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Advice for a web design freelancer?
Looks like I might have a freelance-y web design job soon, and I know all about web design, but I don't know so much about the other stuff. For example, how much do I charge and how do I negotiate a rate? How do I deal with hosting? Do I tell the client what to buy and how to give me access, or should I not trust them with that? Is there anything else I should know?
Comments
The only advice I can really give is that you can and should probably charge a lot more money than you think, if you actually have skill that is.
And if you do have skill, do you want to help me out? I've got a lot of projects in the hopper that are mostly coded, and just have no front end. They look a lot like IDShare, with no CSS or anything.
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
Take into account right management for the pictures used on the site, SEO, maintenance, and if needed content management (as in "the customer is too thick to learn how to use wordpress or whatever content manager you use, so you have to upload shit as well") fees.
Write down the goals of the project, the amount of revisions to be done to the design that is included in the initial fee, expected functionality and features of the project, and a reasonable deadline (with some extra days to spare). The guy I've teamed up to work freelances with usually buys the domains and server hosting packages for the customer and the charges for monthly or yearly fees added to the maintenance fees.
And finally, your customer is an idiot, so explain to him why even though pink, blue and red are his favorite colors, they might not be best for the design, and never be afraid to whip out the contract when they try to push you around to make extra changes or add extra features at no cost.
The client MUST pay for ALL the time you spend on the project. It's no good just paying for the time you are coding, because if you are good, that is the smallest job. Also take into account all the time you'll be spending talking to the client, all the time you'll be organizing shit, all the time you'll be THINKING about the job, etc, etc, etc. Also make clear what they are going to get. Will it be a one time static design? Tell them one price for a one time delivery, but double it or triple it immediately if they are allowed to give feedback and ask for changes.
I am a freelancer, and I "work" just two hours per gig. However, any time I work, I get paid by the WEEK. I travel a lot, of course, but no matter what, my time and energy has to be paid for. Even if I get a gig which lasts less than a day, I still charge my WEEKLY fee. This has lead to me getting paid over two thousand euros for juggling for 3.7 seconds.
My brother is a freelancer, and whenever he told me what he charged, I always said "Wow, that's really cheap!" He had a session with a business management adviser, and the main message this guy had for my brother was "Seriously, you can charge way, way, way more."
I usually don't bill for time, but do weekly, like Luke. That way you don't have to worry about clients complaining about your business process, or thinking they've been swindled (when they don't understand the terms "brainstorming" or "progress bar").
Hosting-wise, it depends on how much business you are thinking of doing. I bought a Linode VPS that I've been hosting client stuff on, and I charge them a nominal fee (to cover my expenses and maintenance time). I don't do it to make money, though. I just can't stand the terrible hosting solutions most people have. If they want their own hosting, I'd suggest having them purchase, just in case they change their mind at the last second.
Clients are fickle, overzealous, and inexperienced. If you let them, they will drag out a project with a million revisions, then complain when you bill them for it. They will belittle your work even as they praise your skills, and assume you'll provide "small favours" for free down the line. Make sure you explicitly tell them if it's a one-off project, or negotiate a rate (monthly retainers are nice) for a certain number of hours of work.
Basically what I want is a Craigslist kind of style. No images, no fancy shit that confuses people. Just straightforward text and links and such. I just also want it to have nice colors and really nice fonts. When text is all you've got, typography is super important.
Also, these kinds of projects are changing all the time. This isn't like, make a site for a restaurant and that's it. These are actual applications. If people start using them, then they will be incrementally improving at a steady rate, so I would prefer someone who was willing to stick with it. Of course, since I do know a lot about HTML/CSS/JS I would be reasonably ok on my own once the foundation is set, but it would be better to have someone stick with it, especially when new features might be larger in scope.
1. Unless you are very experienced and have been doing this forever, it will ALWAYS take you way longer than expected.
2. Due to various situations, you will most likely not get the compensation you deserve.
Freelancing is so tricky, and it is hard to be successful at it. As some have already mentioned in this thread, clients tend to be awful in various ways. The worst are the dumb ones that have no idea what is feasible and how much skill and manual labor goes into this, and the ones who try to cheat you ("I'm not paying you for that, I could've done that is Office!").
From your initial post, it seems that you are trying to make an entire website, but are inexperienced with many aspects of it. There is so much that goes into it, you will end up having to spend a ton of time trying to figure stuff out, and will probably do a lot of things wrong or inefficiently (not meant to be an insult, just speaking from my own experience when I started out). Be aware that the client will keep asking for a ton of features as you go through the project and it will get way complicated and beyond what you initially thought. Just be ready for this!
Anyway, in summary, there is one thing you must do. Make a contract!! Try to figure out exactly what they want, and agree with them that they want "X" done. Do your best to intelligently decide how long it might take you, and give them a quote (although as I said before, it will take you way longer). You can agree on a flat rate at first, whatever you feel comfortable with. But be very clear that if they want ANYTHING else from what you initially agreed, you will charge them an hourly (or whatever) rate. You will probably be tempted to give them free things here and there, and it will creep up on you. That is your decision, but beware you will probably end up not being compensated in the end for what you deserve.
Now to contradict everything I've just said, if you have nothing else to do and don't need a lot of money from this, you can always just not worry so much about the money stuff and use this as experience and something to put on your portfolio. Don't do this too much though, like me, and end up doing tons of free work. x_X
First, constant communication so it is very clear what they are getting and what they want. Don't just do a bunch of work and then go TA DA! Let them see the work slowly evolve so there are no surprises. One guy even had a setup that slowly revealed each component of the site one at a time. It even started monochrome and revealed colors after. This kept the clients attention on what he was talking about, and helped them consider things like the layout without being distracted by colors and such.
The second thing I heard a lot was the "phase 2" trick. Clients would call them up "oh I got this great idea!" and they would say "That is great, let's put it in phase 2" That way you do what you promised on your first contract with no extra stupid work, and you get paid. Then if they actually want all that other stuff, they have to contract you again for phase 2. If they want you to just keep working forever, then they should hire you has a full time employee.