Ask LH: How Should I Charge For Site Design?

5 responses to “Ask LH: How Should I Charge For Site Design?”

1. 

   jeremyworboys

   April 15, 2013

   To charge GST you must be registered for tax in Australia and be completing a quarterly BAS statement.

   Log in to Reply
   1. 

      naed

      April 15, 2013

      Also, you only have to register for GST when your GST turnover (or projected turnover) is above $75k per year. http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.aspx?doc=/content/20724.htm&page=5

      If you are registered you can claim GST credits for your business expenses, but you have to do a quarterly BAS statement.

      Log in to Reply
2. 

   cuervo

   April 16, 2013

   Always get a deposit, even a couple of hundred dollars is enough to work out which clients have any hesitancy in paying bills promptly.

   The 20% of clients that you reject makes a huge difference to your business and your life. Even if you can’t fill that gap with another paying client, using that time in other productive ways (like training or marketing) will be far more beneficial than dealing with a tricky/dishonest/unreasonable client.

   In web design, a seemingly simple request, even if very specific, can be either extremely complicated or very simple (e.g. off the shelf widget versus a hand coded alternative or somewhere in the middle) and the choice between the two can’t always be determined even from the most detailed brief in advance.

   Trying to lock down everything in advance can lead to a brief/scope of work that could take longer to prepare than many small projects, and you’ll do plenty of quotes for jobs that don’t end up going ahead, so it’s not worth it.

   So the easiest way to work is to provide estimates, not quotes and to say:
   “we can deliver broadly X within your fixed budget of Y, and will work to help you get the best possible result within that scope & strictly within that budget, but we charge by the hour. If your requests start steer part of a project beyond its suggested share of the total budget, we’ll recommend options to bring it back in, or come back to you to confirm a budget increase, or delay a component until other aspects are completed so we know how much budget left we have to play with for that particular area.”

   Most of all, manage expectations and keep clients informed on how budget is tracking, they won’t have any concept of what’s involved in most things and won’t know which bits happen “automagically” (and sometimes big complicated things can just be plugged in and switched on) versus those (often seemingly simple things) which involve painstaking hand coding – so just keep them in the loop and you’ll avoid any shocks that upset client expectations.

   Log in to Reply
3. 

   april

   April 16, 2013

   When putting together a proposal, I like to include “Scope” as well as “Outside of Scope” so it’s abundantly clear what I am NOT expected to do – eg hosting or copywriting, etc.

   Log in to Reply
4. 

   Liff75

   April 16, 2013

   It might seem obvious, but I’ve seen a lot of people not include it and get screwed.

   Make sure that your quotation is signed off on, with some terms and conditions around the payments as you probably intend to, but add a clause that all elements of the site that you design are copyrighted to you an may not be replicated for any commercial purposes, until the customer has paid the invoice in full.

   That’ll allow you to take the site back, even though it has their logo and name all over it if things go pear shape. It’ll also stop them from getting you to do half the work and then getting one of their kids “who’s tinkered a bit with PHP” to do the rest for peanuts. Some people try, especially small businesses that are used to exchanging favours and mates rates (tradies).

   If you are really suspicious that you may not get paid, or suspect a client is going to turn into one of those difficult ones that has an endless list of tweaks (move the image left a little more, no up, left, oh wait I liked the way it was before, but can we make the text a little bigger?), consider using an escrow service. Basically, a neutral third party that hangs onto the money and won’t give it to you until the client is happy, but won’t give it back to them either unless you agree. That takes away the “I can always walk away and lose nothing since I haven’t paid anything” mentality that also exists in some circles.

   It really depends on your customer base. The easy clients are in small business, because there’s just so many of them. Government customers have their own rules, but you’ll never not be paid; it’s just probably going to take them 2 or 3 months to get around to it. Medium to large businesses generally never give you problems, but competition is fierce because there aren’t that many and or they might have people employed to do all the massive work and just outsource irregular niche stuff, so regular or large work is tough to come by.

   Log in to Reply