What are the going rates for web designing

[Sinitry23]

A friend of mine would like me to design a full website but I do not know how much to charge. What is a reasonable price to charge someone?

[Ashworks]

well, if your just starting, i did it at 20 dollars a page, and then a 30 dollar charge for the actual layout, but if your not just a started you can sell just a template for 500 dollars! depends on your skill.

[Sinitry23]

How does $800 sound? I was thinking of $1000 but then that might be too high of a price. I'm not a beginner I have some skills in web designing. So do you think $800 is a fair price? Also do you charge for maintence? Lets say if the client contacts your in a year and needs an update how much would you charge for that?

[kristoficus]

If you have great skills and have designed many - more than 5, then i see $800 as a fair-ish price, providing it is exactly what your client needs.

For updates...All depends on whats to be updated really. If its a completely new, full on site redesign then do it for $600 - since they are being loyal and using you second time running. If its just some page content like text, then i think $25~$50 is a reasonable price.

[Cappy]

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you can start throwing figures around.
Do you have to take the pictures or are they provided? Do you have to write the content or is that provided? How many pages are needed? Is it going to be interactive.......... forms, etc. Is it going to be flash or html? If it is html are they going to want a flash page? Are you going to have to setup the ISP (Server) or do they already have a registered internet name? Are they going to want email addresses that reflect the web address? What type of navigation are they going to want?
Just some things to think about. Then you can start thinking about what you need to charge.

If I have to do everything......... listed above excluding the flash page (I always quote that seperatly) I get between $75 to $100 a page with a 10 page minimum.......... photography is additional if it requires more than two shots per page...... illustrations are addtional as I vend them out to someone else..........any maintenance is $60 an hour with a 15 minute minimum.

[Sinitry23]

He just wants a basic website with information on health. I might need to take some picture for him to sell some of their products. As for the content. I will be putting in like 50% of the content work.

[kiwicolin]

$800 is not too much at all, in fact its cheap. Especially if you have generate some content

[Cappy]

I agree with Colin........... that is inexpensive. One thing I forgot when thinking of pricing out a site is the relationship you have with the person your doing the site for and how hungry you are..............

[Sinitry23]

Thanks for all your replies. My last concern is adding shopping carts. Can someone briefly explain to me how it works in term of payments? Can I buy the program for a one time fee or do I need to pay monthly? I was thinking of using Paypal's shopping cart, which has not monthly fees. Since this will be a small start up do you guys recommend me just trying out Paypal first then once business picks up switch over to a better shopping cart service?

[kristoficus]

Cant you create your own shopping cart using PHP? im sure thats just what most e-commerce sites etc, create them.

Dont hold me to that though!