Amusing read.
Wow, those were my thoughts exactly on reading this whole article. When the author was talking about “charge for value”, “don’t undercut your services” and “give the client a great experience”, I was completely on board. When he shifted gears to “buy a pre-made template from ThemeForest (another Envato site…coincidence?), because they won’t know or care”…that’s when the whells came off this article for me.
This whole philosophy is saying that you can find a cookie cutter solution to the client’s business solution, and they will be either too stupid to notice or care, or they have so much extra cash laying about that they won’t care. This is a really dangerous tactic to make, because customers are more savvy than that. And why are we not figuring out what their exact problem is before running to Theme Forest for a solution? I won’t say anyone can do that, but pretty close.
I am all for giving clients value without killing myself or going broke, but I am completely baffled by the way this article ended up.
Amusing, more like a painful read.
Here’s what I saw:
It’s okay if you don’t know anything about web design; now is certainly not the time to try to learn, we’ve got quick cash to make, so make sure you charge $2500-$5000 per project.
Where is the client in this piece? It’s all about “you” and what “you” need. Yet you talk about serving the client. You can’t serve the client if you are only thinking about your wallet, your schedule, your knowledge (wait, who needs it?)
Here are a few thoughts from someone who actually does do this for a living:
1. Um, you do kinda need to know web design. Yes, to get started. Even if you plan to customize a WordPress theme (that IS why you are charging thousands of dollars, remember?), and even more so if you plan to use a Themeforest theme (whose themes are more complicated than they need to be in an effort to be competitive with themselves).
2. If you don’t know web design, where do you justify charging $75/hr OR $2500-$5000 per site? If you don’t know web design, you should not be offering professional web design services. And frankly, I have yet to see a WP theme that justifies any more than $2500, if even that high. $1,000? Yes, at minimum, provided you are an expert. But 98% of the work has been done for you. I know you’ll say as you did earlier that they are paying for the value of your expertise, but that kinda goes against not needing to know anything to get started, wouldn’t you say? $2500-$5000 for expertise from someone who doesn’t even have time to learn web design by way of a book?
You don’t get into web design for fast cash or because bills are coming due. And if you think people won’t find out they overpaid for bunk service, and tell everyone they know…
Also, it was disheartening to see you answering Brandon’s question with a cryptic sales pitch. What happened to underpromise, overdeliver?
Your article and your followup comments seem to indicate that you love money more than people, and this article is basically phrased like a get rich quick scheme. Anyone looking for a web designer who comes across this article would rightly be terrified of calling anyone. A LOT of clients were just disserviced by this article. They are the clients of those who read this article and barge ahead thinking that this is the way to break in to the industry.
You should absolutely charge what you are worth – but remember, you need to also be worth what you charge.
Thank you for listening.
Michelle – Thank you for your sharing your thoughts. The message that you got from the article was not what I intended.
As I wrote this article and others like it I’ve put a lot of thought into the question.. “What am trying to inspire and teach people to do?” I have had a *lot* of experience in web development, working on projects of all shapes and sizes across hundreds of clients. As I wrote this article I tried to step outside of the experience I’ve been blessed to have and connect with the folks who are just getting started. It has been a challenge and it is still a work in progress.
The sections on creating a “Wow” and “Mastering Your Craft” were my attempt to let folks know that, while I am highly recommending that you “start fast”, that’s just the beginning.
While the financial aspect of the business (and the focus of this article) is important, a critical component to my success thus far and my success in the future is that my clients have been thrilled with the work.
I appreciate your comments and have taken them to heart. I will give more deliberate thought and attention to making sure that the heart of this business, service to the client and their objectives, is held up front and center.
wow thanks..it enlightened me about weblancing..however i charged my client for $60 (converted) for my debut as web designer this year..i actually made to web site designs coded for them both 8pages each site…lol..
Oh look he is selling an ebook on how to make money from wordpress websites…
Number One Rule, if it is to good to be true… it is!
Jason, which part is to good to be true?
Intsall WordPress. Install Theme. BAM, $5k. I’ll show you how in my ebook. Am I being too cynical? Difficult not to be in this industry. It’s just getting worse it seems.
You’re being the correct amount of cynical.
Jason – Thank you for the follow-up. What you got from the article wasn’t what I intended. It has been a *lot* of hard work. Using WordPress and customizing existing themes has helped to leverage time, yet there is still a lot of other work involved to develop a finished product.
Most of my time on a project is spent working directly with the client to make sure a website is actually accomplishing their business objectives. Using WordPress and leveraging the work put into existing themes allows me to focus more time on the client.
You people are crazy for giving this guy hell about his article and the fee’s he charges. You either A.) Don’t have any business sense or B.) Running an unsuccessful freelance business to be giving this guy hell. The article doesn’t say, We’ll make you rich by installing wordpress theme’s. His approach is from his past experiences and I hands down agree with most of what he says.
I worked for AT&T, as a marketing consultant, for 2 years and you wouldn’t believe the prices customers were paying for internet marketing and web development. A 10 page “Cookie Cutter” website would run $220 a month with 6 hours of support a year. That’s over $25,000 over 10 years! If you compare that to a $2k website people will shake your hand and invite you over for dinner all day. You have to value what you do or why do it.
