Making a site for a client, how much should I charge?

B

BinaryCleric

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 25, 2005
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My dad recommended me to build a web site for a friend's company; they mostly distribute "As Seen On TV" merchandise. They want to include a product database for about 100 products as well as an online ordering system. I will have to design the layout of the site as well as get pictures/specs for all the products and I was basically going to code this in PHP/mySQL. How much does everyone think I should charge for something like this?
 
4,000+ thats not including the shopping cart solution which I suggest you buy from a 3rd party...

Also.. be sure to talk about charging by the hour for changes after delivery...
 
$4000 sounds cheap, since he'll have to pose, take, post process, and categorize pictures for 100+ products.
 
Yea, $4000 does sound cheap. If you think you can increase their profits with the website, take that into consideration. If they make $100,000 a year now, and the website increases that by just 20%, $4,000 isn't much, especially since it's probably a 3 year investment.

If you think you can persuade visitors to buy more of their products through the website, sell it as an investment to the company. You could probably easily ask for $10k if you're confident enough. If not though, keep it low enough that if it comes out being a loss, they don't get angry that their money wasn't put to the full potential.

Plus, like mikeblas said, entering the items ain't usually a quick process. For 100 products, you're probably looking at $1500 just in cost of time spent.
 
For the backend stuff I would have to agree $4k does sound cheap for what you are doing.

For the website layout it'll depend on your level of artistic skill and your level of coding (css? table design? clean and minimal coding? accessibility?).
 
I'll probably be spending most of my time categorizing the products and working on the web site's backend. I'd decent at page layouts but I'll probably get one of my more artistic friends to do the graphics. The company has a logo already; I've seen it on their polo shirts and letterhead.

Can anybody recommend a good shopping cart solution? The site won’t actually process the orders; it will just save the order so the salesman can print out the invoice when he makes the delivery. The stores they deliver to do a wire transfer when the delivery is processed at the door.

$4000? It actaully seems a bit high to me considering this is my first comercial web development job. I've done some work for friends and non-profit groups in the past though. I was actually probably just going to charge per-hour considering I will probably be doing most of the work on-site.
 
You could have them hire you as a temporary employee. If you do per hour though, usually companies will want some kind of estimate up front. In the past I've worked it out with the client where I can give an estimate up front and if it goes over that I send them a revised invoice at the end. Of course, if you go that way and you do it under the allotted estimate, you usually have to have a clause where they don't have to pay as much either.

I've used OSCommerce before and it's decent. You could get a template for it over at templatemonster.com for a fairly cheap price also, probably cheaper than contracting out a designer. If you have some graphic skills you can modify it to suit your needs.
 
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