I've created multiple personal sites for myself over the past few years, and just recently, a friend of mine has asked me to create one for her. How much should I charge for my time to create it as well as my time to maintain it since she's not web or design savvy? Has anyone been in this situation before where they're just starting out and have no idea what to charge people? If anyone could get back to me on this, I'd really appreciate it!

Well, you can charge whatever you like! You'll have to make a judgement call based on your skills, your costs, and the amount of time you expect to put into this project. If you're just going to charge a flat fee, make sure you carefully estimate how much time you'll need to put into the project and use that as a base for your fee.

Good luck!

John

Well what is the going rate because I was aware of all of that? I'm just having trouble putting a price down. I'd like to know what other people charge.

Hi,

This is confusing, because friendship is involved. what i recommend, firstly consider how many pages you are going to design for her. if its a small website like 3 or 5 pages, and it takes very little bunch of time then ignore the price (i personally think that). if it is going to be a medium size or big size website like online photo album etc. then charge her, whatever you think is genuine.

i advise, if you do a job somewhere, and for example you earn $20 per hour their. then frankly inform your friend that it will take time to design such a website and i will charge my normal working hour price. suppose it takes 20 hours to design her website, you can charge her $400 total (according to above example) if you think you must charge for your designing skills, its up to you.

the main thing is deppend on what you want to do.

Do you see web designing as your future full time job?
if yes, Then never do It for FREE, charge something less than what professionals charge in your country. (25% discount will be fine). behave like a Businessman/professional.

Is web designing just your hobby and its not your full time job?
if yes, then above example would work fine for you.

Hope it helps

Regards
Sandeep

Well you have to atleast cover your hosting prices then how much time will you take to design the site? Will it become a big site or just stay as a personal site? How fast does it/have to be done?

You gota look at those types of things before you give a price and every job is different

This is a hard question to answer because there really is no standard rate. I know a guy who does web-design full-time for a corporate IT department and he's making $40K/year (~ $20/hour, plus benefits). I know another guy who does freelance, just starting out, and he's charging $30/hour. I've also talked to some designers about doing our website and some were cheap ($100 for 10 pages) and some were very expensive (>$2000). So as you can see, it varies. I'd say, if you're half-way decent, don't charge less than $25/hour.

I agree with previous posts, you can make your own rate based on your web development skills and experiences. Do you have sample sites you made that you can show us, so we can definitely throw our two cents and feedback how much you deserve to be paid for.

You don't want to be paid nothing or less for professional work you've done or vice versa.

Just my two cents