What would you charge for this job?

efeezy

efeezy

Well-known member
Oct 5, 2007
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Got a guy who wants a ecommerce site done similar to this...Home Summer 2011 | BRIXTON Apparel, Headwear, & Accessories. He sells his own line of surf clothing, which includes tshirts, sweat shirts, men's & womens apparel etc.. I don't know for sure how many products he plans on featuring in his online store, but I know he already has product photos and descriptions done.

I need to come up with a figure to quote the guy but I haven't really quoted an ecomm platform job before. I'm sure I could do something pretty slick with Wordpress and a good plugin unless there's a better way to go.

Any suggestions on what I need to figure for something like this? He should already have company logos and graphics done, so I probably won't have to mess with that. Any help or thoughts are appreciated.

I don't normally do client work like this, but it's the old friend of a good friend deal, so you know how it goes.
 


Before you set a price figure out how much he is already making, I would start with 20-30% of what he makes in year.
 
Example looks pretty basic. Depends how much you like him and how badly you want the work. 750-2k
 
Depends on his budget and how much you value your time.

Easiest way is to come up with an hourly rate and give him an estimate. Be sure to add some hours to your estimate for back-and-forth communication. This way you can negotiate your time based on additional functionality he might want that you would need to manage/develop. This also helps to set a reasonable expectation/timeline for the project.
 
Magic Hat said:
Depends on his budget and how much you value your time.

Easiest way is to come up with an hourly rate and give him an estimate. Be sure to add some hours to your estimate for back-and-forth communication. This way you can negotiate your time based on additional functionality he might want that you would need to manage/develop. This also helps to set a reasonable expectation/timeline for the project.
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Great advice. Giving an hourly rate is the best thing to do for a project for a friend. Get paid for the amount of time needed to complete the project. Get ALL the specs from your client and give him an estimate for the hours needed to develop the site.
 
I'll throw my hat in the ring for the hourly quote as well. Don't do a per-project quote, because from experience, 95% of clients will change project scope midway. And if you're on a per-project quote, there's a decent chance they'll expect the extra done for free, and will get pissy when you tell them it's extra.

Decide your hourly rate, consult with him, and write up your own set of projects specs with quote. Pass the projects specs back and forth, until you're both on the same page. The more detail in the specs, the better. From there, he approves the quote, and you begin development.

This way when the project scope changes (it will), you can easily say, "it'll be a couple extra hours for that, is that ok?". He agrees, you get paid for additional time, and everyone is happy. If he ever bitches, you send the project specs + quote back to him, and tell him that's what you agreed upon, and additional work = additional money.

It's all around better for everyone, and leaves the client free to make changes as he desires, which always happens. Midway through development, you'll be talking, and he'll say, "looks great so far, but I was thinking, and maybe we should do this too...". If you're on an hourly basis, and the client is a good guy, then it's no worries, and everyone ends up happy.
 
yeh, hourly rate is what you should do, clients always want stuff changed in the end and you'll agree todo one little thing and it ends up being a lot more.
also depends whether or not they want a unique code or if they will settle with wordpress + plugin. either way hourly rate is the way to go.

good program to automatically make invoices for hourly rates is Simple Online Time Tracking, Timesheet and Invoicing Software - Harvest
 
Defined scope of example website, very basic seo, plus 4 hours included for feature creep $2,200. There after hourly or separate quote for additional work requested.

Offer to host and monthly seo/sem options.
 
Cool. Thanks that's what I was looking for. Is $50 an hour completely out of line for something like this. I've really only charged by the project to this point, so I don't have a baseline rate.

I think the site design or wordpress tweak could be done in 8 hours or so. However, because it's going to be a ecomm store, it's the adding of the product images, descriptions etc. that's going to be the time consuming part I would guess. I will get more details on how much product will be featured and what else he has done on his end to make my life easier (or more difficult). Thanks for the replies.
 
efeezy said:
Cool. Thanks that's what I was looking for. Is $50 an hour completely out of line for something like this.
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No, if you've got the skills, $50 an hour is entirely reasonable. I typically charge $60 myself and there are others here that charge much more. I was getting quotes in the $6k range for setting up our eCommerce platform. Don't underestimate the amount of work involved including extensive testing and debugging to make sure it all works flawlessly.
 
