In my current role as a self-employed website developer for small to medium businesses, I pride myself on being reasonably priced. I’m happy to make enough money to provide me with a decent income, but without ripping the customer off.

Now, I’m  not talking about a whole website here, just adding an individual web page with up to a side of A4 of text and 2-3 photos to an existing site.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Copy and paste some text, resize the images, place and label them appropriately, add links to the new page elsewhere on the site, add suitable page labelling and titles and publish it. All done in less than an hour. Total = 1 hour.

But what if?

But what if the customer is not very good at writing content and you end up having to edit it to make it suitable or even write it from scratch? Total = 2 hours.

And what if you don’t know anything about the subject matter and need to do some research via Google and Wikipedia? Total = 3 hours.

Or the photos they supply are exceptionally poor and need serious editing / tidying up? Total = 4 hours.

And excessive emails are required to chase up content or approval for it? Total = 4.5 hours.

Plus maybe a site visit might be necessary to agree final content? Total = 5.5 hours.

Then add-on the time for creating and sending an invoice. Total = 6 hours.

However, what if they don’t pay up and you end up chasing the payment with emails, phone calls and / or a site visit. Total = 7 hours.

And finally, bank the cheque, transfer monies out of the business account and do your books for the tax man. Total = 7.5 hours.

Too cheap?

Now, it’s not often that all the above factors come in to play, but at the proposed new minimum wage, that equals:

7.5 hours x £5.93 = £44.48

which is more than I’m charging! And that’s before the tax man takes his cut.

So if you’re in Blackpool or the surrounding area and you’re looking for reasonably priced website design, give me a call, but make sure you do it quick, because I might just be putting my prices up.

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