Jonathan isn’t charging 2k for a theme installation… he is charging for drafts, education, marketing, experience, and know how. I’ve been working, as a freelancer, for the past year and if I charged less than $1500 for a website I wouldn’t be able to pay the light bill at the end of the month. Things you have to consider:
1.) Uncle Sam will take 30% of your revenue, so if your charging $2,000 your really charging $1400. If you can manage 3 new clients a month at that rate your only making $4,200. That’s $4,200 minus Student Loans, Car Payments, Rent, Cable, Phone… yada yada yada not everyone has rich parents who support them till their 30!
2.) Projects on average take 1-2 weeks even for entry level designs and developments. You have to consider phone calls, emails, meeting clients, planning, research, multiple edits, design drafts, and the schedule of the client. Sometimes clients are busy and projects can take 4 weeks before you get paid.
One point Jonathan forgot to mention is, “Always get 50% down payment” trust me on this one. It might seem high, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. I was working on a $4k fully custom build (No Template) for a friend of a friend and didn’t collect anything up front after 3 weeks the guy bailed. It was tough to cover my monthly bills that month, which leads me to point three.
3.) You have to charge for rainy days. We are freelancers, which means we eat what we kill and this is still a shady economy. I do this full time and they’re still months where I can only land 1 or 2 clients. Nothing in this business is guaranteed, so plan for those dry spots or face the consequences.
I apologize for the rant, but you people should know better… especially if your in the business. Charge what you’re worth. Obviously, if it takes 3 hours charge a couple hundred bucks, but if your work is good charge people. Business owners spend lots and lots of money on advertising, so a $2,500 website is a drop in the bucket. Never sell out of your pocket or you’ll never sell.
You have to understand that successful business owners are smart and will do research before signing a development agreement. They aren’t going to say, “$2500 yeah lets do it” (Sometimes but few and far between) people will get second and third quotes, so if Jonathan is staying busy he is doing something right.
I love helping people and this is why I do marketing and development. I think if your work was worth $2500 you wouldn’t be responding to this article. Maybe you should work for free and become a Saint that way you can live off smiles and hand shakes. Congrats Jonathan and I wish you the best! Sharpton for Prez I’m out!
P.S. thats from a movie I stole that quote
How do you deal with hosting and the domain name? Do you resell hosting (from, say, GoDaddy) and charge an ongoing monthly/annual fee? Do you make the client take care of it?
Thanks for the article – like others here this is something I want to start doing and this article has been a great inspiration.
Hey Aaron, thanks for stopping by!
In the past I’ve focused on providing (and reselling) hosting services and encouraging clients to register their own domains.
Lately, though, I’ve been encouraging clients to setup their own hosting accounts as well. I encourage them to set it all on auto-renew and then I provide guidance and support as needed.
If you intend to resell, though, I highly recommend you take a look at managed hosting for WordPress like WPEngine.com or ZippyKid.com
Great article. It’s something I’ve been doing for a while now but this have given me a much needed kick up the backside to actually get my act together.
For that I thank you.
Keep up the good work!
Shane Smith
@shanedesignUK
Let me add a real life data point to Jonathan’s posting.
I have a client who recently hired a web development shop to develop their web site.
This shop seems to be following Jonathan’s playbook *exactly*: WordPress+template, simple content integration, some plugins like contact forms. The shop added two extra elements: a logo design (pretty basic) and a little custom artwork to adorn the design (which may have come from a clip art library for all I know.) They did no copy editing nor assisted with content, that part was self serve.
The site is 8 pages. The web shop has been OK to deal with but pretty lazy about making the design good as a primary thing. We had to find all the problems like layout and spacing. I’d say they have been very laid back about creating a quality experience. Also, the template they used is a free, not a paid template. And it shows.
$1400. I think it was actually negotiated as a bare-bones site design. The communication with the web shop has not been great, it’s been like throwing things over the wall.
I think if you bumped the quality of the experience significantly by giving the client less tweaking to ask for, you did some copy editing and helped actively with content, and you used a really well designed commercial template, you could *easily* justify $2000-2500 for a product like this.
I know some web design shops. Jonathan is exactly right. A price level like $2500 for a basic static business site is at the bottom end of the price scale as far as what actual businesses charge.
The negative comments in this thread are from freelancers with a case of “employeeitis” who see everything as a low rent, highly defined task that they find on Craigslist.
The key to charging these prices is you provide the whole package, not just install a program.
Jonathan is in business and he sets minimum criteria for the jobs that he can take on.
Big difference.
Just to add a little more on this. Most clients who pay $2k+ for a website expect a unique and hand-crafted site, created by a professional, which involves the designer working hands-on and closely with the client to develop and deliver their vision to make their project stand-out from their competitors. They don’t expect to be over-charged, ripped off and feel cheated by unprofessional wannabe designers who take advantage of knowing a ‘little bit’ more than they do about design, who are just out to make a fast buck.
Most clients would destroy your reputation if they found out you just threw together something in a few hours, with little to no time gone into research and development who just picked out a template, changed a bit of CSS, replaced a logo and cut and pasted copy from MS Word, that focused purely on taking their money and nothing more.
I have nothing against the use of templates – but I feel ALL designers HAVE to inform the client that they’re using $30 templates in projects. It will avoid both the client and the designers reputation being tarnished if the client, or their competitors finds out they were over charged by someone who is unskilled that supplied them with a ‘used’ mash-up from a template and not a unique experience and new end product that they deserved when handing over their hard earned cash.
