Charging for site maintenace

[Nova]

If you had a deal with a local business and built them a basic wordpress site.

A) Roughly what would you charge for this?

and

B) if they wanted you to oversee it and maintain it with doing little or no changes or very minimal additions now and again, what would you charge them for doing so? say a monthly contract fee

I realise there are many different variables but just looking for ideas.

 

[crabfoot]

Charge your time at £16 per hour, expenses at cost, then add 33% for income tax and another 20% for VAT. You won't be far off from giving them a bargain.

 

[Edwin]

Charge your time at £16 per hour, expenses at cost, then add 33% for income tax and another 20% for VAT. You won't be far off from giving them a bargain.

That sounds very low. For somebody billing by the hour for actual hours worked, 40 hours a week x 48 weeks = 1,920 hours/year. Then multiply that by £16/hour and it's equivalent to a maximum gross salary of £30,720 a year.

Given that you actually will never be working anywhere near 40 billable, useful hours a week, every week, you can start to see the problem...

On the other hand, if you have a full-time job that pays the bills, and this is a "bit on the side" then the math might be ok. Still sounds like you'd be underselling a bit, though.

 

[Blossom]

I wouldn't charge site maintenance by the hour, much more profitable to have a fixed monthly fee. Be very specific about what's included (back ups (inc. age/size), upgrades etc.) and what extra work will be chargeable by the hour (many people don't know the difference between 'site maintenance' and actual design/dev/content work). If you can automate most of it you'll make it very profitable.

 

[monaghan]

A one off build fee and a fixed monthly maintenance fee is probably the way to go, include a specific number of updates / activities within this figure. Use the average effort involved with these updates to work out your rate. Allow for core & module updates and testing time. As Edwin suggests, don't undervalue your time (unless you specifically inform the client that this is a special deal - I have a commercial rate and a charity rate and clearly state this when negotiating work)

 

[crabfoot]

That sounds very low. For somebody billing by the hour for actual hours worked, 40 hours a week x 48 weeks = 1,920 hours/year. Then multiply that by £16/hour and it's equivalent to a maximum gross salary of £30,720 a year.

Given that you actually will never be working anywhere near 40 billable, useful hours a week, every week, you can start to see the problem...

On the other hand, if you have a full-time job that pays the bills, and this is a "bit on the side" then the math might be ok. Still sounds like you'd be underselling a bit, though.

I've got to admit I posted to provoke a response, because nobody had answered - but you didn't get the hang of my statement, Edwin.

My way of looking at it is NET, not GROSS.

£16 ph * 1.33 gives about £22 ph, then multiply by 1.2 and you get about £25.5 ph inc.VAT . The gross figure is about £49k pa, you've worked out the rough net figure.

 

[Nova]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I have a full time job but have noticed a few small local companies that don't have a website. I am considering knocking on a few doors and enquiring. Even if I get 5-10 takers its a bit of extra income and at least I don't need to worry about getting slapped by G and losing all my extra income.

 

[Retired_Member38]

I wouldn't charge site maintenance by the hour, much more profitable to have a fixed monthly fee. Be very specific about what's included (back ups (inc. age/size), upgrades etc.) and what extra work will be chargeable by the hour (many people don't know the difference between 'site maintenance' and actual design/dev/content work). If you can automate most of it you'll make it very profitable.

Much more profitable for you yes, but its not a good deal for the customer.

He's aiming at people who don't already have a website - if they don't have a website at this point in time then they probably don't need one at all. Anything they do have is just likely to be a basic site to allow people to find contact info and so on on Google.

Its not going to need maintenance - its unrealistic to charge people a monthly fee if all you're doing is WP security updates every so often surely. Anything that would need doing on the site (content changing, price updates, etc) isn't going to fall under maintenance.

£25 an hour seems expensive to me, for doing tasks that an average teenager could cope with. £25 to someone to work on a 'real' site is no big deal - I think anyone is going to struggle to charge £25 an hour to someone who doesn't even have a website today...

 

[Nova]

That's kind of my thinking monkey. I don't think the small local business without a site will want an all singing dancing site but perhaps a 4-5 page site. Like main webpage, about us, one or two other pages, contact us, how to find us etc and I could to do Wordpress updates, if they allow comments to monitor them and post the non spammy ones any wordpress or plugin security updates each month plus I would host the site on my account for £25 a month.

In the future if they wanted content added changed or new pages built I would just charge by the hour or name a small fee depending on their requirements.

Or I could just whip up a site for £100ish and they would need to get their own hosting account and manage it. Some of the owners or managers might be happy just to pay me £20-£25 a month to keep it ticking over.
If I get 5-10 sites I wont be rolling in it but it would pay for phone bills, tv bills etc each month.

