Loading...
Answers
MenuHow much should I charge to develop a WordPress site?
I'm a 20 year old student studying Graphic Design. I occasionally get clients who would like me to completely redo their website such as designing a custom theme, adding plugins and doing it all with wordpress.
Answers
Take the # of hours it takes you to do it and charge $50/hour. That's the price. Eventually you can charge $100/hour but that will require a bigger customer.
If the customer is small < $1M in gross sales per year - charge $50/hour
If the customer id medium < $1-5M / sales - charge $75
Over $5M - charge $100
The challenge you'll face is clearly defining the expectations and handoff so that you're not stuck doing stuff that you can charge for and always getting interrupted from past customers.
I don't agree with the logic behind charging different customers different prices based on their revenue. If I want to buy a car, the price is not determined by my income. Same with a house. Same with legal services. I guess in some extremes that's not the case (subsidized housing, state-provided legal resources, etc) but in general the price is the price and your income has nothing to do with that. Charging customers with less revenue a lower rate is, like it or not, a subsidy.
If you did provide lower rates to customers with less revenue, your higher revenue customers would be quite right to ask you why you're charging them more, if they ever found out you were doing that. Pricing practices that I can't defend if they become public are, in my mind, not a good idea.
That being said, whatever rate you pick, here's one bit of advice I'd very strongly encourage you to consider. Pick your normal rate, the one that applies with a (say) 3 business day turn around. Multiply that by 1.5. That's the priority rate - within 24 hours. Multiple the priority rate by 3 That's the emergency and weekend rate.
So, with $50 as the normal rate, the priority rate would be $75. The emergency/weekend rate would be $225.
The idea is, a single unreasonable client who wants everything "right now!!!!" can ruin your customer service for everyone and make your life miserable. Make "Right now!!!!" extremely expensive relative to your other rates, and incentivize reasonable expectations on behalf of your clients. You'll sleep a lot better at night if you do that, it'll be easier to stay focused on school (since you're not constantly getting "right now" requests), and (if your experience is anything like mine) your clients will understand and appreciate the rate sheet. It does in fact protect reasonable clients from very unreasonable ones, and it gives clients the option to prioritize things when they really, really need to.
I agree with Dan. The hard part right now will be estimating the time, so I suggest padding your estimate by 20-25% to account for that. If/when you come in under budget, your client will be pleased.
Be sure to use a contract so both sides are in agreement on what the project entails. And if a client balks at signing anything, avoid them. I suggest using Contract Killer 3 as a template for the contract. It helps make clear, in plain English, what the project expectations are, what happens if someone changes their mind and covers legal obligations.
Lastly, don't work for free or less for 'exposure' unless it's a non-profit you care about. Your time has value and most 'exposure' will not return a commensurate value unless it happens to be an incredibly high profile website (in which case they'll be able to afford you).
Sounds like you are playing the role of the web designer and web developer in those situations. If you consider yourself very very good with UI UX design people are willing to pay big bucks for quality work there. As far as the development side it's more about the timeline for development and how many bells and whistles. I've worked with small to medium sized businesses and do not think $250/hr is unreasonable or unusual for top quality design and development on a normal timeline.
Happy to discuss more just wanted to get my thoughts out to bring a bit more perspective in.
It depends on quite a few factors:
- How much experience do you have?
- How much available time do you have?
- What do you like doing?
If you can't commit full time to a project during the week because of school, you can focus on one element of a site design, and outsource the rest.
Will you be customizing existing themes or writing new ones completely from scratch? Pricing will vary based on all of these answers, and it's a broad spectrum.
I recommend some of these resources:
http://chrislema.com/tag/pricing/ (he's on Clarity too and you could chat with him)
http://www.winwithoutpitching.com
https://www.freelancelift.com
I also recommend figuring out the ideal rate for the lifestyle you have or want: http://www.yourrate.co.
Good luck - happy to chat more if you'd like!
It is better to charge them for whole project not according to per hour. Lets say a client have PSD of website and he/she wants you to convert it to wordpress. If that site is limited to 5pages then you should charge $500. If your client requires design mockup from scratch then you should add $100 , which makes $600 in total.
