It's indeed a personal question as I plan to become an entrepreneur and sell essentially websites and apps, but I'm really hoping more of a discussion here. What I'll personally do with probably be heavily influenced by what's said in this thread anyway.
I'm thinking from both perspectives, the dev's (what to make, how to make it and how to sell it) and the customer's (when I buy a website, what do I really want to get?), so technical approach with a business mindset.
Intuitively, I would think it's a matter of "product line", adapting the solution to the client's need, like so:
Case 1: Individual/non-profit/soccer mum wants website
... but it's really just a fancier facebook page + domain name. It's digital presence, in the noble but very narrow meaning of the term: they just need or want to be there and centralize their online activity, if any, and let people reach and join them.
So great, let's make it!
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How: "Build it beautiful" on Squarespace (or some equivalent service, ymmv)
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What: If the customer needs it, help them with domain choice, linking all the social accounts, with all these general techy aspects of the project more so than the mere html/dns gruntwork.
They need such tech consulting more often than not in my experience.
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actually teach them if they want in the process so they don't need you for basic stuff like building other pages and articles and stuff on that consumer-oriented user-friendly platform.
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How much: Charge a reasonable amount for your time.
I suppose the real amount is therefore linked to one's experience and work quality and who the client is; so probably anywhere from $20/h to $100/h, at which point you probably stop selling such low-profit services anyway ─ better give it on your free time to the few people and orgs you want to support, and make more profitable use of your skills/experience during work hours.
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Front the cost of Squarespace (pass-through yourself, literally request they use their own credit card) directly to them: thus it's transparent, and 100% within their control (no liability for you as a business, it's basically just tech consulting + web plumbing).
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After: Charge any subsequent work per hour, I really don't think it would be fair to offer recurring paid support unless the client really wants to change stuff often or big (in which case they fall more into the second case below imho).
Case 2: SOHO / entrepreneur / enthusiast wants website
(that includes myself as a business as my own guinea pig customer)
I guess that customer category is the main part of a freelancer's work/revenue.
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What: typically store or catalog or news-promotion-marketing-PR vitrine, maybe linked to an app (so there comes some backend work), maybe a user-loyalty system. It's a world of possibilities but admittedly it's always pretty much the same with variations.
I suppose that's the real consulting part of the job, helping the client identify their needs, where there is value, and then propose and test solutions that make sense for their problems. I suspect the crucial part is in integrating with their existing infrastructure, if any, so that website is 'smart' enough.
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How: Move typically to WP as a platform, select good hosting and DNS services, maybe a backend cloud a la AWS if it's necessary, etc.
Alternatively Drupal (which I personally prefer altogether but may be overkill for the simpler projects and may hinder their ability to ever administer and edit their website themselves) for more complex projects and/or if the client wants a very specific template or feature that you need to build yourself),
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probably in most cases make use of professionally made templates/plugins etc. to cut much time at the expense of little cost.
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How much: To get it out of the way, front every external/third-party cost (see just above) directly to the client.
Here's my thinking: you're building their website, not yours, so transferability of the licenses seems important to me, so it's their credit card; likewise if they buy a backup-mirror server or whatever you helped them select, their money, their insurances. My time spent on these things is charged separately anyway so I don't see myself taking a commission on such external costs (I'd rather work with a supplier I know and trust, who takes their margin and maybe cuts deals to the benefit of my clients, hence theirs).
I think it has the benefit of transparency ("Here's what you pay me for ─this is the real scope of the project─ and here's what I bought for you from other companies (plugin X, template Y, machine Z, etc.) to complete this project at the target cost and quality we agreed upon.") Should I want to increase my revenue, I'd much rather increase my work rate (see next bullet point) than take a cut where I don't feel like I belong.
Does that seem right to you? It's just a detail in the billing, probably won't make much difference if at all, but I think it's damn important from a legal and moral standpoint. I don't want to be liable for code (or hardware) I bought from (and for) other companies, nor should I be, right? (beyond the bad rep, evidently bad choice of using thus vouching for said plugin if it does something bad)
Note that in time, I'd rather develop some of these (plugins, templates) myself and sell that code effort directly to my customers (as part of the global "how much am I worth to you" assessment), as at least I could properly support them (but realistically this takes much time, it will only happen progressively as I reuse bits of my code from one project to another, and level up much in experience).
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Speaking of which, I would charge my work for such a for-profit reasonably-sized project not based on time (they don't really need to know, and it can vary for many reasons internal to your workflow) but based on the real scope and importance of the project (more pages; more code; obviously more consulting hours before, during and after: all of that costs more) and the QA expected, as some customers will want just the thing working at the lowest cost (if they want a working hack then for all my warnings they're the client, they get what they pay for, no judgment I do it for myself every day), whereas others will want a very polished product and on that, I absolutely want to be the guy that delivers, and then some.
[Note: In my personal case, at first it won't be much (I'm just starting at this, so I'll probably take what I can get until I fill my hours then see from there). But in the wider scope of our discussion, let's consider averages, realistic figures for people who've actually been at this for a living for some time, say a couple years or more.]