 

[Retired_Member38]

I still think £25 a month for hosting/maintaining it is too much for this target market. If people only have a static site but done in WP for ease of use then there would be no reason to have comments activated at all. And Krystal.co.uk will host a site for £30 a year. They would be overpaying by hundreds of pounds if they gave you £25/month.

If you want to target them I'd be looking to charge low, no maintenance, host them on your own server but do it cheaply. I'm sure you can find ones that will let you have unlimited domains but Krystal charge £500/yr for 50 sites. Charge them all £100 a site and aim to spend no more than a day building it. Then charge them £30/year for hosting it.

Its not going to make you rich... but then selling basic sites to people who never needed them in the first place is never going to be anything other than a pocket money gig

 

[Nova]

I hear what your saying but I still don't think £20-£25 a month is a lot to have someone on retainer and making sure the sites ticking over. Companies spend a lot on staff wages and I don't think £20-£25 will break the bank.

To be fair I think:
A) they either don't want a site
B) they don't have much technical knowledge. I mean building a Wordpress site might be a doodle for me and you but might seem like rocket science to someone else.
C) they can't be arsed looking into the best deal, learning about or actually spending time on it.

My first potential target is a local golf driving range. I'll see how it goes if I decide to speak to the owner.

 

[Retired_Member38]

If C) and overcharging people because you suspect they can't be bothered looking into the fact you're offering them a crap deal is your business plan, then I wouldn't expect to get very far with this.

on point B) I think you need to separate out building a site from maintaining it. There is no real maintenance needed. It might be easy enough to convince people to pay a one off fee for a site they didn't want or need... I think it will be harder to get them to continue to pay every month for it.

Here is the list of Wordpress updates - http://wordpress.org/news/category/releases/

There has only been 3 releases in 2013. And only 5 or so in 2012 if you ignore the Beta releases etc. Updating WP is a 2 minute job and done from within the admin login... I think its completely unrealistic to expect people to pay £300 a year for you to handle this for them. Again, £300 a year is nothing to a real business - but its a lot to someone to spend on a website when they have survived up till now without one. And the site obviously won't be bringing in any direct revenue itself.

I just don't fancy your chances of success with this business model as a whole. You would be far better targeting people who actually wanted/needed websites, and charge them accordingly. Not trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel with £100 websites and crappy customers who don't know a thing about what you're offering.

 

[Nova]

C) I think the prices I've quoted are quite reasonable. If you build your own site and buy hosting thats going to cost you £6-£10 a month anyway. Its not about over charging or under charging its about offering a service for a price. If a customer is happy they'll buy it, if not they won't.

and overcharging people because you suspect they can't be bothered looking into the fact you're offering them a crap deal is your business plan

You could say the same for almost any product out there. If you shop around and compare prices you can probably find a better deal on almost anything. Does that make the slightly more expensive (local) offering a crap deal? You may price check on all the items you buy but most don't. They see a deal which they either like and buy or pass. Simple business basics really. If one can of cola is more expensive then another, would you call someone a mug for buying the more expensive one? It obviously suits their needs at the time and they were happy to buy it.

I'm not planning on doing this to rip people off but that's my price, take it or leave it. Any less its not worth my time and I'll respect their choice. Time is money for both the business owner and me. I'm not a charity and I'm not a con artist. I dont plan on signing anyone up to a 10 year contract. If the say they want to stop after a couple of months they can set up their own hosting and take their site. No harm done.

B) to pay a one off fee
Even if they build it themselves they still have to keep paying for it unless you know of any free hosting? and you still have to check for updates now and again (even if there aren't any) and check the site is running. As a business owner if you're happy to do this good for you but others prefer to spend their time on other things and are happy to pay someone a minimal fee to save them the hassle.

And the site obviously won't be bringing in any direct revenue itself.
How can you tell that??
Here's one example.... perhaps someone's on holiday (we get a fair few tourists in this area) and they fancy going to go a driving range and so do a search on Google? They don't see any so they don't bother, or they see your competitors site and go play there.

 

[Retired_Member38]

They won't need to pay £10 a month for hosting - Krystal will host for £30 a year. Thats just one I know off the top of my head... I'm sure there are dozens more.

I'm not saying some people won't pay more for convenience - I do it all the time. But only ever with products I wanted or needed. I think if you are trying to sell someone a product they weren't actively looking for in the first place, then they are going to be more price sensitive.

I also wonder if you are underestimating demand here. I have a relative who has a really garbage website for his tiny building company. The site was obviously done at least 10 years ago and not updated since. Yet he's getting a few phone calls a month - most of them offering seo, some of them offering web design. I think the easy sales to people who have no website / a bad website have been cherry picked by people having a similar idea to you long ago.

