How much would you pay for a *WEBSITE* ?

Websites should be priced based on content. A simple site would obviously be priced a lot less than one that is more intricate. Custom art, specialized coding (bells and whistles), multiple pages...there are tons of things that might cause one site to be more expensive than another.

I agree that price is going to be influenced by several factors, not limited to: type (personal, single business/service, e-commerce), number of pages, content, level of detail and design, interactivity (multimedia/flash/scripting)

Perhaps the poll might be better served if a specific "finite" package were to be described. Also for the "casual" web designer that is not entirely familiar with the business side of this type of work, describing a more detailed "job" may help them arrive at their estimated price, etc.

Personally, a fully unique design, included the aforementioned "options" and establishing the online identity of a business site may start at around $1,000 for a 5-page site.
Such a site may include custom graphic design, domain name registration/setup, online forms, email accounts, search engine registration, website promotion, hosting, on going consultation/support for a specific period of time after it is established - mileages will vary depending on the designer, of course.
Also, depending on the self-evaluated "level of expertise" the price of a given web package will vary.

I agree that it would really depend on the website. If someone wanted a business site, you would need to charge them more because they are going to attempt making money. I'm not saying charge them continually, but make sure it's worth your time to make something like that.

If it's a personal "Look at me" website, that depends on what the person wants. Take me for instance--I have a crappy website for my writing (and partially art). I don't want a lot (and considering I know zero about webbuidling nowadays, not a lot is what I have). So, if I wanted someone to build me a site, I wouldn't want to pay a lot. That is why I have what I have--it's okay for me. Yeah, I'd like something more cooler, but I just don't have the time to deal with "cooler".

Anyway, you need to charge according to the site is the best answer. Know what the person wants, and haggle with them.

Ok, i'm going to rephrase my original post since none of you really 'got' what i was asking entirely.

Im asking this, because quite frankly, I undercharge for small personal websites. I practically GIVE IT AWAY to my clients. I spend days tweaking this and that, designing it, making sure it works on MAC/PC IE/FireFox/Safari.

Imagine coming home with a paycheck of $120 after working all week.

I know what i charge businesses, I have no problem with that rate, and neither do the businesses.

I want to know what the general public who wants a dinky little website personalized for them is willing to pay for that.

I think there's still quite a few variables in this one. A dinky little website personalized for one person is going to be completely different than for another person. Honestly, I think a base price for a certain amount of coding/personalization is good, and then for anything beyond that an hourly rate is perfectly acceptable.

I think $75-$125 for a Fairly simple 2-3 page website is way more beyond fair. Considering the effort it takes to put just that together. Say you spend 10 hours putting that together, it still only comes out to $7.50-$12.50 an hour, so I'd say they are getting an awesome deal. My husband is a software developer (specializes in UI development for web applications) so I know a fair amount of the business, and most web developers/software developers make between $35-$75 an hour depending on knowledge & experience.

I've seen the work you do Vex, and I think you're selling yourself way short. if you're only coming away with a paycheck of $120 for a weeks worth of work.

ps.. do you also do software development, or just stick with mostly webdesign?

I honestly always figured the personal web sites you do to cost around 400-600 dollars at the minimum.

$120 is a steal.

I think 400-600 dollars for the personal web site is still fair (and I would pay it if I had it) to the customer, and fair to you too. That would be like working a 40 hour work week at 10-15 bucks an hour. Even still, those figures are kinda low given your experience, in my opinion.

I doubt very seriously that many people are going to be able to afford $400-600 for a personal website, whether or not that's fair. I just don't see the market bearing that. Therefore, if a person is truly trying to make a living at website design, it would seem to me the only way to go is commercial.

For say TAC or a personal website - 400-600 would be steep. I certainly would have never been able to create TAC if it would have cost that much. Granted Vex severely undercharged me for tac's first professional redesign from her back in 9/04 - but I like to think I make up for it for her lavish christmas and birthday gifts =D

Nowadays 120 for a website does seem like a steal, considering what all people want in sites and for future maintenance that I know someone like vex will do without charging. I'm frivolous with my money though. =x

Reading your responses and thinking about it, yeah 400-600 is a bit steep... but 120 is definitely too low. I was mainly thinking in terms of hourly wages and a 40hr work week.

Really though, I think in this situation estimating the amount of hours it will take to complete a web site and basing your price off an hourly rate you give yourself would be the best bet.

I love art, and there are serveral artists who I would LOVE to commission... however, I would have an easier time forking out cash for a nice professionally design web site and the tools to maintain it because it has a function that will potentially enhance whatever it is I want this site for.