I did some cursory research into pricing. One local web design shop (in Ohio) says in their FAQ that their lowest tier of web site is roughly $4K. I assume *that* buys a custom design. Wold’s clients fall well below that. I suspect that $3K-$4K is the norm for bespoke web sites.
If you’re happy with a design that may not be absolutely unique – using one of many, many available commercial templates – then you can save a lot with Wold’s services.
Your comment: “Most clients would destroy your reputation if they found out you just threw together something in a few hours” is just plain ridiculous. First of all, only an effin’ moron tells the client “your job was really easy and I hardly did anything on it” and makes a point of that.
Secondly, sorry for shouting, the client is hiring a web shop because THE CLIENT DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING TECHNICAL NOR HOW TO EVALUATE THE EFFORT. IF THEY DID THEY WOULD NOT HIRE A WEB SHOP.
And one more time – this is the difference between an employee type and a business owner. The employee type guilts others for charging what the market will bear.
Nowhere is Wold saying that you don’t disclose exactly what you are doing. YES, claiming that it’s a unique design is dishonest. He’s not saying that you do that. The fact that he shows the client several design choices before hand indicates that it’s a canned design.
Are visitors to web sites running around to the various template marketplaces to determine if a business on the net is using a template? Most people have lives.
I think the envy is dripping here.
Wes Schwab, most clients who can afford these prices know that other designers who use templates only charge about $200-500 and not the prices listed above.
Where I come from, you don’t get many clients who don’t shop around. I prefer to treat clients with respect and to give them a good service, rather than stuff a whored around Themeforest template in their face and do a runner with their money. Any monkey can edit a web template, but that doesn’t make them a professional web designer thinking that they can charge professional rates. Clients pay professionals to design sites, not people who don’t know their from their like a lot of ‘code ninjas’ out there that wouldn’t know what PHP stood for if their life depended on it.
As for envy, far from it, I know for a fact that most clients wont pay these prices for a website template as they know that they can get them cheaper, thus the reference that all designers need to state upfront if they’re going to be using a template to do a job over $1,000, as the client expects value for money. I know a lot of clients who would be furious to find out that they paid $2-3k for a job that would normally cost them a few hundred tops. I would rather do a good and honest job than try to pull a fast one just for the sake of making money from an idiot.
The point most people are trying to make above is made through experience in web design and dealing with clients. We know the value of our work and so do most clients. That is why I said most people who are reading this thinking web design is a great area to get rich, but truth be told, most won’t get anywhere near this income because most clients are aware of the value of web services.
But like I said above, if what was said in the article is true, hats off to him for making silly money from mugs, as his clients must be to pay those prices for a rushed template edit that most freelancers would charge about $200-$500 for.
What we are talking about is a complete turnkey web design service. It’s not the same at all as just installing a script or installing WordPress.
You and others on this site constantly drag what this guy is doing back to a mindless commodity business that some foreigner could do cheaply over the internet with no interpersonal contact. Installing a package like WordPress is a one click operation that web hosts provide. Setting up an empty WordPress site is a low level Elance/ODesk type service.
The *only* thing he’s not doing is hand coding the layout.
He provides exactly what the expensive web design companies provide, except a hand coded layout. Hand coding itself (I say this as a long time software developer) doesn’t add business value. It’s grunt labor.
Here’s a data point on building a site the way this article describes – my own site. I have limited artistic experience with web design, although I am a techie.
I recently rebuilt my web site from Drupal (with a lousy canned template) to WordPress, with a Themeforest template called U-Design.
The site content was already present in the old site, but I needed to simplify the site map vastly, and redo the home page for simplicity.
It took me what amounted to about one week of full time effort. I’d say it was easily 30-40 hours. To make content decisions, to customize this complex template, to add CSS styling to create certain effects I wanted, to find and integrate images that would reflect my business and personality, to decide on a heading style. Layout decisions, etc. On and on.
After going through the life cycle of design decisions with this project, I could bang out the next one in about 10-12 hours. But I could not do that in any way without that one whole site building experience.
I’ve had numerous people tell me that my new WP site looks on a par with any B2B business site they’ve ever seen.
Some amateur with little web site, CSS or technology experience would easily take double the time I did… or much more likely give up and not get it done. End users CANNOT DO THIS. Low end script installer monkeys CANNOT DO THIS.
And the template is only the start.
> most clients who can afford these prices know that other designers who use templates only charge about $200-500 and not the prices listed above
Anyone who takes on the responsibility of delivering a complete site for $500 is a fool.
Wes and Marvin, I really appreciate your comments.
I agree with Wes in particular regard to the actual type of work that I do, and recommend that others do. It’s about the client relationship.
The relationships I build with clients are rarely replaced. In my early days I made mistakes that cost me those client relationships. Nowadays, if there’s turn-over it’s because the client has needs that I can no longer meet.
What I do today and what I recommend others do is focus on the relationship and really get to the heart of understanding what a client is trying to accomplish with a website and help them accomplish it.
WordPress and customizing pre-existing themes are tools that can help you stay focused on the work that matters most without having to spend a bunch of extra time (and your client’s money) on custom work.
I still believe in (and do) custom work. There’s definitely a place for it. For most clients, though, building a theme from scratch just doesn’t make sense.
Good article, interesting conversation..
