Are people seriously getting $750 for a 5 page wordpress site?

KHer0 said:

I think I was clear. I don't care how much you charge for a webdesign. Everyone knows how much his work worth..
Charge as much as you want but don't steal other themes and resell them then you tell me about economy

Exactly like selling some factory made product and sell it as yours then talking to me about Milking as much as you can. If this happens in the real world you would go to the jail.

Again: It's Okay to do some service and charge it as much as you want as long as the other part is satisfied. This is what Marketing is all about.

But selling someone's else service ( Themeforest themes ) for 1000$ and talking about Marketing.

Oh, and I'm totally okay with your brother and how he earns. He provides people with a service and hosting and people pay him and they are okay with that. Actually it would be pretty weird if hosting costs him 1$ and he asks people 1$ for it. We would call him nuts ! It's the natural thing what he did.

But selling other people work ( consider it game, book, theme ) for higher price ?! Put yourself in the place of the owner.

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I'm actually enjoying this discussion since my brother has a couple of friends who think the same way as you So allow me to refute your reply.
First off, it's not stealing when you buy a theme and resell it. I agree that you should at least buy the theme when you're going to charge other people for it. That's just basic respect
Second, what about white label themes? They are growing really fast on themeforest and other marketplaces.. I honestly think most designers know that a part of their sales are from resellers
Third, if a webdesigner doesn't want his work to be shared, he should not sell it on a marketplace. he should keep his idea and use it when a client/opportunity presents itself.

It's just being a middle man. They will always be there because they know and can do certain things others can't. Again, this is just basic economy man. Everyone profits from this. Some parties more than others but than again, one party has to go through a lot more trouble for finding clients.

Bill gates bought DOS for 50k. Then turned around and sold it for millions.

He ended up parlaying that into a multi-billion biz.

Now...is he unethical?

I'm not really sure how to feel about this, so I thought I'd do a bit of research and found a pretty relevant article on enotes

Part of the second paragraph says:

An organization achieves an advantage when it does a better job than its competitors at satisfying the product and service requirements of its target markets. Those organizations that develop a competitive advantage are able to satisfy the needs of both customers and the organization.

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Suggests that as long as you're fulfilling the needs of your customers and that you're doing a better job than your competitors, you can charge as much as the client is willing to pay.

One of the principles of economics is that people will do what in their best interests, with that in mind the question which this raises, is the burden on the customer to understand their options and get more than one quote, or is it on us to tell then what's what?

But the article goes on to suggest that you could turn to into an advantage:

when an organization behaves ethically, customers develop more positive attitudes about the firm, its products, and its services.

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It also goes on to say that the opposite is true that unethical behaviour could lead to unhappy customers.

another interesting point:

Deceptive pricing practices cause customers to believe that the price they pay for some unit of value in a product or service is lower than it really is. The deception might take the form of making false price comparisons, providing misleading suggested selling prices, omitting important conditions of the sale, or making very low price offers available only when other items are purchased as well.

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I'm also wondering if website design (even with wordpress) is as easy as we make it sound to a layman. Are people just paying ~$700 for a website? Not really when you think about it, you're likely going to be sorting out hosting and domains for them too. And even after I imagine a layman would know where to begin with cpannel (god forbid if they when with hosting and had to install it through FTP and set up databases themselves).

If you can upsell a 5-page Wordpress site then go for it. As long as the customer knows what they are getting and are happy with the service, there's no problem. Things only have value if people want them and I'm sure the apples you buy at the market cost 0.01p to actually grow, then we pay more to buy them. You bring a desirable service to the right market and you're onto a winner.

Robbie1 said:

Ha, I'm a student who can easily live off $30/ week, I suppose that's why these prices are striking me as odd. Which reseller service is your brother using? is he happy with them?

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Dude, just because you can live off $30/week doesn't mean you should charge shit. Are you working just to survive?

I charge $1k-$1500 for a 5 page WordPress site or free if they get a monthly SEO package. The reason being is hate doing web design. However, a lot of others charge around the same price as me around here (Los Angeles). I do offer any CSS or theme customization they want so its not like they are stuck with the theme the way it comes.

BTW, its all in the revisions. Charging $1k for a 5 page site could end you up with less than $10/hour if they customer wants enough revisions. Thats why I let them pick the theme and offer only 2 revisions.

mego818 said:

Dude, just because you can live off $30/week doesn't mean you should charge shit. Are you working just to survive?