2nd part of this equation. If I were to go the Wordpress route for this, what ecomm platform would you recommend? (I know this one has been asked a million times)
 
Do not go wordpress route for e commerce.

I would not charge hourly, I'd go by project, but that is just me. Just make sure to limit the project somehow so the client knows upfront what type of 'extras' you might charge.

If this is your first ecommerce site development, than charge reasonable and expect to not really earn much per hour, as you are going to be spending a lot of time learning the basics of eCommerce and dealing with common problems which someone with experience will know how to deal with.

And $50 hour is not unreasonable, although a tough sale.
 
poisonsembrace said:
You negotiate down, not up.. fucking poser. Can't believe no-one called you on that shit sooner.
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Called me on what shit? You obviously have to start with a threshold and then work on from there. Some people start at $500 then charge per hour or per project, or just charge per hour, to each their own. I didn't say to tell the client right off the bat that's it's $1k. He's asking for opinions so I gave mine you child. The designer always has to have the leverage or you'll be easily manipulated and underpaid if you don't have a plan...

Sorry for the confusion for anyone else who has read my comment. No pun intended..

P.S. OP, DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT do anything without a contract, even if it's a friend, a contract can save a business/relationship.
 
Back when I owned an e-commerce store I used x-cart which worked pretty wel. I had a custom design done which cost $2,500 and it looked fantastic.
 
HOLY CRAP do not go WP for E-commerce!!!!!!

At least, don't go wp-e-commerce. It is THE WORST open source project ever. I could go on and on, but I won't. Just trust me and don't do it.

I have a project that's kind of "stuck' in Wordpress so I'm going to try the Shopp Plugin next. But for the love of god, do NOT touch getshopped.org or WP-E-Commerce.
 
efeezy said:
Got a guy who wants a ecommerce site done similar to this...Home Summer 2011 | BRIXTON Apparel, Headwear, & Accessories. He sells his own line of surf clothing, which includes tshirts, sweat shirts, men's & womens apparel etc.. I don't know for sure how many products he plans on featuring in his online store, but I know he already has product photos and descriptions done.

I need to come up with a figure to quote the guy but I haven't really quoted an ecomm platform job before. I'm sure I could do something pretty slick with Wordpress and a good plugin unless there's a better way to go.

Any suggestions on what I need to figure for something like this? He should already have company logos and graphics done, so I probably won't have to mess with that. Any help or thoughts are appreciated.

I don't normally do client work like this, but it's the old friend of a good friend deal, so you know how it goes.
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You should put together three separate options for the prospect. Be sure to do it in a table format (the kind you see when reviewing software packages).

Then you're going to want to go over a needs analysis where you outline the recommended source of action. Also, when it comes to e-commerece websites you're going to run into issues with the product pricing, different variations, pictures, and educating the customer on how to use the website when you're out of the picture so a good rule of thumb is: if you're providing good value it's pretty damn hard to overcharge.

If I was you I'd consider jamula's virtuemart, magento, 1shoppingcart, and volusion.

I'd also offer different packages based on your level of involvement, you're going to have to sell him on the value of things like upselling and cross selling, automated drip marketing, teaching him how to use social media w/ product reviews. You might even discuss optimizing a feed into google shopping and setting up an ebay store.

You should be able to pick and choose these things and make different packages out of them...

I'd price it like so:

Bronze E-Commerce: Website + cart + crm
Silver E-Commerce: Website + cart + crm + landing pages for adwerdz + payment gateway integration
Gold E-Commerce: Add everything from above, include ebay store, google shopping, and 20 hours of consultation.

I'd probably price them accordingly:

Bronze: $2,500
Silver: $4,600
Gold: $7,200

I've been successful selling on the highend when doing it that way, but most of the time I would of lead them towards something like silver then just send up making the money back on monthly consulting when they realize they're out of their depth.

If you need any advice just PM me.

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