I’m fairly new to freecodecamp.org, but I’ve been actively using FCC, and other, platforms/services to learn Web Development.
I managed to talk my way into a freelance job that entails updating an existing small business’ website. It’s a fairly straight forward assignment because the current site is a simple Wordpress theme with about 4 pages and a contact form. However, I’ll be moving it from WP and to host it elsewhere.
I’m looking into all the little details (ie. contract agreements, invoices etc.) but I’m not exactly sure how, or what, to charge for my services. Since I am new to the Web Development field I feel like it should be a reasonable low rate, but I don’t want to sell myself too short.
Any insights, or advice, on the topic would be appreciated!
Assuming your employer/client lives on the same country as you, you should take a look at how the market values your work; check what others charge for what you will be doing and try to estimate the value based on what you expect to earn weekly/monthly/yearly. Maybe you could come up with something like:
// USD currency
minimum wage per hour: $15 // I think this is around $11 for USA?
// Time spent studying and how much experience you have:
aggregated value: $10
Hourly wage total: $25
Time spent on project: 40 hours (this is something only you can determine based on how fast you're)
Total: $1000
In my case, it was my brother-in-law, and so it was just a handshake deal.
In normal circumstances, a quick-and-dirty contract with at least half up-front and an hourly rate for any additions beyond the agreed-upon scope would be a very good idea. Maybe someone has one or you can find one online?
I really haven’t dealt with this, sorry. I think the main thing is to define what your fee entails and maybe list the “other” things that you will be charging for if the client asks for more stuff in a section clearly marked as being additional and thus requiring more $.
I just wanted to circle back and thank all of you for the great advice! I was a bit unsure, as this was my first web dev job, but everything went pretty great.
I spent about 20 hours on the project and charged $500 + additional costs.
Found a great template for contracts with some google searching
Now I’m onto setting up the business side of things, and hopefully taking on more jobs.
Also curious to just hear you give a very brief summary of how you ported it over? If you have time of course.
Reason i’m curious is I’m planning on doing the EXACT (well almost) same thing using my dad’s website as a guinea pig, to get my feet wet. He has a wordpress site that he blogs on, and I want to create a really basic landing page modern looking site, with links to his blog posts.
Did you use a pre-made bootstrap theme, or did you do it from scratch? And what backend/deployment choices did you go with? If you don’t have time to answer this I understand lol, but it would be cool to hear from you, or others if they have ideas.
It really depends on where you’re from, but there are a lot of free resources out there.
I did a quick google search of blank contract template and found some decent templates, but I ended up going with Law Depot. In my opnion, they have a simple and straight forward platform for sending legal documents. They can also be tailored to where you are doing business.
I would suggest a bit of searching and reading reviews before landing on a choice.
I started off by taking a day to review the clients current setup. They had previously paid for someone to create their site but the content was quite outdated. It took a day to figure out because it was in PHP, and I only have a basic understanding of that language haha.
I built it from scratch, using bootstrap, since it was my first gig. I really wanted to get an idea of how much work it would be, so I know for the future. In hindsight I should’ve just used a template because it’s less headache for the same result lol.
It was simple enough to look at the current site and find the equivalent bootstrap components. There was a lot of google searches for certain features, scrolling and animations.
The deployment was a simple FTP(FileZilla) to the host file manager.
I wish I had more insights but It was a pretty simple first job haha. I’ll try and think of something else to share from my experience.
Thanks for the reply! I’ve been working with a premade Bootstrap template, and it gets a little messy when I’m trying to edit it. I’m still pretty novice, so there’s a lot going on and it’s hard for me sometimes to figure out what everything is doing. So maybe starting from scratch wouldn’t be a bad direction for me to take.
Using premade Bootstrap templates can defintely be tricky in the beginning. It’s a lot of trial and error when you’re changing them.
I’d say keep practicing, reading docs, and watching youtube tutorials. I usually try to focus on the different components of a template I’m using and try to recreate them.
Another thing that worked for me was trying to change different templates into portfolios for myself.
I have not used Bootstrap, but I was doing a similar thing yesterday using WordPress. I’m comfortable with WordPress and I like how easy it is for the client to add posts or change pictures (assuming they’re tech-savvy enough). Also, with WordPress, there are plenty of nice-looking templates (themes) available, that can be changed with a single click.
It is nice to have the experience of hand-coding or semi-hand-coding some sites, of course.
Congrats on your first gig! Not sure if this is too late… So even if that agreement was friendly, I would still recommend getting it on a contract to protect you, and also have a scope of work. As far as pricing, I always recommend thinking in terms of value; what is it that you’re bringing to the table that they can’t do themselves and what problem is it solving? If you check the current market for prices, especially for new devs, all that is saying to the prospect is that your value is congruent with the rest of the newbies. Thus (for your next gigs) they could just be price shopping. And generally, those that price shop are the low paying, pain in the rear end clients. For invoicing, I did this:
50% upfront to secure a spot on the workbench and production
40% after the first revision session (they’re impressed by your work then)
10% right before deployment
This way, it protects you as the developer for when they ghost but you’ll still get paid.
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