I think 200$-500$ for installing a ready made template with the logo of the customers company is ok, if you happen to be in that kind of business. But I don’t think the 2000$ stated in the article is just install wordpress with a template + logo. It’s refining, changing colors, making forms, finetuning etc. plus the teaching part as the customer rarely wants to go out looking for how-to-guide for using wordpress. And if you do all that for less than 500$ then its just very stupid.
I don’t do either of the above. I’m not a wordpress guy, but I have customers that I can see could benefit a wordpress site. In these situations I go to theme forest, buy a template that has the “structure” that I want. Then I design a custom look, a skin, on top of that.
I would call this a custom, hand-made design job, even tho there is ready made coding underneath. I wouldn’t call this cheating. Maybe some one would.
For me the above is as much work as a full website made from scratch. It involves more than a normal coding job and also the normal coding for me comes from years of experience and it’s fast and easy for me to do. These project start from 3000€ and normally hover around 4000€. Some projects go with +10.000€ price tag, it all depends. I’m talking in € as I’m from Euroland. And therefore my pricing might differ a bit.
Anyway, what I want to say and what my point is. If you are a professional, don’t undervalue yourself. If you are still studying and learning, then naturally you’ll do the job a bit cheaper, but then again, the customer is not expecting a perfect job.
Wonderful article
How to make $5000+ a month?
START SPEAKING BUSINESS WITH A CLIENT.
Shift your focus to what client really cares about – ROI. Sell a vision on how the site is going to achieve it and work hard to deliver.
Be patient, and eventually you will earn a lot more.
But if your focus is on “templates”,”customization”, “installing”, “hand coding” and other technical stuff, then you will get paid only what those commodities are worth. And not to mention a heavy competition…
I noticed this post and said WOW!! He’s charging $2500 for stuff I do already at a fraction of the cost!
Now we’ve started up this whole conversation on value and I will say this — I increase my prices monthly. I do not talk to my clients abou the technical parts in detail. I don’t use pre-built themes (at all), but I outsource my coding. Here are my responses to some of the arguments I saw
1. Do I need to know about web design or not? — And my answer is not really. I agree. I dont know how to code and people keep telling me to learn how to code…but if I can find a coder who will split profits with me in my client budget, then why do I have to learn how to code? I just design what I want…tell them what I want and he tells me it’s possible or it isn’t possible. I’m not trying to re-invent the wheel for my clients, I’m trying to build them a nice site that can stand up next to competitors and be of value to their customer.
2. Are people DUMB to pay these prices? — no…I think it’s all on who your client is and how they perceive the value. If I’m telling them how I’m a whiz at Photoshop, they don’t give a damn. But if I tell them how I’m creating a site to increase conversions and evoke their brand, they give a damn and want to pay for THAT.
I will never knock this man’s hustle! It’s really inspired me to at least START my bidding for client sites at $1500. It has also inspired me to figure out what I can do to add more value to my clients. I pretty much immediately emailed a client and asked what else I could do for them.
Lovely article!
Thanks for stopping by and sharing, Kendra! Much appreciated. You’ve got the right idea – Keep up the great work!
Gosh, this article and the following comments are something I’ve been searching for. Thanks, Jonathan!
Do you have any insights on how you handle contracts in general? Any resources you recommend?
Josh – Great question! I confess this is an area of relative inexperience for me. I have only worked with contracts when they’ve been requested of me. Now, 100+ clients later, I haven’t yet had a problem by not using a contract – it doesn’t mean I won’t, though. I don’t have a resource I recommend yet, but you’ve got me thinking about it.
Yes your write its is difficult to survive our life and wife without side or another income other than job. I also have an same thought so i also started a classified website to make a side income. But its a PHP website , in the way i decided to start to design my own PHP template but it is difficult to do as i’m unable to configure script to designed pages and all. So can u help me in this please
Talk about great timing!
Thanks for the article. It clicked for me…my question to you is how did you do mock-ups…? Or did you even do them..? Also, how much customization did you do and how did you charge for them ?
Steve, thanks for stopping by! In my case, for the types of projects I’m describing in this article (focused on using pre-built themes) I don’t use mockups.
For custom design work, I start by working carefully through a list of elements that go on a particular page, then I work on a wireframe (basically, a simplified mockup) to make sure that the client and I are on the same page. After that, design, then coding.
In the experiences I described above, customizations have usually been to a minimum and are included in the price for a project. I recommend “flat rate” pricing.
Does that help?
Great article, Jonathan!
I must admit I was on the fence about your price point before reading through your answers to some of the similarly minded comments above. Having read your answers I definitely see the value you bring to these projects that elevates them from a simple WordPress installation, smacking on a logo, and adding some content. Thank you for your thorough answers!
That said, I still have a few questions on which I hope you can shed some light.
1. As mentioned in one of the comments above, the clients who’s budgets allow them to hire you on must not be coming from Craigslist and the like. Could you talk a bit more about that? Are you using job boards of any kind? That is are you doing the legwork to get these clients, are they coming to you based on your portfolio and online presence, or are lots of these clients referred to you by previous satisfied clients?
2. How do you usually structure payments for projects that don’t involve two phases, design and development?
Thanks again for writing this article. I’m sure you expected that there would be lots of cranky responses telling you, in a not-so-nice manner, that you’re screwing your clients. That takes real courage and shows how invested you are in helping freelancers based on your experience. Bravo!
Sasha – Thank you for your kind words! Great questions.
