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Am I Charging Too Little

Thread title: Am I Charging Too Little
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03-13-2012, 11:22 PM
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BoyWonder is offline BoyWonder
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  Old  Am I Charging Too Little

I recently made a custom cms for a local newspaper for my first paid project. It took me 25 hours and we agreed on $500. When I came over today to collect the money, I received $2000 because the manager felt bad, saying that he spent $20,000 for his last cms. Am I low balling my prices?

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03-14-2012, 11:53 AM
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dojo is offline dojo
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Well, it depends. If you are pleased with your current pay and can make a living, you can play the price game. I had clients who claimed my prices were insanely small and some who expected me to work for free I guess

You need to set yourself a desired hourly rate and make sure your projects NEVER fall under this. If you have say $20/hour and a project takes 20 hours, quote for $400 and it's OK. Try not to get under this desired hourly rate and slowly increase.

I have now clients who pay strictly close to my desired hourly rate and had people who have paid me even $100 for an hour. You need to be comfortable with your prices and slowly go up. You can guess I'd quote a price 6 years ago and will surely quote another one in 3 years from now.

03-14-2012, 12:10 PM
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Boy Wonder

The issue of what to charge and how has been raised here many times in the past. A quick search might give you some useful parameters.

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05-20-2012, 01:28 AM
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HogWildMark is offline HogWildMark
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Originally Posted by BoyWonder View Post
I recently made a custom cms for a local newspaper for my first paid project. It took me 25 hours and we agreed on $500. When I came over today to collect the money, I received $2000 because the manager felt bad, saying that he spent $20,000 for his last cms. Am I low balling my prices?
I have seen web site designs sell for as low as $60 to as high as thousands of dollars to companies charges $75+/per hour

It really comes down to how much you think your time is worth and how high the quality of your work is in comparison to the rest of the marketplace

05-20-2012, 05:36 AM
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SenseiSteve is offline SenseiSteve
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Based on your custom CMS, your client sure thought your pricing was too low. A lot of decisions are based on where prospects just came from. If they used a cut rate designer in the past, that's generally what they expect. Just the opposite applies as well. In this case, you agreed upfront and got paid 4 times as much. Your time is valuable. If you produce quality work, you deserve quality pay.

05-23-2012, 01:29 PM
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Eli Isakov is offline Eli Isakov
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You got very luck, he knew that you deserved better for the quality of time you've put into making a custom CMS. Not many people do that, there are too many low ballers who expect you to do work for free almost. They think it's easy to come up with a design idea, yet alone coding it.

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06-20-2012, 01:31 PM
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NewEra is offline NewEra
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its depends on the job really some jobs would require you to ask for more and some are just fine the way you ask for pay

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06-29-2012, 06:20 PM
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outingly is offline outingly
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The fact that he quadrupled the pay without being asked to is astonishing. I would take that as proof that with your current clients, you can charge more. As others have mentioned, first and foremost is that you receive the salary that YOU want.

Secondly, but also important is the type of client. Think of it like retail and wholesale. You might not be able to charge (or find clients) in the web development world willing to pay thousands for work they're outsourcing *hint, wholesale*. But if your clients are end-users - you can charge them retail prices baby.

What to take from my two cents? Firstly, its YOUR salary, and the beauty of freelancing is that you can dictate it, to an extent. Secondly - play close attention to who you're dealing with. Is it a multi-million dollar firm, or is it....

Hope that helps!

04-30-2013, 09:19 AM
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Mortan is offline Mortan
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well, ask for so much amount of money that you think suitable for your services... Prices always differ for person to person...

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