[TriLUG] Webmaster pricing scheme

[Jon Carnes]

I generally charge a setup fee which covers the "do over" of the site
(adding a virtual domain to the setup).  After that, you need to look at
a few factors:
 - The on-going monthly cost of bandwidth
     $100 to $200 if he's hosting from home via cable
     $400 to $500 if he's in a colocation serviced by multiple carriers 
 -  I generally plan on upgrading hardware every 2 years
    which has an approximate cost of ~$2k or $85/month
 - How many customers he thinks he will average
 - What secondary service fees he can get from customers for additional
   services he provides - such as web and database design.

With ongoing monthly charges for you of $500/month and an average of 10
customers, you will have to charge $50/month just to break even.  Of
course if someone else is already footing the bill for the server and
services, then anything you charge over that is pure (sweet) profit!

As a comparison, I've seen simple web-hosting (mainly static pages) for
$10-$25/month. Those sites are generally slow to load but you can park a
domain there and get email as well.

For folks hosting Mailing lists (no spam please!), I've seen pricing
around $120-$150/month. These sites generally host Linux/Unix based
mailing list software that is maintained via web interfaces.  Some Corps
like to keep this function off their corporate net - though the
bandwidth required is not really that much. 

Good Luck to your friend in their new venture,

Jon Carnes

On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 08:23, Janyne Kizer wrote:
> A colleague of mine is starting a webmaster business.  He picked up some 
> work as a referral and he doesn't know what a fair rate would be for 
> what is basically a do over of the current site and then maintenance 
> afterward.  If anyone could provide him with some advice, I'd truly 
> appreciate it.  Private responses would be fine.
> -- 
> 
> Janyne Kizer
>