Obviously that final (face-value) pricing depends on the geographical market in which one operates I suppose, and on the kind of cash that flows in business that's asking (hello, fancy jewelry, luxury bar, five-star cottage, quality begets paying the right price to get it...). But on average, I would think it reasonable to ask
- a few hundred dollars for a static website (probably around $100 per final page, more at first, less as we go up to about a thousand probably),
- in the low-mid thousands for a more code-heavy project (the kind of which takes about a week or more full-time to properly complete, and probably many hours here and there afterwards, over weeks or months, to polish and adjust perfectly to the client's needs).
Of course charge more as the project grows in scope, say... closer to ~$10K for a complex month-big 100+H project?
A personal take, as a rookie entrepreneur: I would probably feel quite uncomfortable taking over a bigger project than that alone by myself, even if I were the expert at it, because it's just too big not no make mistakes and just fail something along the way (it can be done, you can do anything, but I'm really not sure it would be cost-efficient). So at that point I'd probably team up with someone(s), and redraft it as a much shorter but heavier team project, typically parallelize the skills emphasized by the problems at hand: a visual artist, a proper backend or frontend guy, or a security guy, maybe some ad-hoc engineer of the customer's trade, etc. I think I'd actually love to be part of such small indie-team projects.
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After: Offer (and that's the core revenue of this freelance business imho, the part you want to rise) your support to maintain the website for a recurring monthly fee (or yearly fee for smaller clients who really just need to "have someone to call").
The contract I envision would typically include all the rather predictable, necessary hours of work to maintain the website and make sure it stays compliant, works well, etc., but also the "high availability" factor: the fact that I will answer at any time any day (extreme case) has a cost in itself (I think it's value for the customer, I think it's a responsibility on my part I have to gear for and uphold). Regardless of the hours I'll charge for the subsequent work that ensues after that call by the way ─ and if that's my fault the website broke, or the host's or whatever, then it's OK it's included in said maintenance contract; but if it's a request for something more, then it wouldn't be covered, see below the next bullet point).
So, for basic support and maintenance during work hours (9-5 Monday to Friday), does something like $100/year (for a static super-basic site) up to about $200/month (for the bigger projects with at least a few hours of maintenance on average per month) sound reasonable? And how much more would one charge for a commitment to fix stuff during weekends or even nights too?
I don't want to milk customers, really, but it takes time to do the accounting, customer research, training one's dev skills, keeping up with technology, etc.; and these have to be factored in the final cost; I actually really don't think you can live as an independent charging less than $75/h or so to the final customer (speaking of the US, or western Europe), because the real cost is that you're barely left with 10-20% of that once you factor everything else to keep your boat afloat in a sustainable manner.
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Offer expansion and modification of the website, and price said expansion it like it's a new project in terms of scope/hours of work (once per expansion, obviously existing paid support extends to everything you ever built for that customer and grows in scope accordingly).
Very customized, very specific project
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What: The kind that doesn't really fit existing CMS solutions, and would rather mandate a custom web(app) built from the ground up.
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How: Then you grab a node or angular or .NET or Swift or whichever stack is a good match between the customer's expectation and your skills, find a home in AWS or Azure or Rackspace or whatever fits that project's bill, and start building.
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How much: I'd wager cost is all over the map, and a per-project negotiation. I guess at that level of expertise it's probably quite lucrative, and rightfully so given the experience involved to make it right. But that's out of my league currently so I can't hypothesize on how to contract or price such products on freelance, and I don't really suppose you'd go to a freelancer for such a project anyway, or maybe as a very specialized add-on to a team in charge.
So... How does all that sound to you? Does it seem valuable in terms of work for the dev, in terms of "What they get" for the customer?
Obviously the point of using solutions like Squarespace or WP or Drupal is:
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To cut costs dramatically for everyone involved;
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To essentially be able to hand off the keys to the product to the client and give them full control over the solution; it's an assurance they can work it out without me (they can hire another pro, they can foster such skills in house, whatever fits their boat);
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It's also proven tech, trial by fire, millions or thousands of existing customers out there. Community support. Etc.
I don't see many cons.
The premise being that if the customer liked your work (i.e. "I solved their problems and, within months, helped them make more money than the cost of contracting me"), then they'll call you back, maybe pay monthly for support, and possibly ask for much more work as their business thrive.
Which is how I envision a sustainable business as a freelancer: not necessarily many clients, but a few stable and durable and honest business relationships (win-win, we both grow) which fosters trust and a predictable revenue (say, as high as 3/4, and the rest of the income roaming between new clients, because it's probably good to retain some wider exposure to the market, always plan for when a recurring contract ends, which inevitably happens).
I think that approach (honesty, quality, commitment, the will to do that "last mile" if the client wants it and is willing to pay fairly) has value in and out of itself and justifies higher-than-market-average pricing (likewise, why do some consumers pay Apple's prices? it's not the same but there's a reason that business model is thriving). I mean, more than just tangible work (code, pages, dbs...) between two businesses it's a mutual assurance, a mutually profitable partnership, one that each party has to work for (they pay, I commit). And when it ends, if it ends, everyone's happy because we made good business and added value to each other.
I would really like to hear how the people who sell and build websites for a living actually do it, and a critique of my early 'plan' and business mindset, so to speak.
Thanks a lot for the read, and if you didn't:
TL;DR = title.
Feel free to just say what you want on the topic of selling websites, regardless of my post.
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