1. In looking back at that three month period, a good portion of the total (perhaps 40%?) was work from previous clients that I had stayed connected with. When I realized how much I had to earn to meet our objectives, I went back to them and let them know I was available to do as much as they needed. The rest of my work during that period of time was through referrals and folks who contacted me through my website – with one exception worth sharing.
I had found a website on a topic of interest to me and noticed that there were a few problems with the layout (text out of place, misaligned elements, etc). I contacted them and offered to make a quick fix (I figured it would take me less than an hour). They were happy to have the help. In the process of communicating I let them know that I was available should they need anything further. Shortly thereafter they came back with a sizeable project that was a big help towards our goals.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how to help folks get new clients. While this comment isn’t sufficient to do the topic justice, I will share what I believe is the key:
While an individual may have the talent and capability to provide value to their clients the challenge is that the businesses and organizations who need their service simply don’t know that they exist.
That’s the problem that has to be solved.
Reaching outside yourself, making new connections, and letting folks know that you’re available is the key.
2. Lately, I’ve been structuring payments based on the size of the project. For smaller projects (usually $750-$2500), I typically require payment in full up-front. For larger projects, ($10,000 and up) I tend to split payment in half or third, with a down payment at start and the next or last payment at a predetermined milestone.
And thank you again for your encouragement! I hope that helps – Please feel free to respond back or send me an email if you have any further questions!
Wonderful article with some very insightful tips. Thanks for writing it!
Great article! Congrats to you, Jonathan, for your focus and determination. You took the bull by the horns and accomplished what you set after!
This one’s such an inspiring and motivational read here. I wish we had such high paying clients here in India. Sigh!
Guys, you are really overcharging your clients providing you are using existing back-end (WordPress), use existing theme ($20-$100), and perhaps install some plug-ins. I believe only few SMB would pay this much for this little.
To Mombo
Seriously?? So what is proper pricing then?
P. S.
My apologies for misspelling your name.
Great read. Thank you. I started freelancing only recently and I find the points mentioned in this article really useful and I’ll make sure to apply them in my own work for sure.
This post can also be applied to a small to medium size team of developers as well. Each month we scramble to find new clients between projects to pay the bills. Even though we are a small development team, rents in Los Angeles still have to be met. Anyways, we deal with an assortment of clients that sometimes need just a basic WordPress or Joomla install; to full blown custom php-built platforms. We have different sets of contracts depending on what the customer/client needs, and usually we tend to steer our clients to customized WordPress or Joomla solutions. But if they really want a pre-built template solution, we’ll usually charge no less than $1200 for installing and teaching them how to make updates and 5 hours for one month of support after. Inspirational post, keep up the good work!
Great article! Thanks for the post and I wish I could’ve read this sooner.
$75 an hour…I think it’s time to up my rate.
I love this.. nice share.. thankss..
I loved the article and at present I have a good knowledge of managing any blogger sites using templates.
I had been studyingto get in to WordPress and have tried using WAMP, XAMP etc to run the templates offline.
Apart from WPengine, any other Hosts will you recmmend? I was looking at rackspace for a while and even hostgator. Are they good for a basic to medium level websites?
What would you recommend .. reselling the hosting services or telling the client to deal with any outage that may happen in the future by himself?
If you are working part time, how do you think you will be able to provide any service to the clients just in case a need arises? (Thats a reason i like Blogger because in past 4 + years have never had any outage which i believe can happen with any of the hosting services)
What are your thoughts on it?
firstwordpress
Thanks for stopping by! WPEngine is fantastic, as is Zippykid.com. The key to either of those services is that they are geared specifically towards WordPress.
Beyond them, HostGator is great – You just need to be prepared to managed and maintain WordPress yourself.
As for how to manage the relationship – it depends. Nowadays I tend to set clients up with their own hosting account and, depending on the nature of the relationship, I’ll be the first point of contact if there is a problem and I’ll deal with the host directly.
Does that help?
What, if any, are the ethical implications for buying a theme and using it with a client? Couldn’t they do the same thing but for much cheaper?
Cal – Thank you for your question! I am upfront with my clients and, wherever it makes sense, I involve them in the theme selection process.
While a lot of folks certainly could set it up themselves, most business owners and decision makers at organizations aren’t interested in doing so. Even more importantly, there is a lot more to it then just setting up a theme. I provide my clients with guidance about what pages should go on the site. I also give feedback on content and may even provide some writing services.
Using WordPress and pre-existing themes saves time and helps leverage the great work that has already been done – the value, though, is in getting to the heart of the business or organization’s objectives and helping them build a website that gets the job done.
Does that help?
There are very few things that people can do online to generate $5,000+ in a day.
One of those ways that you CAN make that much is site flipping.
Go to Flippa.com and check out some of the auctions. There are even some going for 5 figures!
Of course not every site will sell for $5,000, but site flipping can be a great way to generate steady cash – if you know how to do it.
You can really sell a website for 200$ and almost the same for 2000$ however there is a slight and important different between both , it realizing the business value of the website for the customer, and try to bend the website and it is capabilities to offer the best business value to the customer. then you can sell it for 2000$
Otherwise of your focus is pure IT and design , 200$ is fair price for you.
I am sorry, but I have to agree with Michelle, This is a little misleading and can be incredibly damaging to the potential designer, businesses as well as the industry.
The market is flooded with people trying to be web designers, doing major damage that I spend a lot of time having to fix.