Basically what I'm saying is: Vex, you charge too low! If I didn't like to fuck with things I would definitely hire you to do my web site. I'm not made of money or anything, but I was really taken aback when I read what you charge. If I were a customer coming to you I would have been ready to pay at least double what you're charging now.

thanks guys, thats really what i needed to know.

to me, its better to have $120 in your pocket than $0, which is why i undercut so much. i -want- your money, as much as you're willing to give me for what i'm worth. And i was raised on the ethics (morals?) to not rip people off. I have a guilty conscience for it. so i'm willing to live with being underpaid than overpaid, but if you all seem to think $200-$250 is reasonable, then I will more than happily raise my prices, even if its still not 'what i'm worth' in you guys' eyes.

And yeah - working for business only is a GREAT idea, the only pitfall being -- there's not enough businesses that need websites, so i do personal sites, blogs, forums, guild sites, art commissions, etc. to fill in the gaps. its just becoming apparent lately that its not filling in the gaps enough because I spend too much time on 1 project, delaying me from taking on / working on others - and at the end of the week - i feel like i live in korea and working for pennies instead of dollars lol.

yeah i could make generic templates, but as an artist - i hate recycling my stuff. only when specifically requested, and if the recycled version is too close to original i usually ask if i can change it up some cause having 30 portfolio items where 15 look exactly the same is still only 16 portfolio items to me.

so yeah, thank you all for the inputs, and the attempts at swelling my ego ( it didn't really work, but it was nice to read what you guys thought

Rather than generic templates, consider creating "modular" sections that can be mixed and matched according to the overall theme/feel/look/functionality you are going for.
By keeping things modular, you can quickly customize things to fit your client's "vision" of their online presence with far less time spent on the re-invention of the proverbial wheel.

Then you can also package your offerings, especially for personal sites. Perhaps a 3-page layout, then a 4-page layout, and then a 3-page layout with a simple forum/album/CMS/store. These are just rough suggestions.
Each one assigned a particular price - and because you can customize the modular part of it to suit your client, they get a personalized look while retaining the "generic template" functionality behind it.

Pricing can be reasonably set at around $200 for a 3-page layout, especially at your level of expertise.

And also, if you do things modular, your clients can sorta get a feel of what their getting to begin with and they can say yes or no instead of you buidling something from scratch, taking days or weeks, and having them go "Eh...not quite what I was hoping for." Keep it simple for yourself. But also have the ability to mix and match ideas or put in new ideas if the client isn't completely happy with a mod.

I clicked on the 100-150, I'll admit it... but that's based off my own experience lol. I have a freewebs premium site, which sucks, but it's affordable... and since not a whole lot could be done to improve it, I would not pay the bigger monies.

Now my frugal little butt would definitely pay double, maybe even more for some of the stuff I've seen you come up with Vex, if I were moving into my own domain etc.

(I had my own domain once, and cancelled service when a whois search gave a person who was stalking me my complete name, phone number, address... ended up changing my number and getting a restraining order.I miss my own domain though)

anything modular is probably ugly. i want to be proud of my work and put it in my portfolio. I recently emptied out some of the uglier designs ( ones i didn't get to design myself basically ) 2 of them were modular phpnuke designs. A lot of my small websites are artist sites, and its just not a personal artist site unless i use some of their art, which kind of eliminates any pre-designed elements on my end. and its also that i dont mind taking a week to do, its just that im undercharging -too much- for doing it.

and charging based on pages is great for 10 years ago, but nowadays, you can make unlimited pages, with a simple easy click of a button. So even if your site is 2 pages or 20 pages, It doesn't affect me whatsoever. I'm not a content editor =)

Usually i would charge a base design, and installation fees for wordpress, phpbb, etc, any other script they wanted ($25) - unless they had fantastico or installatron, then i wouldn't charge since thats 3-4 clicks in the web browser.

Aside from that, MoonLily - i am a PARANOID person. I pay the extra $8/yr or so that www.godaddy.com provides privacy services - nothing is shown in your whois that is even remotely related to you. you can still get a domain (wink/nudge).

i love the idea of modular sites to keep the price down - allows you to say exactly what you get for exactly how much money - not to mention budget your time as well. for a custom site from you, yeah, 200-250 is still a steal - but the average home user won't/can't be able to afford more sadly.

aletianic.com (i think it's dot.com - could be net!) offers a similiar service that overlays the whois is with another company as the go-between. and if it's just a personal site you're looking at - i pay about $10 a month for something like 15gb of space and more bandwidth than i can possibly use - and since they're associated with aletia... attaching the domain name is a breeze.

I've always had a problem with pricing things, which is one of the reasons I refuse to do any tech support unless the person is a friend, family member, or someone I really want to know. Those people get free service.

What surprised me (and really disgusts me when I think about it) is that my old ISP when I moved to Texas was showing off their services when I took some kids in a camp for a tour. They were in the middle of putting together a website for a business in FrontPage. It was a bland background, fully centered, single column page. Paragraph, picture, paragraph, picture, paragraph, picture. Simple, ugly, $3,000. Three. Thousand. Dollars. I'm so glad they were put out of business by broadband.