How Much Should You Charge for Freelance Web Design?

In the highly competitive field of freelance web design, pricing tends to be all over the place. A recent discussion on a popular forum frequented by web development professionals illustrated the wild range of prices that can be found in this segment. Let's recap some of the salient points of the thread.

A young web coder got an offer to build a simple one-page website, which was intended to be largely static, along with a web application for field service workers who would enter reports about jobs completed. The app was not very sophisticated, but it certainly required tight security because the data input by the field employees would determine how much they would be paid by a startup company.

The developer was offered $500 for the project, which he declined. He was then offered $1,200, a sum he considered briefly before declining tentatively, which is what prompted him to post his situation to an online forum of his peers. The consensus was that there was no way he should take on such a project for $1,200; after all, the functionality of the app would result in others getting paid for their work.

Another young developer took the same job in the same area, and this time, another developer came through with a $50,000 offer. He declined, but the same reasoning had been used before: the app was complex, which could impact the other side's ability to pay more for their work. He considered the offer, but after seeing the number of people working on his project, he decided not to do it.

To be clear, this situation would not be as extreme as those outlined here, as it was very much tied to the industry at large. The fact is that most startups fail because they have a single, inexperienced developer, who will fall prey to an industry's own insatiable desire to keep up with competitors. This, then, would be the main reason the number of successful startups doesn't come close to the number of failures. This lack of confidence does not come from a lack of technical skill, which is what most startup founders expect. Instead, it is a fear that the people working on these systems would be paid too much for their work. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/webdesign/comments/nqebfr/igotajob_offer/.