Figure out the Actual Worth of Your Design!

admin on Jun 23rd 2010 with 7 comments

Newton’s law of motion says, “Every action has equal and opposite reaction.” Therefore, the growing demand for web presence, has inculcated the need for web designers. There is a lot of growing competition in this industry and whereby, demand exceeds the supply. To meet this growing demand, freelance web designers are the need of the hour.

Many professionals, and even amateur designers are coming up in this web designing industry with astounding talents and thereby, it becomes important for them to know how to calculate the actual worth of their designs so as to get a fair idea before you start rendering your services to anyone. There has always remained a concept called bargaining because of which you are forced to underestimate the exact value of your design.

This blog post is an attempt to make well aware the beginners as well as the newly turned freelancers (professional web designers) to calculate their design’s genuine value, whether to charge by per project or per hour, and the other essentials to be able to avoid yourself from falling into a pit.

We would recommend you to consider these simple, yet important steps before you place you pricing in front of your client—

1.Charging Per Hour:

Research work is one of the most important ingredient in initiating any process. Research onto the pay scales of the others in the same field sharing the same level of experience.

• Note that if u starting as a fresher, or with a handful of months’ experience, you really cannot choose on the face value of the worth of your design. Give them the opportunity of building the trust of your potential customers by keeping yourself restricted to the average design rates prevailing in the market.
• Don’t forget to divide the researched annual market value of your service with the working hours you tend to spend on the project.
• For all the beginners, there are some major disadvantages of choosing the option of charging on the per hour basis;

— If you run into unanticipated bugs while designing, chances are high that your clients question your credibility. You tend to be ready with an immediate next action plan if you ever fall into such situation. Always try and stick to your promises and refer to reliable sources to fix the problems.
— It is very important for you to keep track of the time you spend on the execution of actual work to be able to estimate the cost. 88 Miles, Focus Booster App, myHours are some of the free time-tracking applications that can help you with the same.

Be a smart worker and don’t fall into the pit of being underpaid. Be firm, and know exactly what you tend to offer, how you would execute the project and the accompanied solution. Be crystal clear in your work and commitments and assess your potential well.

2. Charging As Per the Project:

Charging as per the project is a more professional way to do so. A kind of a base package should be listed out, with the additional fees if necessary is more likely to impress your customer as it beforehand gives an idea to the client as well as you, of what would be the overall charge and worth of the project.

The client is crystal clear of what for he/she is paying for. It gives a fair idea and there are almost no chances of being unpaid or underpaid.
— If the client is clear and have a planned structure of his/her project and even you have thoroughly calculated the incurred cost of your design then, this kind of charging proves to be advantageous.
— Be specific about the number of revisions you make. Try and achieve perfection in minimum amount of revisions. And additional amount ought to be charged if your client requests for modification after the conversion into HTML/XHTML/CSS.

3. The Contract:

— Have a proper documentation ready before starting up any project.
— Sign a mutual agreement between both the parties, and avoid the situations under which the client may force upon you something or the other. It may be anything— from adding additional features to updates and maintenance.
— Be clear and concise in all your terms and conditions considering mutual agreement between both the parties.

4.Your Portfolio Is a Must:

Whenever you are about to make a deal, you gotta have something in your hand. The portfolio is your answer and just make sure it is exactly the replica of your work.

Here, we give you some simple steps to get your portfolio ready—

1. Redesign an existing site: Rejuvenating an existing boring corporate site can help you add a star start to your career.
2. Create new themes and templates fore various CMS: WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
3. Start from home: If you have a businessman father, start bringing his business online, and if he already has a site, redesign it. Showcase your talent in whatever way you can.
4. Try and bring perfection to your work: Make sure that you go through enough of mock sessions before taking up a real project.

Designing, as you all know, is a very creative field. It naturally goes with them, who are really passionate about it. Make sure you set optimum standards and rates according to your talent. Be clear about the current trends and the level of perfection and then set the optimum pricing so that you bait more and more potential customers.

Hope you liked the post. Social Bookmarking and Comments are welcome as ever.