Thread

Mechanics and doctors are licensed…;)

Ah! I knew there was a reason.

*opens Photoshop to create a web design license to display in office*

I don’t think there’s much meaningful to add except that:

- There is clearly no anti-trust violation, there needs to be an attempt to control the market. Doing that in a public discussion about prices would be a tough sell.
- No it’s not too much, I’d argue that it’s not a lot. It’s skilled work that I assume you can’t do yourself.

As was said earlier, don’t shop by price.

if price is really an issue you could try elance, guru or rentacoder. you will find a cheap developer way below $100/hour. like many others have said, you can get lucky and find a great developer and pay 20/hour or a bad developer and pay 60/hour. the cheap developer from might agree to a low price but then having to go and learn EE and in turn accomplish the same in 3 hours as the more expensive and hopefully more experienced developer with EE background. I think in the US you probably will find good EE devs between 50 and 150. That’s partly a guess and partly from my own experience.

I do wnat to mention that web design/dev pricing can seem very irrational. Basically you can get a web site for any amount of money. Your local freelancer might create a standard website for $3000 (fictional amount here) and your downtown studio with fancy loft office might create similar website for $20.000 and the ogilvys of the world might do it for $80,000 and some elancer might do it for $500. 😊

A more or less “objective” look at the professions of the web:

http://aneventapart.com/alasurvey2010/

As others have pointed out, price is not the only factor to take into account. Since that was sparked the whole discussion, have a look at this chapter of the survey

http://aneventapart.com/alasurvey2010/03.html

Mechanics and doctors are licensed…;)

People have also been using them for their entire lives.

They also have crushing overhead in labor and equipment costs.

First off, I didn’t read all the replies here so this post may be completely moot. if so I’m sorry.

This is one of the misconceptions that creates a problem.

those saying “how much work do they do in an hour for that price” need to understand, you are not paying for the work, you’re paying for the knowledge and experience the developer has. How much work is a doctor doing in an hour for his $900? you’re paying for his vast knowledge and ability.

There are thousands of ways to accomplish things in a development environment. Doing it correctly, efficiently and cleanly is not cheap. just because something gets accomplished doesn’t mean it’s done right. it could tax the server load, create problems down the road, not be expandable etc.

I don’t think $100 is out of line at all for a professional, good developer.

The price you should charge is the price your clients are willing to pay for your work.  A few things that have driven my pricing model from the past:

1) My mom always telling me I didn’t give myself enough credit

2) A few friends who became clients along the way telling me to charge them more, that their employer would pay more for my sort of expertise

3) Companies like Autodesk, a local company to me, who laugh at you if you put in a bid at less than $250/hr or so.

Its all about creating value for your clients, providing a service that they feel you are the best to provide, and delivering. Sure, we’ve all cut our quoted price to get a job, but there comes a point, if you do good work and treat clients well, where your reputation precedes you and you can charge what you really feel you are worth. Here is a case in point for our experiences in the last year:

We were hired by a designer to build an EE site that they were designing for a very prestigious department at a very prestigious private college. We’ve publicly promoted this work, its not hard to figure out what it is if you are curious. We bid on it, and took the job at about 60% of our bid, knowing the high profile of the project would be worth some value to us when complete. It went well, we’ve even done a lot of follow up feature additions for them, all billable. Even better, we were personally requested to bid on a project for another mid-profile department at a mid-to-high-profile university based on the work they saw that we did last year. It was ours to lose. We were the highest bidder by over 10% and we still got the job. We’re talking around mid-5-digits here.

Now, for that money, we’re not just building a simple website- its branding, steering, IA, design, development, post launch support, training, travel and on site visits, and its probably a 6-8 month project. But 5 years ago I didn’t have the expertise to pull something like that off, and in 2003 when I had just started freelancing on the side I wouldn’t have had the balls to. Clearly, we’ve worked up to that sort of project.

So my point is, in 2003, I was charging $25/hr. In 2006 when I began full time it was $65. Its gone up from there as our quality of service and expertise has grown. I know this isn’t everyone’s situation, but I love what I do and I am damn good at it. I work my a$$ off. Don’t sell yourself short. Give yourself credit and charge what you think you are worth. Then deliver.

First off, I didn’t read all the replies here so this post may be completely moot. if so I’m sorry.

This is one of the misconceptions that creates a problem.

those saying “how much work do they do in an hour for that price” need to understand, you are not paying for the work, you’re paying for the knowledge and experience the developer has. How much work is a doctor doing in an hour for his $900? you’re paying for his vast knowledge and ability.

There are thousands of ways to accomplish things in a development environment. Doing it correctly, efficiently and cleanly is not cheap. just because something gets accomplished doesn’t mean it’s done right. it could tax the server load, create problems down the road, not be expandable etc.

I don’t think $100 is out of line at all for a professional, good developer.

I am glad somebody mentioned this. It’s not just the amount of work per hour, but rather the experience, maybe also customer support. How fast does the developer respond, does he respond at all, how is communication etc.. If you think about an easy development project like html and css coding, I am not sure that the $150/hour dev can be three times as fast as the $50 dev for same quality work.

How much a web developer charges depends on many things - like any profession.  Skill, experience, resources, results, quality of work are all factors.

Shop by price and you’ll get what you pay for.

Why is the hourly rate such a concern?  If price is a main concern why aren’t you getting project estimates instead?

Hey Mike! When you did the San Antonio Train-ee class, you briefly mentioned a formula you use to calculate how much you charge for a project. If my memory serves, it was based upon the number of weblogs/channels and templates needed times a set amount of hours for each and then multiplied by your hourly rate plus a small percentage for the unknown… or something like that (my memory probably doesn’t serve me too well)?

Could you share your formula for pricing an EE project?

When I see this rates I want to cry :(
Im from Bosnia and we can only charge based on project which price “very rare” goes over 2000-3000 euro per project and job is done in max. one month, for company websites.

Guys you are lucky 😊

How much a web developer charges depends on many things - like any profession.  Skill, experience, resources, results, quality of work are all factors.

Shop by price and you’ll get what you pay for.

Why is the hourly rate such a concern?  If price is a main concern why aren’t you getting project estimates instead?

Hey Mike! When you did the San Antonio Train-ee class, you briefly mentioned a formula you use to calculate how much you charge for a project. If my memory serves, it was based upon the number of weblogs/channels and templates needed times a set amount of hours for each and then multiplied by your hourly rate plus a small percentage for the unknown… or something like that (my memory probably doesn’t serve me too well)?

Could you share your formula for pricing an EE project?

any luck finding the formula? I’d love to see it too

I actually expounded on that theme at the first EECI conference.  Matthew Pennell has a summary and link to the video here:

http://www.thewatchmakerproject.com/blog/michael-boyink-quoting-and-planning-expressionengine-projects/

Basically I shared the idea of a formula based on indicators that seemed to define scope, but you’ll need to determine the exact numbers on your own.

Thanks Mike! That really was a solid presentation. I need to incorporate the white board idea into my processes.

Holy zombie thread Batman! 😉

Thanks mike and Todd.. It’s a valuable discussion here.