How much should i charge for my design services?
Question by Who is Danger Woman?: How much should i charge for my design services?
I’m a technical writing student, and as a project i did a brochure for a restaraunt in my community. I did it for free, because i the guy who owns it is pretty chill, i was getting credit for it, and it was also my first. Well now word has gotten out around town, and i have a couple projects line up for me. The thing is, most are beginning businesses, so i’m not sure what is a fair price for my services. I don’t just throw a bunch of pictures and text together and call it an ad. I design my own templates, do some photo editting, research the area, because a lot of these businesses are in the historic area. All in all i would say i could spend a full days work dedicated to the project.
Best answer:
Answer by Radical Marketing Solutions
I think the question you need to ask first is how much do you want to make?
Lets say you want to make $ 10K a month. You would need 10 clients paying you $ 1000 per job.
So if you want to make $ 10K a month and work 40 hours a week, you need to charge $ 250 per hour.
Next just figure out how long it will take you to do the project and then you have your answer!
Hope this helps!
Bill
Add your own answer in the comments!
Pricing is contingent upon your overhead. you have to consider your rent, time, equipment, etc. If you live at home, then you can charge less.
For current salaries for designers, you want to check out the AIGA (professional association for designers) website.
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/salary-survey
The two answers below are correct. What you also want to consider is who your clients are. Are they non profit, young, large companies, etc.
I do the same kind of stuff, but more with logo design and company branding, so I can’t tell you my rates!
I’ll give you a hint; start researching online at what other companies are charging for the same services, and average it out. Since you’re just starting, you’ll need to keep your rates somewhat low, until you start to build a decent name and reputation for yourself/or your business.
My advice: don’t take on projects in the design field unless you really know what you’re doing. I had a friend that started a company a few years ago, he had someone design his logo, and related colateral……and paid an amature to do it to save money, and then he was wondering why he couldn’t use his logo made in photoshop for other applications. I had to completely rework the whole thing for him, and do it “out of the goodness of my heart,” while he tried to track down the first guy who designed it and threaten him to get his money back. yikes.
As with anything, you want to set your prices to match of be within a few bucks of your competition.
You never want to be extremely lower than everyone else. …you save that for “specials”
About the time you set your regular pricing way low…everyone else will follow…and now all you’ve done is cut yourself out of profit that the market was willing to give you.
If people are willing to pay $ 10 for something…don’t sell it for $ 7
Being priced a little higher typically brings you a higher end client…but they have a little better sense of what good quality is as well. So there is an advantage to being higher priced.