Hello. I have not been in these forums for quite some time and it is nice to see that they are still quite the resource. I am hoping they can help me again.
I ran a site until a year ago when I licensed it off to a company. At the time, I was not making much money but the hits were in the range of 4,000,000 per month with just short of a half million page views. Considering it is a niche market, this was an excellent result.
Anyways, I licesned the site off to another company and began to receive some royalties. That company has now been bought out by another and they do not like the way the site has gone - neither do I to be truthful and it has lost some stats since I transferred it.
Anyways, the new company has contacted me in hopes that I can take back over the site and operate it as a division of their company. They have no intention to directly make money off of this site but instead it will drive people to their 'real world' business - which it will I am sure.
I am very much looking forward to this opportunity and getting my hands back on my little baby. However, I am having some difficulty in coming up with a good reasonable number that would be respectful of my work for financial compensation.
The work would require daily monitoring and maintenance. All in all, when you look at the hard core work and pushed it all into a single stream of hours together, this would amount maybe 3-4 hours a day of work.
Considering too that this new company has plans to take the site to a higher level with me at the reigns (no minority shares available to me), in order to benefit more off of their real world business, what would be a fair price for my monthly efforts?
I began this site 3 years ago in my basement. It is the biggest site in it's field in my country.
I know it is tough to figure out a price, that is why I am here. What sort of price is reasonable to charge do you think?
Thank you.
Megan posted this at 17:44—31st August 2001.
She has: 10,145 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I just have to say that it is illegal, in Canada and the US (at least - not sure about other countries), to discuss pricing among colleagues. This is considered to be price fixing so that's why its illegal.
It is fine to talk about methods of determining pricing, I know that for sure, but even talking about broad ranges of dollar amounts can be a sticky issue.
Megan
My web design blog
ASCAN posted this at 18:10—31st August 2001.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Aug 2001
Ok, how 'bout methods of pricing then? I guess that is really what I was looking for. Sorry.
fairhousing posted this at 09:34—3rd September 2001.
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at least $1,000 a month.
fairhousing posted this at 09:37—3rd September 2001.
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oops, i noticed u said 3-4 hrs a day, not a week (what i thought u stated).
hmm, then at least $2,000 a month.
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Jaiem posted this at 13:09—4th September 2001.
They have: 1,192 posts
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Im not a lawyer. However, I don't think the *hypothetical* discussion of prices per se is illegal. The organizing of a group to set and hold prices (price fixing) is illegal. But just inquirying into prices isn't.
IOW, if someone asks "What's the going rate for ?" that's not illegal. But if a bunch of people in the same field were to form a group and say "We're going to charge $X for service Y and no one had better charge anything else!!!" that would be illegal.
If it were then all trade groups and associations would be illegal.
(not a lawyer, not a legal opinion)
Jaiem
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Megan posted this at 13:35—4th September 2001.
She has: 10,145 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I'm not really sure either, but I know that on some other forums talk about pricing is strictly moderated.
Here's a recent article from Sitepoint with a method of figuring out pricing:
http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/483
Now, I'm not sure exactly what that means - I e-mailed the author for some clarification, but I'm assuming that "hypothetical" prices (is there really such thing anyway? Fairhousing is directly telling him what to charge here...) is included in that. "Discussion of pricing" can mean a lot of different things from exact numbers to ball park figures. I think this is why some forums are so strict about it - they don't know how strictly this can be enforced and don't want to get into trouble.
Megan
My web design blog
Keegan posted this at 14:00—4th September 2001.
They have: 300 posts
Joined: Aug 2001
Amount of money that you expect the company to make off the traffic of your site to their real world business.
Time you will have to actually spend on the site.
Add 40 percent of those figures because you are needed in this case (YOU)
Throw in some because I need more espresso in my life
And come up with a figure you can feel good about.
Oh and this bit of advice will cost you 42,000 dollars a year.
K
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Megan posted this at 17:51—4th September 2001.
She has: 10,145 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Here's a link to some information from the HTML Writers Guild about price fixing - they do not allow any discussion of pricing on their mailing list:
http://www.hwg.org/resources/faqs/priceFAQ.html
They have talked to some actual lawyers about this. It seems to be a bit of an uncertain issue, but IMHO it would be best to stay away from discussion involving dollar figures just in case.
Megan
My web design blog
Greg K posted this at 17:40—4th March 2005.
He has: 1,638 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
In doing a search for something else, I came across this thread. I am posting to bump it up to the top for new people to have information on why not to discuss pricing. I had looked for good info on why not to do this before and this thread has good info on it.
-Greg
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Ghostface posted this at 11:53—15th September 2001.
They have: 9 posts
Joined: Sep 2001
depends on whether or not he is a "business"
do you have a tax id ? or is this a extra income on your taxes.
and are you discussing prices
or getting a estimate of an industry standard.
you are not telling us your prices you are asking an industry standard which is not illegal,
what you need to do is price it out by code
set a price for yourself
consider the factors how long you have been doing this certain area how fast, how good, and how much knowledge you have.
example
site has 1 hour of html work a week = 15 and hour
site has 5 hours of cgi work a week = 40 an hour
site has 10 hours of asp work a week = 60 an hour
site has commerce 1 module applications = 75-100 an hour
then just estimate it like that
based on your experience and speed of work
Ill do my sig later
aboyd posted this at 18:58—15th March 2005.
They have: 33 posts
Joined: Nov 2004
I don't buy it. A few years ago when I was starting out in the Web I discussed the prices for graphic design work all over the Internet, with a bit-trail a mile long. No ill effects, no lawsuits.
Price fixing requires collusion among enough of the market to force people to accept the price structure. A Web guild might need to avoid appearing to endorse a set price if it has hundreds of thousands of members. But someone asking for advice on a Web forum? Hmm.
My suggestion for the original post is this: 4 hours a day is a half-day. So whatever your full-time salary is, halve it, and charge that. Don't sell yourself short -- if you lowball and they take the offer and you work your butt off, you'll be sad.
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Megan posted this at 13:26—5th April 2005.
She has: 10,145 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Just wanted to bring this up again... We just want to avoid it just in case, that's all. We don't want to get the forums in trouble. This is also following the policy of other communities that seem to have done more research. So - no mentioning of specific prices, and that's the rule
Megan
My web design blog