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If you're a website designer who is charging hourly for your website design
projects, you're amends and updates, then I hate to tell you this, but you are

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doing it wrong.

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You are leaving money on the table.

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You are damaging your client relationship, and you are most likely damaging
your confidence as well.

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly
Christie. I'm a website designer, a website designers mentor, and the host of

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this podcast. I'm here to help you if you are working in the web design space.

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So that could be a designer, a developer, SEO specialist, potentially even a
copywriter or branding specialist. If you work in an industry that mainly works

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with websites, then this podcast has been made for you. I'm here to help you
have a better business, to earn more money, to improve your skillset and to

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enjoy it all along the way.

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So, you ready? Let's get started. So today I'm talking about charging hourly
because this is something that still comes up time and time and time again. And

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I have my Sparks Group mentoring programme as well — we were on our group
mentoring call last week, and I spoke to the 10 designers and developers and SEO

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specialists in there and said, how much are we all charging as an hourly rate?

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And everybody was able to give an hourly rate. Everybody was saying, oh, this
is what it is.

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It kind of feels a little bit like a trick question because the real answer is
I don't charge hourly, and there is a reason for that. Hourly is often the time

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where people are exchanging their expertise for a set amount of money.

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And when you look at how much that expertise would cost, it's a little bit like
how long is a piece of string. Yes, there is an industry standard. In general,

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most website developers will be kind of hovering around the 50 pound mark. Some
will be at a hundred pounds mark, some will be at 75. There's no kind of set

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rate, and most web designers tend to set their hourly rate against another web
designer's rate.

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So they might be on a group mentoring call finding out what other people are
charging, or they might see it on their developer's websites, or they might ask

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a client what their previous designer or developer was charging. Sometimes
they'll undercut and think, oh well, maybe I'll just do this or that.

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A baseline — the only really successful businesses are the ones which don't
exchange time for money. The ones who say, this is the cost of a project, this

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is how much the project will cost you. And there are all different ways of doing
that. You can say, as a web designer, that I will only work on projects that

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take me three hours or more, or I will bundle all the web design changes and
then I'll only do them when it gets to a certain amount of hours work.

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Really how you choose to divvy up your projects and how you prioritise them is
up to you. Building project pricing is very different to hourly pricing because

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this is really building a lot more on expertise than it is if you were just to
say, yeah, I'll go and get those changes done.

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Another thing about when we charge hourly is that it can make it quite hard to
prioritise work, because if you are getting paid the same rate for whether you

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are building a website, whether you're making some amends on a website, whether
you are just adding in a mailing form or something like that, it's hard to

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decide which one you're gonna do at which time.

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And consequently, you're gonna have to be really disciplined to make sure that
you are servicing your clients as per the agreement that you've got with them.

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So when you book something as a project, it's much easier to say to them, right,
I've booked in the project and the start date for that project is going to be

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whatever date — you'll hear from me with an update at whatever date, whatever
your terms of service says as well.

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Project pricing should also allow for scope creep. I have done other episodes
on scope creep because it's such a big part of the industry. And you know, I get

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it that a lot of our clients aren't visual people, so they don't know what the
change is or the update or the website, whatever. They don't know what that's

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gonna look like until they actually see it.

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And then they see it and they think, oh, that's brilliant, or that's not so
brilliant. And can I just see it like this? Can we add this in? Oh, I've got a

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photo I think will really work with this. Or, oh, I see where you were going
with that — another website I saw had a video on their website.

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Can we add one in here? And the next thing you know, that three hour project
that you planned now has another hour's work involved, but you've already quoted

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the client three hours. Then when you go back and say, well yeah, we can do
that, but it's gonna cost another hour, another hour and a half.

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The client kind of feels cheated. They think, well, no, I'm just giving
feedback. This should be included in feedback. Look at bundling pricing for a

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project. You are not just looking in the same way with like a web design — if
you were doing a brand new design, you wouldn't say, well, that's gonna take me

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30 hours.

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I work at 50 an hour. Therefore, the price of this project is going to be 30
times 50. It doesn't look like that because we have to look at the expertise

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we're bringing to the table. We have to look at the tech setup, running the tech
updates, all the different things that go into it. The final testing — what

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happens if at the final round of testing we activate some plugins and there are
errors within the website?

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Yeah, there are so many reasons that we go to project pricing when it comes to
website builds. We need to look at that project pricing for all of the stuff

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that we do within our work. Booking things as projects can be a lot easier as
well, because once a client gets used to that kind of structure, they don't

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think, they've told me it's three hours — I think it's just a quick little job.

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I know I'm using this three hour analogy a lot, but so many clients think, oh,
I had a DIY website myself once, and therefore I think just putting an image and

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a container on a page is a quick job.