Another possibility here is that it requires more than 5 pages ,then you may charge $50 according to per page.
It is a good practise to charge with fixed amount as it satisfies clients by letting them know what total amount they are going to spent.
Happy coding !
This depends on who your client is, how much their revenue is, if the website will give them a ROI (return on investment), and how talented you are.
My agency (https://www.brotskydesigns.com) does pricing based on what we estimate the time commitment will be. If we estimate the job will take 40 hours and our hourly rate is $x we simply charge $x * 40. We make sure to cap off the hours so clients don't take advantage of us and we don't end up stuck in endless projects.
To understand how much you should charge for a WordPress Website you must answer the following facts one-by-one. The cost of a WordPress site can be broken down into following categories:
I. WordPress hosting
II. Domain Name
III. Design
IV. Plugins and Extensions (Apps)
To create a self-hosted WordPress site, you need web hosting to store your files. Every website on the internet needs hosting. This is your website’s home on the internet. There are different hosting plans available for all kind of websites. You need to pick one that suits your requirements and fits your budget. Next, you will need a domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet, and this is what your users will type in the browser to reach your website (example, wpbeginner.com or google.com). With WordPress, there are tons of free website templates available that you can use. However, if you want something more advanced / custom, then you can purchase a premium template or have one custom made which will raise the cost. There are 54,000+ free plugins for WordPress. These are apps and extensions for your websites. Think features like contact form, gallery, etc. So, while you can build a website with just the hosting and domain cost, based on your situation, you may end up paying for additional tools and services. That is why it is often confusing for people to find out the real cost of a WordPress website.
Estimating the Real Cost of Building a WordPress Site.
Depending on your needs, your cost to start a WordPress website can range from $100 to $500 to $3000, to even as high as $30,000 or more. It is important to know what type of website you are building, and what you will need for it because that will directly affect your cost. But do not worry, we will show you how to avoid a financial disaster and make the best decisions.
For the sake of this article, let us break down websites into different budget categories:
I. Building a WordPress website (low budget)
II. Building a WordPress website (with more features)
III. Building a WordPress website for small business
IV. Building a WordPress eCommerce website
V. Building a custom WordPress website
Now let us see how much each of these projects cost and how you can avoid spending any more than necessary. You can build a fully functional WordPress website for yourself and keep your costs under $100. Here is the cost break down of a WordPress website on a low budget. First, you will need a domain name and web hosting. A domain name typically costs $14.99 / year, and web hosting normally costs $7.99 / month. Thankfully, Bluehost, an official WordPress recommended hosting provider, has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and over 60% off on web hosting. You can continue to use Bluehost for WordPress hosting to keep the cost low and get a free domain name.
However, since you will be adding more features to your website, it may make sense to get a more powerful hosting configuration like SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. This will cost you a little more, but it comes with premium features like staging, faster performance, and can handle up to 100,000 visitors per month. You can use our SiteGround coupon to get 60% off for the first year of your hosting. You can also go for a premium WordPress template for your site. Unlike free WordPress templates, these templates come with extra features and priority support. Here are some essential premium WordPress plugins and extensions that you’ll need as your site grows:
Features
I. WPForms (Pro) – Adds a drag drop form builder to your WordPress site
II. WP Rocket – Premium WordPress caching plugin to speed up your site.
III. Beaver Builder – Adds a drag and drop WordPress page builder.
IV. WP Mail SMTP – improves email deliverability and fixes WordPress not sending email issue.
Marketing
I. Constant Contact – One of the best email marketing services
II. OptinMonster – Converts abandoning website visitors into subscribers. Lead generation for WordPress.
III. MonsterInsights Pro – See how visitors find and use your website.
IV. All in One SEO Pro – Improve your website’s SEO ranking.
Security
I. BackupBuddy – For automatic WordPress backups
II. Sucuri Firewall – Website firewall and malware protection
There are many more WordPress plugins and services that you can add. Each paid service or addon that you add will increase the cost of your WordPress site. Depending on the premium WordPress plugins and services that you add, it can be anywhere between $500 and $1000 per year.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
-
How do you manage a developer who's slow, especially when you have a small budget and you don't feel like you'll get things done in time?