I charge $1k-$1500 for a 5 page WordPress site or free if they get a monthly SEO package. The reason being is hate doing web design. However, a lot of others charge around the same price as me around here (Los Angeles). I do offer any CSS or theme customization they want so its not like they are stuck with the theme the way it comes.

BTW, its all in the revisions. Charging $1k for a 5 page site could end you up with less than $10/hour if they customer wants enough revisions. Thats why I let them pick the theme and offer only 2 revisions.

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thanks for for the reply. Couple of. Questions:

are you approaching the clients, or are they coming to you? I figure you'd have more leverage if they are approaching you right?

The 'plan' would be to charge them an upfront fee + monthly and yearly hosting/ domain and other services + a one off fee each time they want a revision or a monthly subscription which will offer some/ unlimited revisions and software updates.

To what extent are you customising themes?

KHer0 said:

I didn't quote anyone because my reply are to those who say Milk it as Much as you can.

I guess this is not called marketing, this is called Cheating !!

Let's separate Experience from Cheating !

I can create 3 pages website created for Google.. So, I can't actually depend on Wordpress and I will have to use my own code. In this case I'm adding a huge value to customer and I will charge money for this even if it didn't take that much time.

But selling 50$ Wordpress them for 1000 EU abusing the ignorance of people .. What about something called self-respect ! If this is not stealing the what is it ?!

I believe you get money for the value you add to the customer.. If you aren't then you are just stealing and the only reason you are not stealing in real life because there is COP and Law..

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Sorry to bust your bubble, but there's something called working smart. If I know that my client would be happy if I "made" him a good looking website used from a template that I bought, which would look way better than what I would be able to accomplish myself, and I charge them x20 more than what it cost me; then it's a win-win situation.

It's like saying you can't sell pizza in your shop unless you own a cow, and learn how to produce cheese from its milk. And of course, you can't source the cheese from a manufacturer unless you put the cheese trademark on your pizza box, otherwise that would be unethical.

The OP thinks we are ripping off our customers because HE doesn't think a website is worth that much.

We are defending ourselves as if we have done something wrong.

OP, What do you do to build a website? Personally, I don't design websites at all. If someone wants a custom design, I hire someone to do the design, and I do the build.. I generally work off of themes and templates, and I buy developer licenses for all of these and scripts and plugins for the site.

i take a list of the keywords that might apply and spend a couple days looking at traffic and competition. I send this to the customer for their input. After choosing the keywords to target, I outline the pages of the site, and outline the contents of each page. I mock up the website for design approval with a template or theme and out it in place with dummy text. Then I invite the prospective owner to give me input as to what they want it to look like, so i can tweak it and make it theirs.

We discuss the purpose of the various pages, what keywords they will target and how that meshes with the owners marketing plans.

For the home page content, I look at competitors and see what points they bring out, assembling the specific points I want to make. Since this content is for a small business, I want it to be the best I can do, and that means 700 words or more of quality content. Ether I write it myself, spending a day or two on each page, or pay a real writer (or copywriter) to write it for me ($50 to $75 per page of content). Ditto for the rest of the pages.

Now I start to find graphics I can use. I sort the stuff I have collected that I have the rights for, then buy what else I need. Might tale a day.

As I build the site, I develop page titles, descriptions, and headings to take care of the on page optimization, Figure a half day added to nail all of this down.

In addition, I have to optimize the image sizes, create alt text, image file names, and titles for each image. If video is involved it has to be set up and brought in.The navigation also has to be put in place in such a way that it aids user experience, which often means custom menus.

Then I start cross browser checking for the 3 main Browsers, and deal with any issues that occur there.

After all this , page by page I check spelling and grammar, and make small changes to tweak out , fixing keyword density, headings, adding emphasis where it can be done, looking for the little finishes that make a good website.

I then put the site online, and go over everything again, just to make sure it is all right.

For this I charge $100 a page at least. I do not think I am cheating anyone, in fact I think they are getting a lot of bang for their buck.

Now you come along and say I am cheating my customers because all you do is throw up a WordPress shell for someone and consider our services to be the same.

They aren't.

You can buy a pocket knife at Walmart for $5.00, or you can have Charly Bennica build you one for $6500. They are NOT the same knife, one is a piece of art.

And we haven't even talked about designing anything.

We made an ecommerce website at work with 1200 products an multiple variations of each product. It would have cost the boss about $4000 but there was allot of work in it. 10g for an estate site is ridiculous.