With the no revenue thing, I think without people selling directly on the site they are going to struggle to attribute any new sales to the site itself. So they will see it as £25 a month wasted.

I guess the only way you will know for sure is gather a list of 100 local businesses, phone them all and see. Its only going to have taken one other local designer to already have tried it to completely destroy this as a viable idea for you - and you don't know until you give it a go.

 

[Skinner]

My mate Jim makes a good living doing this, even does some town centre council sites now, http://www.bubblemarketing.co.uk/, some pricing here http://www.bubblemarketing.co.uk/Service/c/1/s/2/Free-Web-Design but also check way back.

 

[Retired_Member38]

My mate Jim makes a good living doing this, even does some town centre council sites now, http://www.bubblemarketing.co.uk/, some pricing here http://www.bubblemarketing.co.uk/Service/c/1/s/2/Free-Web-Design but also check way back.

Its a suckers deal though - the longer you keep the website, the worse value you're getting as a buyer.

"good, honest, old fashioned way of doing things" - it doesn't really seem that way to me when you give someone the product up front for "free", then add in ridiculous overcharging for the 24 month+ period of the contract...

The only upside of this is if you physically don't have the money to hire a designer in the first place. And if thats the case then you're probably going to be out of business in a few months anyway due to serious cash flow issues surely.

 

[Skinner]

I think HP on cars is a suckers deal paying monthly, but never owning anything, thousands ontop of thousands think its a mint deal.

All I know is Jim does quite well out of it, and gives the OP some pricing which IS working in the real world.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Someone doing well from something doesn't mean it was a good deal for the customers - see payday loans providers for an example

Look at his terms - they customers never even actually own their own website. If they want to leave, they need to negotiate a release fee. Which isn't given in the order form. So you're signing up to rent a website, and you're letting Jim hold you to ransom if/when you finally want to leave. If people want to rent then thats fair enough... but only an idiot would do so without a clear path out of the deal if they wanted to take it.

 

[Skinner]

Doing well out of it, indicates the price point is workable (which was the point) and the service is in demand. If the OP improves on the points you make if he deems he needs to, and aims at that price point then all good right?

 

[Blossom]

Much more profitable for you yes, but its not a good deal for the customer.

If the customer is happy to pay then everyone's happy.

There are many, many cases I've seen where customers have been suspicious because they see something as 'too cheap'.

He's aiming at people who don't already have a website - if they don't have a website at this point in time then they probably don't need one at all.

The world isn't static; people create new businesses and projects (and thus need websites for them) every day.

£25 an hour seems expensive to me, for doing tasks that an average teenager could cope with. £25 to someone to work on a 'real' site is no big deal - I think anyone is going to struggle to charge £25 an hour to someone who doesn't even have a website today...

I'm going to ignore this bit since I talked about monthly pricing and didn't say anything about charging £25/hour for site maintenance.

I still think £25 a month for hosting/maintaining it is too much for this target market. If people only have a static site but done in WP for ease of use then there would be no reason to have comments activated at all. And Krystal.co.uk will host a site for £30 a year. They would be overpaying by hundreds of pounds if they gave you £25/month.

And I could probably find a cake makers' forum that says charging £400 for a cake is too much when I could buy/make my own for ~£20 + my time. But people still buy them, and expect to pay that for wedding cakes.

You buy this kind of service because you don't have the time to think about doing it yourself or you don't know how. It seems easy to us because it's our industry, just like performing laser eye surgery seems easy to surgeons. When you talk to small business owners who don't know what a domain name is and are busy working every hour possible because they're self-employed and dealing with suppliers, manufacturers, customers, physical premises, print work, marketing, book keeping, accountants, tax, networking, contacts etc. etc., the last thing they want to do at the end of the day is go home and sit in front of a computer researching how many security releases a content management system had last year. Especially when they don't know what a content management system is.

Similarly, I could grow my own fruit and vegetables at home, but I don't even though I know how. I'm not interested and I don't want to go home at the end of the day and spend time messing about with soil and water and fertilisers and digging up potatoes. I'd prefer to go to a supermarket and overpay for the convenience. I'm perfectly aware I'm getting ripped off, but I don't think twice about it.

That's why Tesco Express charges more for exactly the same products as Tesco Extra. That's why train coffee prices and cinema snack prices are insane. That's why you pay more for a meal at a restaurant and a drink in a pub. Is the customer getting a good deal? Of course not. But it still works as a business model.

If C) and overcharging people because you suspect they can't be bothered looking into the fact you're offering them a crap deal is your business plan, then I wouldn't expect to get very far with this.

Clearly you've not heard of a company called Apple.