Usually Programmers are only slow when they don't know how to solve a particular problem. So they will spend a lot of time researching and a lot of trial & errors to solve a problem. It is important that before you engage a programmer on a project, you break down the entire project into simple, easy to understand modules. Let him give you an estimate of how many hours he will require to complete each of the modules. Example: a typical site will have a login module, registration, My account, profile etc. So let him estimate how much he will require to do the login. You can go even detail here. (e.g. how much extra time if you were to implement Facebook/Twitter Login?). Once he start developing, track his progress closely and make sure he is following his given timeline. If he goes over his budgeted time on a module, talk with him and see what went wrong. It is often seen that they may be wasting their time on something very insignificant that you may have asked him to implement, but you can totally go by without it too. So by understanding what is taking longer time, you will be able to prioritise things better. You definitely need some tools to get this done. Google Spreadsheet or Excel works just fine. But if you don't mind spending a few bucks there are many agile project management tools that you might look into. Here is a list, google them all and sign up for trials: * AgileZen * Agile Bench * Assembla * AssiTrack * Blossom * Basecamp * Breeze * DoneDone * Eidos * Fogbugz * GreenHopper * Jugggla * Kanbanpad * Pivotal Tracker Or the reason why he is slow can be purely non-technical. Sometime your developer may don't share the same level of enthusiasm as you about the idea that you are working on. They often don't often see the "bigger picture" (since you don't share everything with them explicitly). If you can somehow get them excited about what he is a part of, it will work like a drug :) He will work day and night without questioning you. But you need to work equally as hard as him. The moment he sees that you are the boss and he is just the guy doing work for you -- his mentality will shift from being part of something to being the low paid developer. Ultimately its all about motivation and making him a part of your venture. After all he deserves it, if he is really playing a crucial role in the entire development.Saad KamalSK
-
How can I create a searchable large (3 million record) searchable database in WordPress?
Well first off I wouldn't recommend trying to power your client's database with the standard WordPress database instance. They can use WordPress for the website all they like. But with millions of records like that, you really don't want to move those data in with WordPress. For that matter, you're probably gonna want a dedicated database server to answer those questions, if the client doesn't already have one. You might also need to investigate something like Elastic Search, depending on what your search requirements are and what sort of database they are using (pay close attention to whether or not it provides full text search ability). Beyond that, and somewhat obviously, you're also gonna want SSL on the website and to make sure you're up to date on federal and state privacy requirements for data like this, as well as best practices for securely transferring data over the web (port configuration, ssh keys, etc). The privacy concerns would raise a flag for me. If those data have anything personally identifiable in them - which they very probably do - then you're really gonna want to make sure you do your research on security of personally identifiable information. Government specific privacy /security /auditability requirements may also apply, so double check that too.Evan VolgasEV
-
I have this social media idea,but no coding skills. How do I get someone to do the coding (cant afford to pay them) and not give away half of my idea?