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Of course it's not. If you think about when we're working with images — we're
resizing them, we're changing them to WebP format, we're renaming them, we're

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putting alt text in there, we're positioning them, we're doing all the SEO work
as well. And that's all the hidden behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into your

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project pricing rather than your hourly pricing.

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As I was explaining earlier, it just helps clients feel more secure, settled,
and less argumentative in what they're getting if we're quoting per project.

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So the other thing that using project pricing helps us to do is it helps us to
work with white labellers and freelancers. And there are always times where web

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designers just get inundated with work.

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If you're not inundated with work, I strongly recommend that you go back and
listen to some of the previous episodes of this podcast, because it tells you

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how to build your brand, how to market yourself, how to get clients. I also have
a course at websitesmadesimple.co.uk — it's how to get clients for your web

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design business.

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And this will essentially give you a three month plan on how to show up, how to
market yourself. It's got some email templates, it's got everything you need to

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really turn it around. And when you have turned it around, you have the
opportunity of working with freelancers, white labellers, or even tech VAs,

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depending on what it is that you're doing.

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Having a project price allows you to choose who is going to work on that
project because you're not trading time for money. You're not thinking, oh, well

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I would charge 60 an hour, but a tech VA is 35 an hour, so really I should only
be charging the client 30 an hour — actually I need to put another five pounds

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on because I'm the one doing the invoicing.

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It just takes up headspace that you don't need to be allocating to. You just
charge per project, say to the white labeller or freelancer, this is what the

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project costs — would you like to work and do it? And that's how it's done.
Ultimately, you'll also always be cheaper than an agency. Agencies charge

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extortionate amounts for websites and website amendments — they take a very long
time to get round to them.

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And I know that I'm generalising. I know that there will be micro agencies who
are a lot more honest around these things or they don't have such high overheads

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or whatever else. But usually people will always favour where they have paid
more for this as well. So don't worry. Even if someone comes back and says, oh,

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that really is a lot of money.

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It wasn't what I was expecting to pay. So that's how much it costs. And yeah,
if you can't pay it, I do understand — and totally understand if you use someone

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else, because I know that it can feel really nerve-wracking to turn down any
form of money. But trust me, if they can't afford you, they're not your people.

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The ones who can't afford you are the ones who will be haggling every single
bit. You know, especially if you're charging hourly — and again, you're building

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your business. This is just headspace that you don't need to be taking up. So
really do bear that in mind. The nice thing with project pricing as well is it

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means that clients always really know where they're at with things, because they
know the project costs this much, even if they scope creep it a little bit, as

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long as they're not massively scope creeping.

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In which case I have got an episode which tells you how to deal with that —
which is basically bring it back to: I'm gonna need to requote for this project,

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or if we change the scope, then I need to quote on top of what you've already
paid as well. It really does settle people to know where they're at, knowing

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what the bill's gonna be.

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And I've just taken on a new client recently whose website was absolutely fine,
but she said the designer just kept coming back with, oh, and by the way, you're

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gonna need to pay for this. And I've decided that I'm going to add a plugin and
you are gonna have to pay for the plugin. And she said, I just felt —

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I never knew each month whether I was gonna have to pay more and more for my
website. So really being clear with costs — even if your costs are higher. And I

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do recommend that bundling into project pricing, you do quote slightly higher.
It just gives everyone that peace of mind — and ultimately when people are

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choosing their website designer, they're choosing peace of mind.

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So do bear that in mind. Project pricing as well will help you to get better
quality clients. Now, I've talked about this all the way through — you won't get

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people who are haggling. You get people who are confident, settled, and secure
in working with you. And when you have clients like that, it means that you can

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be confident, comfortable, and secure in your work as well.

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So if you feel like you're excluding some of those lower paying clients or
whatever else, it's because you're opening up the way for those better clients

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to come along to you as well.

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So that's it for today. I hope I have absolutely convinced you to charge per
project rather than per hour.

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You also heard me mention the Sparks Group mentoring programme that runs every
single Wednesday from one till two PM. It's a secure space for website

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designers, developers, and SEO specialists to come in and to have an hour of
group mentoring with me, to have a mastermind with the other people in the

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group, to talk about anything industry related.

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There is no subject off the table other than the one rule: we do not do shame.
Everybody has a different setup. Everybody's welcome at the table. And if you

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think that this form of mentoring would be right for you, go to Websites Made
Simple co dot uk and you'll see Sparks Group Mentoring there — go and check it

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out.

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In the meantime, if you have any feedback, any thoughts, anything you would
like to share with me about your own experience of pricing per project or

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pricing per hour, you can find me at hello at Websites Made Simple dot co dot
uk. Or go to the website, go to the podcast page — you'll see there's a form you

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can fill in and you can even leave me a voice note from there.

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Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.