There’s a great article out today from Chris Pearson at Pearsonified about the How Much Should a Design Cost which has also made the front page of Digg.

I must admit, I’m not a full-time designer, nor am I a master of CSS and the intricacies of XHTML/cross-browswer compliant coding. I do a bit of occassional design work in my spare time and I know my way around enough to code sites by hand and modify Wordpress themes as necessary (like on this site!). The key thing is that I also run into the same problems as I primarily deal with small and medium sized businesses who see a website as more of “something that I have to do since everyone has one” as oppossed to a key ingredient in their business plan.

After doing a few projects (10-20 page sites) for a fixed fee of $200 - $350 including all revisions and technical hand-holding on the server setup side, I’ve finally moved to bill off hours on my next project. After calculating the amount of time it took, I realized that I was making the equivalent of a burger-flipper while delivering work that actually didn’t look half bad (according to me).

So here’s how a typical project broke down for me:

Initial Project Scope (Call & E-Mail Exchange) - 1 hour
Get Creative Brief completed by Client - 1.5 hours
Initial Mockup (Conceptualizing) - 4-10 hours of Photoshop Comp Work (They also normally have NO logo or a crappy logo that will need to be redesigned and I throw this into the equation)
1st Round of Reviews - 1.5 hours
Revise Mockup - 2-4 hours of Photoshop Comp Work
Final Round of Review - 1 hour
Image Slicing/Preparation - 1.5 hours
Setup Test Server on Client’s Web Host - .5 hours (this becomes 1-2 hours if they have no idea of who/what their host is and I have to go emailing their support team to get this info)
Site Structure Build - PHP files/CSS Stylesheet - 4-8 hours
Test Site - 1.5 hours
Tweak Site to get the Final Layout perfect - 1 hour
Present Site to Client - .5 hour
Client gives ANOTHER round of feedback (this always happens, no?) - 2 hours
Documentation on how Site works, Server details, etc. - .5 hour

Time Spent on Entire Process - Between 24-34 hours total
What I used to charge - Avg. $300/site
Equivalent Hourly Rate - Between $8.80 - $12.50/hour

My new hourly rate for existing clients - Approximately $25-$35.

I would love to hear from other designers if you think my new rates are fair.