How much to charge for my E-commerce SEO services and web design

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm starting a web design company doing standard web design, E-commerce web design, and E-commerce SEO. I've been doing the nuts and bolts of an E-commerce business with four online stores, one very successful, for nine years. Since that's my main experience, I'm sticking with helping others with the nuts and bolts of their E-commmerce SEO. I also do the web design, which I've been doing since 2001.

What should I charge per hour for my web design and E-commerce SEO services? I live in Boise, Idaho. I'm thinking $100 an hour for everything, is that too much for web design or too little for SEO? The SEO would be billed exact but my web design estimates are more generous.

Looking for honest opinions. I don't want to over or under charge.

Thanks

Bob

[EGOL]

Actually all of my sites are info sites and all of my sites are retail sites.  I'll explain below....

INFO SITES

My info site has thousands of content pages, but it also has a store that sells hundreds of items.  That's an info site with a small store.

All of the info pages display ads from adsense or another ad network.  Some of the info pages have a very closely-related product in the store and we have house ads on those pages to move interested visitors to the store.  The info pages usually outrank the store pages, but that's OK because they also outrank almost every competitor too.  If we don't make money from a sale we make money from the ads.  Its all good.    Most of the revenue comes from ads.

RETAIL SITES

My retail sites have lots of info.  Lots.  More than all of our competitors and the manufacturers combined.  They also have more info pages than retail pages.  That is how much content we are attacking with.  But, these sites produce more retail revenue than ad revenue.  So they are retail sites, but they really are content sites.

All of my sites are content sites, but a couple of them produce more retail revenue than ad revenue.  All revenue is good.  I don't worry about my competitors ads taking a sale.  I took a piece of their ad budget and their ads on my relevant pages usually pay pretty good.  And I am under the assumption that they are wild ass bidding and don't realize that they are losing money.  :-0

[BobGW]

EGOL,

Don't mean to stroke your ego, but you always give the best advice anywhere. You also have a similar background as me, though much more thorough.

Last Question: How do you make money on info sites? I'm assuming ads

[EGOL]

How do you find a good niche?

I don't "find" them.   I live them.   My info sites are about topics where I have formal education, decades of industry experience, a passion to learn more, and I write for them like a craftsman who does very careful work without regards to the cost and the time.

My retail sites sell products that I have used for a very long time.  I know a lot about them and about the types of people who use them.

How do you find the right suppliers for that niche.

Most of the things that I sell are only available from a small number of suppliers in the United States, maybe the world.  Some of the things that I sell are more difficult to obtain than they are to sell.

If you are a really small business and trying to sell the same stuff online that people can buy at Kmart then your chances of making money are very very slim.

[BobGW]

Thanks, this helped with the web design aspect.

[BobGW]

Incredible advice, thanks so much.

[BobGW]

EGOL,

I'm going to ask you questions that you don't have to answer if they are your secrets, but I would need to know to do more websites for myself. I have my way but it's not enough.

How do you find a good niche?

How do you find the right suppliers for that niche.

Thanks, any advice is appreciated and your advice is always golden.

Bob

[EGOL]

I used to do web design, SEO and content development for others.  At the same time I was working on a couple of my own websites in product and information niches that I know very well.   I found that I could make good money working on my own sites.

I also found that the projects that others brought to me were very often in niches where they didn't have the resources to become competitive or I didn't have the resources to mount their attacks.  As an example, a local office supply store wants a 10,000 product website.   Their expectation was to spend a few thousand dollars and be able to compete in a national market with product descriptions drawn from a data feed already in use by a huge number of other merchants.   My expectation was that this project was not going to be successful given their available resources and my inability to talk them into unique product content and something that would make the site a valuable destination for visitors in its own right.

I could have made lots of money from clients with predictably unsuccessful business models.  Instead, I told them, "I don't think this is going to work".

Most websites only make money for hosting companies and people who develop websites.  This isn't much different from other areas of business.  Most businesses of any kind don't survive their first three years.  Much of this is predictable but the business owner doesn't receive a prediction or doesn't want to believe it.

How does this relate to the amount of money that you should charge a client?   If you are able to make money from your own projects you can simply divide your income from those projects by the number of hours that you put into them.  That sets the basic rate that you must charge a customer to compete with your own work.   Be sure to factor in the amount of time that you are going to spend evaluating and declining to accept projects from clients that you know are not going to be successful.

I think that every person who starts a business of making websites for others should have some experience making websites for himself.  It's a good way to see how much your time is really worth and better helps you assess your ability of taking an idea from another person and turning into a business that can make money for everyone.   I've found that I can't do the later most of the time.  So, I happily work on my own websites.

.

[BlueprintMarketing]

What I have experienced is if you're using a particular framework like magento and you do the development as well you can charge quite a bit. Rightfully so it's a lot of work.

If you're doing straight up design and allowing a developer to about that design.

Break it down into parts and ask yourself what is your time worth.

The market will balance itself out automatically crowdsourcing is huge in web design currently. This method of creating websites has some pluses and negatives focus on what you can bring being a all-in-one source that is powerful.

99designs and designcrowd are very popular and I truly think they balance out pricing in the design the industry and are unfair to designers at the same time. However if you want to know what it will cost there not a terrible barometer.

I have  information below that may help you. Now the information contained below does not reflect my opinion of what SEO should cost nor do I believe they are putting in campaign style work. They're talking about on page.

• http://www.executionists.com/blog/much-website-cost-2015/
• http://www.executionists.com/blog/cost-to-build-websites-2014/
• http://webflute.com/how-much-does-a-magento-site-cost/
• http://sherodesigns.com/how-much-does-a-magento-website-cost-general-pricing-guidelines-and-what-to-look-for/
• http://executionists.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Client-Questionnaire-2014.pdf ( handy client questionnaire)

I hope that helps,

Tom

[ClaytonJ]

Patrick has nailed it.

I would also suggest a monthly retainer / signed contract 6 or 12 months and providing a monthly report.  We also offer an hours education - 1 on 1 every two weeks.  It is rarely taken up, but the customer loves the opportunity - used mainly when new marketing people join the team.  Gets them imbibed with the strategy you are implementing..

Good luck

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

A lot of this is going to come down to your expertise, how long you have been doing it, and what you feel you are truly capable of achieving for each client. Remember, each client and campaign will require a customized approach and research on your part.

Here are a couple of good places to help get an idea of how to price:
How to Charge for managing SEO Campaigns (Optimize Smart)
How Much Should You Spend on SEO Services? (SEW)

Also, remember that business owners have more access than ever to a wealth of resources online that can help them gauge your approach, and also what questions they should be asking. People are more educated than ever, so it's best you are honest about your capabilities up front and continue to do so through your campaigns.

There are a lot of great resources out there that can give you guidance and help you get started as well. You're in a unique position as well to start fresh and build on honesty; a lot of agencies don't have that. Remember, this all comes down to what your experience is, the client, their goals, what you think you can reasonably achieve for them, and how much your time is worth to you. Since none of us on this forum know those things about you, it's best left to your intuition, honestly.

Hope these resources help! Good luck!