It sucks having to tell clients they have to essentially pay twice to have something fixed or redone.
Not to mention, it is a harder process as I have to reassure them and rebuild their confidence and they are now angry and hurt, and leery of web designers.
It is bad enough that clients think the process is easy and don’t want to pay people what they are worth, and devalue web designers.
It is bad enough that every person out there thinks they can become one because they made a wordpress blog or bake sale flyer one time.
Building websites for people’s businesses is a SERIOUS thing and should be treated as such. You need to convey that this affects people’s lives and income and families. There are legal and liability issues you could be faces with or worse yet, cause for your clients. I have seen people go out of business for overpaying on a website that didn’t get done or didn’t produce, or because a designer used illegal images or content and the client had to pay fines in the five and six figure range.
These kinds of mistakes are made by inexperienced people making websites.
Here is an example. My acupuncturist has a small family business of 25 years. Their IT guy started offering websites and built their site. Six months later, they started getting legal demands from Getty Images, Istock Photos, 2 photographers, 1 publication, and one theme developer totaling $85,000! Every single image and graphic the guy used was not legal. They are now trying to work out payments, otherwise they have to sell their business.
And guess who can get sued by the client now? The amateur web designer who created this mess.
It is important to make sure people know that you need a solid foundation in design and web marketing and have been on the web consistently to keep up with guidelines, laws and standars and to understand not only how to build a website but to do one that actually helps, not harms a business.
This is not something you can do overnight. I started by building websites for friends and non profits free to get experience and gradually started charging more as my skill level improved. It took over a year before I actually started my business and even then I was not charging $2000 yet.
I think it is dangerous to tell people they can go out and build websites for $2000-5000 by just getting themes on theme forest.
As a web designer you know there is much more involved. What about SEO, browser/mobile friendly, legal issues, strategies, etc? You will send people out there to over charge, over promise and under deliver which will ruin their reputation and could get them or their client sued.
I am not trying to be mean, just wanted to share some things you should consider.
Dani – Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment about the seriousness of this work and I have indeed wrestled with how to make certain that it gets conveyed.
At the heart of that seriousness is making certain that folks getting started, no matter how much or little “technical” experience they have, are focused on understanding their client’s objectives and providing true value.
To that aim, I think someone truly can get started with very little technical experience and leverage existing tools to provide a high value to their clients.
That said, I agree with the concerns you raised. While I am advocating that folks begin by focusing on value in light of their client’s objectives, the next steps are to build on that value by broadening and expanding your skillsets.
For example:
A new web developer finds a potential client that wants a website for their local business. I am advocating that the developer should spend the majority of their time and effort *not* in learning HTML or CSS, but rather in learning about the business, in figuring out what it is that they’re trying to accomplish (how will they know the money spent on the website was a success?) and then in lining up the tools and resources to help their client meet that objective. Those tools and resources include understanding mobile, SEO, sound legal practices, etc – and, indeed, cannot all be mastered overnight. You can take steps in the right direction, though, and build a lasting relationship with a client that benefits as your skill sets improve.
Thank you again for your thoughts Dani – they are welcomed and appreciated.
The facts are:
- Business and especially the law as it affects specific points of conduct in business is quite complex. There’s no courses, no course syllabus, no standards, etc. It’s not like being licensed as an electrician. (after all, you web people are ‘L33t artists, not mechanics, right?)
- Some people out there, including a few who choose to hang a shingle as a business operator, are just staggeringly ignorant, negligent, and stupid. This goes for any field, not just web design.
IE: “Their IT guy started offering websites and built their site. Six months later, they started getting legal demands from Getty Images, Istock Photos, 2 photographers, 1 publication, and one theme developer totaling $85,000! Every single image and graphic the guy used was not legal. They are now trying to work out payments, otherwise they have to sell their business.”
That IT guy is everything bad I could say about some low end operators: stupid, legally ignorant, too cheap to license images properly, etc.
That does NOT mean that you should tell Jonathan Wold that he has no right to educate people to enter this market.
Web design is truly the wild west. Contrary to bitter and narrow opinions being voiced in this thread that only certain blessed and anointed ones should be allowed to “design” sites – as well as the narrow viewpoint in this thread being voiced that only graphical artistic skills are a factor and everything else is installing scripts –
A web design business is an interplay of artistic, technical, AND LEGAL cognizance. As well as customer relations. In short you have to know one hell of a lot. Not just how to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
There is NO apprenticeship or certification that says that a given web designer won’t screw over his client somehow or will even deliver a usable result.
If you’re responsible and deliver great results, your clients will love you. If you screw up, you will go out of business.
The *real* professional will always be a little awestruck by the amount of responsibility he has to his customers – but will learn, cope and adapt.
I just found this article while googling for “freelance web development” and truly enjoyed reading all these comments. Let me just say that anyone can charge whatever they want, as long as there’s someone willing to pay that price. If you do the same thing for a “fraction of the cost”, then it’s your own problem that you can’t sell your work for more.
I don’t do much freelance but when I do, my rate is well over $75/hr because I believe that my skills are well worth it. Let me just give you an example. A former client, someone who I hadn’t heard from in years, contacted me out of the blue a few months ago. They hired some of these $200-500/project web designers who took the money, didn’t get the job (WordPress website) done properly and stopped responding to emails.