I'll typically do a site in the 1500-2500 range. I have done the $500 sites for friends and such, But by the end of all the tweaks and changes (and we do a fair amount of customization even with an out of the box theme) its just not worth the time for $500, have to pay employees, cover overheads like rent etc. I have enough demand that I can turn down the guy with only $500 budget in favor of the guy with $2k budget for a site I don't think my business could survive just doing $500 sites. Development work is kind of annoying anyway, I prefer my link building clients.

Robbie1 said:

thanks for for the reply. Couple of. Questions:

are you approaching the clients, or are they coming to you? I figure you'd have more leverage if they are approaching you right?

The 'plan' would be to charge them an upfront fee + monthly and yearly hosting/ domain and other services + a one off fee each time they want a revision or a monthly subscription which will offer some/ unlimited revisions and software updates.

To what extent are you customising themes?

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I will never approach someone for web design unless I am fairly sure they will get SEO. These clients I am speaking of have been referred to me from my SEO clients or sometimes referred by friends. So yes, they kind of come to me.

Your plan is good, except for the unlimited revisions for a flat monthly fee thing. You are basically offering unlimited labor for a flat fee. You can see how this can so wrong so fast.

As far as the customization, I have a few experts I routinely outsource to on Odesk for about $30-$100 depending on complexity. I dont know CSS myself.

OnQ_Media said:

Development work is kind of annoying anyway, I prefer my link building clients.

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Yes, EXACTLY....somehow they never ask for revisions. hahah

Techxan said:

The OP thinks we are ripping off our customers because HE doesn't think a website is worth that much.

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Now you come along and say I am cheating my customers because all you do is throw up a WordPress shell for someone and consider our services to be the same.

They aren't.

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I've not accused you of anything

Did I accuse anyone of ripping of their customer's in any of my posts in this thread? No, you've completely misunderstood why I started this thread. It wasn't to find out whether or not people are ripping of their clients, it was to find out how much a customer is likely willing to pay...


OP, What do you do to build a website? Personally, I don't design websites at all. If someone wants a custom design, I hire someone to do the design, and I do the build.. I generally work off of themes and templates, and I buy developer licenses for all of these and scripts and plugins for the site.

i take a list of the keywords that might apply and spend a couple days looking at traffic and competition. I send this to the customer for their input. After choosing the keywords to target, I outline the pages of the site, and outline the contents of each page. I mock up the website for design approval with a template or theme and out it in place with dummy text. Then I invite the prospective owner to give me input as to what they want it to look like, so i can tweak it and make it theirs.

We discuss the purpose of the various pages, what keywords they will target and how that meshes with the owners marketing plans.

For the home page content, I look at competitors and see what points they bring out, assembling the specific points I want to make. Since this content is for a small business, I want it to be the best I can do, and that means 700 words or more of quality content. Ether I write it myself, spending a day or two on each page, or pay a real writer (or copywriter) to write it for me ($50 to $75 per page of content). Ditto for the rest of the pages.

Now I start to find graphics I can use. I sort the stuff I have collected that I have the rights for, then buy what else I need. Might tale a day.

As I build the site, I develop page titles, descriptions, and headings to take care of the on page optimization, Figure a half day added to nail all of this down.

In addition, I have to optimize the image sizes, create alt text, image file names, and titles for each image. If video is involved it has to be set up and brought in.The navigation also has to be put in place in such a way that it aids user experience, which often means custom menus.

Then I start cross browser checking for the 3 main Browsers, and deal with any issues that occur there.

After all this , page by page I check spelling and grammar, and make small changes to tweak out , fixing keyword density, headings, adding emphasis where it can be done, looking for the little finishes that make a good website.

I then put the site online, and go over everything again, just to make sure it is all right.

For this I charge $100 a page at least. I do not think I am cheating anyone, in fact I think they are getting a lot of bang for their buck.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a pretty full list of services, through I'd question the profitability considering that if you need to pay for a custom design and then pay content writers at least $50 per page of content. How much of that $100 / page are you seeing as profit.

Well that's power of marketing i guess.Cause setting up a simple site is not worth more then 200$ ...

Yeah, that is about right the quoted prices in that have been stated in this thread are about on par. It gets even worse if you are looking for a Drupal based site. I know alot of web firms that focus in drupal that start their websites at 10k minimum bids..... and they make some really custom sites, but a lot of them are not that "custom" if you get what I mean.