The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hi,

A friend and I are starting an online business and got a quote for building the website. Can I run this by someone to see if it is reasonable? If you just wanted to give me some guidelines here, that would be helpful as well.

Thanks!

Ken

I'd be interested in hearing numbers too. I usually see quotes of at least several hundred dollars to start a site where the client comes up with most of the copy content.

Is that cheap, spot on or expensive?

I guess it depends on the size of the project and how much front end and back end stuff you need.

$200-$500 is the norm for simple web sites. The low end of the range is mostly html with minimal image-editing .. The high end is dhtml and flash, or a complex design.

If you get into back-end database requirements, the price could easily be double that. Especially if you need the database designed from scratch.

Ken, if I can give you any specific advice, let me know. I'm fighting with a dude on rent-a-coder right now about the design I hired him to do, so some of the pitfalls are (really) fresh in my mind.

Here's a subject where I can actually offer some decent advice, as opposed to most things musical.

As with most things the old saying applies, you get what you pay for. I would say that $200 - $500 is on the cheap side.

Think of it this way. At a decent bill rate, say $40 / hour, at $200 that means this person would only spend 5 hours on your site. At that level of involvement, you are better off getting a book and learning yourself.

At about 20 - 40 hours, which is by far a more realistic expectation of the time required to complete a small business site, you are looking at $800 - $1600, which would still be be a tremendous deal, given it is a a decent quality.

Thanks all.

The quote is for maybe 5 or 6 pages, Paypal ordering, client upload/download
capability to FTP, automated forms, and back end client-modifiable
content.

Ken

Doesn't sound like a $200 job to me. I think Freddie is closer.

SPUD

Low-rate web design is probably done using templates. You're not likely to get 5-6 pages of a completely new design for $200. However, you can go really far with templatizing. Get a designer to make graphics and choose a color palette, and you've got something that looks good and is fairly unique.

Heh, fairly unique.

I think he's on hiatus as a web designer, but ask Frontalot for advice-- he did this for a living for several years.

JB

Woah, I was responding to egg when I said "$200-$500". Ken's site is definitely more complicated.

Freddielove wrote:Think of it this way. At a decent bill rate, say $40 / hour, at $200 that means this person would only spend 5 hours on your site. At that level of involvement, you are better off getting a book and learning yourself.

Though one caveat: For a lot of folks, coding isn't the issue so much as design, and you won't learn design from a book. A $200 site is worth it if you'd spend more than 5 hours yourself futzing with colours and image placement.

Ah, wasn't trying to attack you personally or anything, just trying set a bar for expectations.

deshead wrote:$200 site is worth it if you'd spend more than 5 hours yourself futzing with colours and image placement.

Fair enough, or I'd be out of work.

Whenever I hear the word backend, heh, I usually think about doubling the quote. Of course that's all project specific as well. That could be a SQL + .net implementation, or I've even used a blogger template to pass as a 'backend' solution for a client who wanted something quick and easy. Though I wouldn't really recommend that.

And yeah, check out some templates. I got a call by a company like this one http://www.templatemonster.com to design some templates. Decided to pass. Not a great deal for the designers, but hey, as they say, they pass the savings on to you.

Hey Ken,

I might be willing to do it for you for free. Other than the graphic design aspect of it, I have plenty of experience doing all the things you're talking about. Graphic design wise, I'm not a genius but I'm not a total hack. You could always try to get some friend with some artistic abilities to whip up some mockups of the general template for the site's pages, which could be handed off to any reasonably skilled techie. Send me the details if you want.

Sam