I said it would take me 4 hrs to fix that mess. It took much less than 4 hrs (I still charged for 4, of course) and the client was extremely happy with the result and quick turnaround. Now they keep coming back to me every time they have a new project, even though they could hire someone for 4-5 times less.
They just know that whatever the project is, it will be done in a timely banner and without any BS involved, and that’s worth the extra $$$. So, stop crying about other people making more money than you, but work harder instead, polish your skills and maybe one day you will be paid as much as the author of this article.
Overall I think that Jonathan is right on point with everything. Depending on your OWN perspective and how you choose to do business is entirely up to you. The web is indeed the wild west when it comes to web design and development. Quite literally, there are the good, the bad and the ugly websites out there, which may or may not have be overcharged… or in many cases undercharged.
If using templates/themes are considered “wrong”, then using pre-made UI elements, plugins, icons, forms etc. would also be considered wrong… and we all know that’s bs because all web designers and developers get they’re inspiration from somewhere.
The important thing is to always be honest with the client and to just be a nice person to work with. The clients I’ve worked with who wanted a turnkey solution knew they were getting a template that was only $50 because I told them that and guess what, I still charged them and payed me $2000-$2500 to customize the pre-bult theme because I was honest and they trusted me. It does take time to polish and refine everything to fit their needs but when the job was finished they were overjoyed! Bottom line, just tell the truth and they’ll be grateful for having you.
I think people really need to stop and think about how much they’re undervaluing their own skill set, this doesn’t just go for web designers and developers. Remember, just because something is easy for you doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for the next bozo on the bus. Not everyone is a web designer or developer, but if you are one you need to stop feeling so afraid of competition. I hear so many people grumbling about how saturated our industry is getting… Every industry is over-saturated for crying out loud. There are over 7 billion people in the world to waste time comparing yourself to. Get over it, get to work, get out there and sell it like Jonathan says. Just be friendly and honest about everything your offering and you’ll go far.
It’s going to be ending of mine day, but before end I am reading this great post to improve my knowledge.
Thank you for this post. I came across it while trying to justify to the client (and myself) why the implementation of a theme which cost $50, is going to cost a min $2000.
It came down to this:
Experience, Service, Time & Required Investment Return. Not even the most amazing theme, with every option under the sun, is going to satisfy the client needs immediately.
The clients point of difference in their own market is the first thing that I address. I am a designer and I start at the brief. What do they want their website to do? Generate leads? Convert potential customers into actual customers? Give their existing clients a resource base? It’s often incorporating their marketing strategy into the site.
Each site, regardless of the theme in use, needs a plan of attack. Each client has their own idea of what a website should look like. Usually this is a mirror of their brand on the web, that’s not just logo, colour and typography changes. That means we need a way of making their website a natural extension of what they already do well. This doesn’t come in the box.
I do graphic design & user experience well. I am not a developer, but I know when I need one. I don’t over commit to my clients and am transparent about using themes. I let them know we are finding something that all ready ‘functions’ like they want their site to function. Everyone wants the bells and whistles, but to develop them from scratch requires $$ that I already know my client doesn’t have (I work 3 days a week from home and do sites in the 2-5k range). I still do design mockups, I design custom icons and illustrations from scratch, build interactive sliders (each taking up to 2 hours depending on the layers and the design), rework the CSS to conform to the approved designs and then build the content in. A site from start to finish (incorporating long conversations, writing emails, explaining the pros and cons of different layouts etc) rarely takes me less than 20 ‘billable’ hours. Add to that any issues with clients domains, researching, configuring and integrating new plugins, getting things signed off and the overall process is quite time consuming. THIS is where the $2k+ for a $50 theme makes sense. Offering CMS training, SEO services and ongoing maintenance and you do have a significant amount of effort going on.
Thanks for your perspective. It’s a solid read and resonates with me.
Such an interesting read. Thanks.
I just got done reading this article, it was great. I used to build websites for fun and for friends, I never thought I could do it for profit but after reading this I have no doubt. Very well written.
Awesome article! It’s just about the right time I read this article.
I have been having a hard time managing my freelance work. Sometimes, I work more hours in one day and less hours in others. It makes the deliverable time is inconsistent for my clients.
This article inspires me to set up a time to dedicate for doing my part-time freelance work. I can see that it will be the solution for my problem.
Thanks Jonathan!
The client should know that you exist. Good rule.
Maximization seems to be the key. Don’t waste time, be efficient, steadfast and focused!
Hi,
I am a PHP MySql developer from India. I have 3+ years of experience. I work on Yii-framework.
I also design wordpress sites.
When I visit freelancing websites I see for a normal html site people pay about $100 or less. For a wordpress website we get $50-$200 maximum.
Can I get $5000 per month from doing such websites projects of USA? How? I will even do same work for $2500.
Ankur,
Sure you can, if you find someone willing to pay you that kinda money
Last month I built a wordpress website (created a custom theme, wrote a few plugins, etc.) that paid me over $10K. So, sky is really the limit here. It all depends on what kinda skills you have (just being able to install a theme won’t cut it) and if you have clients willing to pay that much.
Good luck!
As most of us agreed here, it sure is a wonderful article. I’m kinda newbie and I have a silly question, I’m trying to build myself a mobile phone unlocking service website with a list of phone companies, service providers, countries, etc. ; is there a WordPress theme for that or is it something that I should get from somewhere else? I appreciate anyone’s help here.
