How do you price your WordPress development services? How do you avoid pricing yourself out of business? We surveyed our working web developer members to get the scoop and help you overcome the common dilemma of pricing.
Should you charge by the hour or per project? How do you come up with a quote? Maybe you offered a client an estimate and didn’t hear back?
Whether you’re a freelancer or starting your own web development business, if clients have ever found you overpriced, you’ve probably heard the following when asking around for advice:
“There’s no such thing as a market rate. Only you can decide what you’re worth.”
Or, maybe you don’t know how to price your services and decide that “bartering” is a great way to start your business…
“When I started this (WordPress) business, I exchanged a website for a 6′ fence around my property. The value of the fence was $3,000, so that’s what I got in exchange for their website.” – Phil, WPMU DEV Member
Yes, it’s all true, but it doesn’t generally apply to absolute beginner or intermediate-level freelancers or web developers running their own business.
Of course, if you have a shiny portfolio, or if your calendar is booked out for months in advance (because you’re that good) then sure, you don’t have to think about the going rates or what other people are charging.
The bottom line is, no one wants to work for peanuts. There’s a lot to consider when constructing your pricing model.
Fortunately, we have access to a 50k+ member community of web developers and we have gathered the information presented in this article through surveys and discussions.
Rather than talking about specific pricing and what to charge (which we cover in other articles – see links at the end of this article), in this article, we’ll go deep into how to set up pricing for your services so you can apply these ideas and come up with a pricing model that works for your business.
And so in this post:
- We’ll show you a surefire way to price your projects so you’re never underpaid.
- If you aren’t sure what your hourly rate should be, we’ll look at feedback we got from our web developer members, as well as looking at crowdsourced data and the going rates on popular freelance marketplaces.
- We’ll also see some tools to help you validate your project estimate and ensure that it’s not way off the mark.
- And in the end, we’ll see how you can meet your annual monetary targets using some cool freelance rate calculators.
Note: This guide is not for you if you’ve reached a point in your career where you can charge what you want. This guide is for you if you’re a freelance web developer or starting your own web development business.
Continue reading, or jump ahead using these links:
Fixed
[…]
This article was written by N. Fakes and originally published on WPMU DEV Blog.