This question comes across every client’s and web designer’s mind at some point. It’s a bit like asking “How much does a car cost?” and of course the answer is “it varies, “what are your requirements?” and “how much are you looking to spend”. It can be a tricky question to be asked, and what Folyo has done is exactly the wrong way to go about answering it.

Why? Surveying various designers under the pretense of addressing the question “How much does a website cost?”, or rather “How much do you charge for a website”, is price fixing.

Forgetting that the questions only addressed the mockup — “All prices are for design only, i.e. they don’t include any sort of coding (no HTML, no CSS, no Javascript, no PHP, etc.)” — and that a dynamic medium cannot be designed for with a static, non-interactive image: these figures are still pretty damn useless because every client is different and therefore the amount of work required will vary.

Well How Much Should I Charge Then?

1. Work out how many hours you want to work a week.
2. Work out how much money you want to make per week (include overheads in this figure).
3. Divide the amount of money you want to make over the hours you want to work.

Now you’ve got an hourly rate that allows you to give a client an accurate estimate. You might want to do a similar calculation with only your overheads in step 2, which will give you your absolute minimum rate.