I get updates on this post and enjoy reading the responses this article receives. But I guess it’s time to write a post about how to find or how to distinguish a client that is willing and or has the budget to pay for such a basic site and service. Would love to hear about any articles that illuminate this point, How to find that client that is willing to pay $5K for a basic WordPress or Joomla site.
I’m in the exact same boat as Jacques. I’ve been subscribed to this thread for quite sometime and really enjoy reading all the responses and have come away with a number of great ideas because of it.
While I don’t have a shortage of clients so to speak, I also seem to have trouble finding the clients with a higher budget to spend on a custom site, and end up with many smaller jobs rather than a bigger paying (and ultimately bigger development) project.
I would also be super interested to hear what others are doing to attract these types.
Much appreciated!
To the people asking about charging $5000 for a website:
If you are asking you aren’t ready yet. If you have been at this long enough, you arrive at those rates naturally, and clients are willing to pay because you have a reputation.
You really really shouldn’t be charging those prices unless you have the experience and are providing a product WORTH that price.
Establish yourself an hourly rate appropriate for your level of experience and length of time in business. Create some website packages, then factor in the amount of time/work involved to arrive at a fair price.
Honestly, if you are in India, no one is going to pay you US rates. If clients are given 2 proposals at $5000, one in the US and one in India, they will go with the US simply because they are within our legal system and they have recourse of something goes wrong. Not to mention they know there are a million Indian companies that will do the work for next to nothing. It doesn’t mean you have to work for pennies, just know that you are competing with a lot of people willing to do things cheap so you have to show them why you are worth it and why you are different.
If you are looking to get rich on every project, with a substandard project, you wont last. If you charge too much, too soon you will not win bids.
If you do manage to get someone to pay that much, clients eventually realize it and word gets around fast so you may get a few contracts but then what?
If you are offering a great product, people will come and be willing to pay so start by making sure you are doing it the right way so you get repeat business and referrals. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to establish yourself.
You need to have a solid website and presence online with a smooth professional system (proposals, invoicing, project management process, client education and follow up, etc) I have won contracts simply because my system was professional and the others had sketchy websites or weren’t professional. An email proposal with vague information and a paypal address wont cut it when you are competing with others.
Clients are getting smarter, they know how to look into things now. This is an over saturated market and everyone is afraid of getting ripped off. You need to show them that you care, you can be trusted and you are committed and not just trying to get money from them. Clients know, they can smell desperation.
I agree with you, but not a 100%. I’ve been developing websites for over 5 years now. Mostly Front-End and I have gotten those $5k and up jobs, but it seems that those jobs are far and few and that forces me to take smaller jobs from clients with unrealistic expectations and small budgets.
This article at least for me implies that there is a pool somewhere with clients who are willing to give more for so little development. If there is such a pool, let me know. If a client wanted to give me $5k for a simple modified wordpress site, I would do a lot more than just take his/her cash. With a budget like that, it could afford me to spend more time on one project and develop my own plugin or theme.
And who can get rich doing web development? Unless you come up with an app or service, you’re not going to get rich especially if you’re a freelancer living in the states where you have to pay for your own health insurance, and etc. Anyways. . .
Hi,
I agree with author.
While the technical value of website is only
$200 ,client are ready to pay $2000 if it brings
that much value to their business. like bringing new clients or valuable lead to them . most web developers are technicians only. where as author talks about the entrepreneurial part of web development . further i second the author’s claim that client dont want to do(wp setup,customization) it themselves.
regards
vinodh
I can already program php (with mysql) and html pretty well.
I would of course use wordpress to make my life easier and customize if necessary if I have to.
The problem for me is how do you find the clients?
I’m shock at what I’m reading here, so I just started my own business I’m realizing that I’m pricing to low. How can I find clients that are willing to pay 10000? It seems that the clients that I come in contact with are very fugal.
Nice article, Jonathan. Congrats on your success.
Funny how a lot of the negative comments focus on using a $50 WordPress theme, but say nothing about using the *free* WordPress platform and free technologies like PHP, MySQL, and the like. Almost every site I build–and get paid for–contains at least one of the following: jQuery, Modernizr, Fancybox, Raphael, Masonry, FitVid….you get the idea. All add tremendous value to the finished product, but they’re all free, off-the-shelf libraries or plugins. I don’t feel guilty about using them.
But in my experience, clients NEVER just want a 6-page site for their business. They want photo galleries, social media integration, e-commerce, a newsletter. They want to create “community.” They want to link up their site to their Flickr and Twitter accounts. They basically want everything, and they love to change their minds. Pretty hard to meet those kinds of demands if you’re a new developer who plans to shop the ThemeForest site for the theme that comes closest to accommodating the client’s needs.
Nowadays, I charge about $2,000 for a project, but I tend to do completely custom design, theme development, and other coding. That’s actually how I justify the cost, and how I respond to objections from clients.
They say, “$2,000 ?!? I saw someone on Craigslist who will make me a site for $100.” I respond, “Yes, but they’re using pre-built templates that you could install yourself for free or low cost.”
@Brian,
Here people ask me to do same thing for $200 (Custom Theme Development and Coding).
I don’t use any free templates or pre-built templates.
And my many clients tell me to not disclose that I have developed their sites. That means I also don’t get credit for my work.
That’s why now I am thinking about selling themes/apps online.
I would like to know other people’s experience on selling templates / apps online. How much can I make per month?