Dilip was very kind in his response. My answer might be a bit on the "tough love" side. But that's for you to decide. My intention, just for the record, is to help you (and those like you) on your path to success. And that starts with having a viable philosophy about entrepreneurial-ism and business. And I'm going to answer this because I get asked some form / version of this question very frequently from newcomers to entrepreneurial-ism. The scenario goes something like this: "I have a great idea. It's amazing, I love it, and I just KNOW it's gonna make me a ton of money. But I have no money right now so I can't afford to (fill in the blank with things like "to build it / create it / market it / etc" or "to hire the required staff needed to work in my business to sell it / develop it / etc"). And I don't want to tell anyone about my great idea because I'm worried someone will steal it and make MY million / billion dollars. But I can't afford to legally protect it either... So how do I launch without the skills to personally create the product AND no money to hire anyone else to do that either??" The answer is ... You don't. Look - let's be honest. All you have is an idea. Big deal. Really. I'm not saying it's not a good idea. I'm not saying that if properly executed it couldn't make you a million / billion dollars... But an idea is NOT a business. Nor is it an asset. Until you do some (very important) initial work - like creating a business model, doing customer development, creating a MVP, etc - all you really have is a dream. Right now your choices are: 1. Find someone with the skills or the money to develop your idea and sell them on WHY they should invest in you. And yes, this will mean giving up either a portion of the "ownership" or of future income or equity. And the more risk they have to take - the more equity they will want (and quite frankly be entitled to). 2. Learn how to code and build it yourself. MANY entrepreneurs without financial resources are still resourceful. They develop the skills needed to create what they don't have the money to pay someone else to do. 3. Get some cash so you can pay someone to do the coding. You'll probably have to have some knowledge of coding to direct the architecture of your idea. So you will likely still have to become knowledgeable even if its not you personally doing the coding. (This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of options... And I'm sure some of the other experts here on Clarity have others to add - and I hope they do) To wrap up - Here's my final tip to you that I hope you "get"... It's FAR more valuable to have an idea that a very specific hungry crowd is clamoring for right now - One that THEY would love and pay you for right now - Maybe even one they'd pre-order because they just have to have it - Versus YOU being in love with your own idea. [Notice I didn't say "an idea that some as-of-yet-undetermined market would probably love"] I wish you the best of luck moving forward.David BermanDB
-
What 3 questions to pose to a developer, to gauge his expertise level?
If you're not technical yourself, then you might not be able to gauge the efficiency of a candidate's algorithms or critique her code. But there are still some higher-level, more behavioral things that a non-technical interviewer should be looking for in a strong development candidate: 1. What are some tech blogs that you follow? Explain an interesting article to me that you read from one of them. The software development world changes all the time. Best practices are constantly evolving and new libraries are regularly released which make developers more productive. If a candidate doesn't keep up with the latest software news, that might be a red flag that they're not curious or trying to improve themselves. Also, having them explain a technical concept to someone who's non-technical is a great way to gauge their communication skills. Do they seem like someone you could work with and understand easily? Do they care about pausing to make sure you understand, or do they just drone on with jargon? If you feel overwhelmed while they're explaining this answer, imagine how you'll feel when they're telling you why the product has bugs or isn't going to be done on schedule. 2. Tell me about a time you ran into a big roadblock with something you were building. How did you get past it? It's inevitable that a software developer will get tripped up or have to solve some Gordian Knot. Everyone has to bang their head against the wall from time to time. Maybe an API didn't have the data they needed or some function was running too slow and they weren't sure how to speed it up. You're looking to see how they are as a problem solver. Did they come up with a clever but hacky solution? Were they methodical or did they fly by the seat of their pants? Did they go back to the stakeholders and see if the feature's requirements were flexible? Did they work on it for hours and hours trying new things? Did they ask for help from colleagues or on the internet? No right or wrong answers here, but you want to get the sense that this isn't someone who throws up their hands when they hit some friction. 3. Tell me about your favorite project that you worked on. What work are you most proud of? By asking them about the project they're most proud of, you'll get to see what it is that they value most. Maybe one candidate is most proud of a side project they built, even if it wasn't that technically complex, while another candidate is proud of their esoteric PhD project or some specific algorithm they improved. Again, no right or wrong answers, it really depends what type of candidate you're looking for. But it lets you see into their mind a bit, and get at some of the aspects that can make someone a strong development candidate. If you want to talk more specifically about hiring for your team, I'd be happy to do a call!Hartley BrodyHB
-
What are the key accomplishments for the first year of a startup?
A generalized question can only get a generalized answer. The most significant accomplishment is validating that the product you have built is a fit with your target market. This is demonstrated primarily by engagement (the people who sign-up or who previously visited, continue to return) and secondarily by growth, ideally based on word-of-mouth or viral growth but effectively converting paid traffic is a great second prize. Other significant accomplishments include: Not running out of money Recruiting and retaining great talent who believe in the founders' vision. Your loved ones not thinking you're as crazy as they thought you were a year ago. I'm happy to talk to you in a call to give you more specifics about what you want to set as your goals more specific to your startup.Tom WilliamsTW
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.
