Fair pay compensation for amateur web designer?

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Question:

I'm 17 and planning to design a website for a friend of my dad's who's willing to compensate me for my time and labor!. I'm pretty handy with XHTML, but I'm not an expert on markup languages and I'm not certified, but I'm a fast learner and pretty good at what it is I do!. I've "designed" several websites for friends already via studying templates to get an idea of how to format layouts and where everything "goes," then customizing them using my own graphics and photos taken and edited by me (I'm also an amateur photographer)!.

This guy seems kind of professional!. What is a good compensation to request for structuring a 5+ page website with personalized graphics, audio greeting, customized banner, an ecommerce store, a bunch of other stuff, and headshots of the guy and commercial photos of his business!? Thanks alot!Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

trust me on this, i've been in the design field for some time - and have experience with the basic coding languages in order to make websites work!. XHTML is not going to come in handy much for something like this!. doing a site this complicated is not going to be easy WHATSOEVER even if you are a fast learner, the ecommerce bit especially!. designing with templates is SOOO much different than designing from scratch!. this is not going to be something i think you can do without any kind of extensive training or knowledge without having to purchase outside help, such as a premade shopping carts and flash components/etc!.!.

however, if you still think its something you'd like to tackle!.!.!.with training and at least 2-3 years experience, a freelance back-end developer will charge anywhere from $70 - $90 an hour (of course experience can bump this rate up further) the front end designer will charge anywhere from $40 -70 an hour (and experience will bump this rate up too)!. However, with out having any kind of training or any experience past templates - and combined with the fact that this job will require you to do much more learning than i think you realize, i think it would be unfair to your client to charge him an hourly rate and you should charge him a base rate with a limited number of revisions!. He does want a hell of a lot of stuff though!. I'd say what he's asking for would go NO LESS that $3,000 - $5,000 for professionally trained people to do!. In all honesty, I wouldn't even take this project - it sounds like the biggest royal pain in the ***!. And don't take this personally, but from my experience it sounds like this guy will try to take advantage of you as much as he can!.!.!.because you're young and don't know the ropes of the design/developing business yet!.

I'd say for all that stuff, based on your experience and the time you will have to put in on your own to learn some of this stuff (which you should not charge him for, and which will put the deadline farther behind) my opinion is that you should charge him:
a base rate of no more than $700 - $1,000 for a 5-page HTML (NOT FLASH - that would be much more) website!. and that includes the graphics, the banner, and the e-commerce bit, and the built in audio greeting!. WITH 2 REVISIONS ONCE YOU GIVE HIM YOUR INITIAL WORKING SITE DESIGN!. If you do not limit the number of revisions, a client will keep changing things, keep changing things, etc!. and not pay you for them if you are working on base price - and if you do not specify up front!. I also suggest that if he wants more than 5 pages in the site, charge him $75-$100 each additional page!. make sure you know everything he needs up front!. get half of the payment up front, and half upon completion!. write up a contract so that if he backs out of the deal, you get at least half of the remaining amount so you get paid for your time!.

I'd also play with the ecommerce thing a bit before you start, because I sincerely believe that you will not be able to do this right off the bat and will need to get payment from him to buy a premade shopping cart!.

Charge him separate for the photos at an hourly rate!. for your experience I'd suggest between $9-12 an hour!. and that includes the time you spend retouching them!.

I'd also suggest getting the book "pricing and ethical guidelines" by the graphic artists guild!.Www@QuestionHome@Com