First Web development freelance job - Need help

[Tweaker]

Hi there,

I need some help. I build websites/web applications for a company and have decided to take on my first freelance job. Except my problem is that I have no clue what to charge for development.

Client wants to use his own designer - so i won't need to charge for the design.

He's asked me to take care of hosting and domain name - who is best to use for these? I know of serv.co.za and hetzner for hosting but what about registering a domain name? Not sure if it's relevant but - I'm going to need to use a database.

The site is going to use a shopping cart, and more than likely will need to be intergrated with a 3rd party payment system (who is the best to use?)

It'll consist of about 3/4 main pages and the rest of the site will be the online store.

Client wants to be able to update the products himself and added his own categories to the product list. Which would be better in this case, to build a simple cms or use something like wordpress or joomla?

I'm also going to need to intergrate SEO, as well as keyword research.



I think that's it for what the site would require, please if you think something is missing - let me know, but other wise what should i charge for the creation of a site like this?

Any advice is appriciated, Thanks

 

[Messugga]

Hi there,

I need some help. I build websites/web applications for a company and have decided to take on my first freelance job. Except my problem is that I have no clue what to charge for development.

Client wants to use his own designer - so i won't need to charge for the design.

He's asked me to take care of hosting and domain name - who is best to use for these? I know of serv.co.za and hetzner for hosting but what about registering a domain name? Not sure if it's relevant but - I'm going to need to use a database.

The site is going to use a shopping cart, and more than likely will need to be intergrated with a 3rd party payment system (who is the best to use?)

It'll consist of about 3/4 main pages and the rest of the site will be the online store.

Client wants to be able to update the products himself and added his own categories to the product list. Which would be better in this case, to build a simple cms or use something like wordpress or joomla?

I'm also going to need to intergrate SEO, as well as keyword research.



I think that's it for what the site would require, please if you think something is missing - let me know, but other wise what should i charge for the creation of a site like this?

Any advice is appriciated, Thanks

Have you ever done something even remotely to this scale? Generally you need to decide on an hourly rate and calculate how long you reckon you're going to take, plus add in a factor for debugging and unexpected delays. Also, set up a SLA/maintenance plan.

 

[rrh]

Have you ever done something even remotely to this scale? Generally you need to decide on an hourly rate and calculate how long you reckon you're going to take, plus add in a factor for debugging and unexpected delays. Also, set up a SLA/maintenance plan.

I hate to say this, but if you are asking these questions before you have started you a doing your client a disservice: you simply don't have the experience.

That said, i would look to adapting an existing open source product that includes shopping cart etc. and allows for client updating. Not my field but I am sure the others on these forums can assist.

 

[ozziej]

Yup must agree with some of the above comments, you should have asked these questions before taking on the job
But, my contribution to assisting:

I would use hetzner for hosting, they are reliable, they give pretty good bandwidth allocations 20GB per month, and I have never had issues with line speed to the server... (we have two with them) Also, when a server has had an issue, it has been resolved quickly and always had someone telling me what happened.

Have you got a shopping cart system in mind already ? I would look at something like Magento if you can't write it yourself in Java or PHP
Magento gives you the ability to do all the updating of products and stuff that you mentioned.
Me personally, I would write it But thats because I am an awesome HTML, Javascript and Java developer, and have written a few of these

"Integrate SEO" errrmm... Thats like engaging the flux capacitor
What I would suggest you start with is the keyword tool on google, to use it you need to create an adwords account with a gmail address, then log into the account and one of the things you can add is adwords, if not go to adwords.google.com
You can then access the keyword tool that will let you pick keywords and see what the monthly search volumes are, as well as suggest other keywords that are related.
Its pretty awesome.

For online payment there are two companies that I have worked with www.vcs.co.za and www.mygate.co.za
Both companies are pretty good, and integrating their payment systems are pretty basic even for a beginner. You can do simple things like have a redirect to their website (nothing special in terms of skills needed, just the ability to do a HTML POST), right up to complex server request / response type interactions that appear completely seamless to your customers.
P.S. mygate's website is a bit slicker, vcs need to get theirs up to date, it looks like it fell of the ark

I would agree with some of the other posters, get yourself a contract setup ASAP with some kind of SLAs.
Your customer needs to know what you are going to do, and you need to lay down the law in a nice polite way about what you will and won't do.
THe last thing you want is to make promises that you cannot deliver on.
Also, you do not want the customer to start with:
"Oh, I only need 3 or 4 pages and a shopping cart"
Which then becomes:
"Well, now I need 15 pages and a integrated search engine, as well as management of my stock, warehousing and Point of Sale while you are at it"
You get where this can land you??

We have had a few clients that do not understand about sticking to the terms of the contract and have ended up getting themselves in trouble with expectations. Make sure that the customers expectations are fully covered, and that if it goes outside the scope of the SLA, that you simply tell them that any additional features will be covered AFTER everything else is done.

 

[Tweaker]

Yup must agree with some of the above comments, you should have asked these questions before taking on the job
But, my contribution to assisting:

I would use hetzner for hosting, they are reliable, they give pretty good bandwidth allocations 20GB per month, and I have never had issues with line speed to the server... (we have two with them) Also, when a server has had an issue, it has been resolved quickly and always had someone telling me what happened.

Have you got a shopping cart system in mind already ? I would look at something like Magento if you can't write it yourself in Java or PHP
Magento gives you the ability to do all the updating of products and stuff that you mentioned.
Me personally, I would write it But thats because I am an awesome HTML, Javascript and Java developer, and have written a few of these

"Integrate SEO" errrmm... Thats like engaging the flux capacitor
What I would suggest you start with is the keyword tool on google, to use it you need to create an adwords account with a gmail address, then log into the account and one of the things you can add is adwords, if not go to adwords.google.com
You can then access the keyword tool that will let you pick keywords and see what the monthly search volumes are, as well as suggest other keywords that are related.
Its pretty awesome.

For online payment there are two companies that I have worked with www.vcs.co.za and www.mygate.co.za
Both companies are pretty good, and integrating their payment systems are pretty basic even for a beginner. You can do simple things like have a redirect to their website (nothing special in terms of skills needed, just the ability to do a HTML POST), right up to complex server request / response type interactions that appear completely seamless to your customers.
P.S. mygate's website is a bit slicker, vcs need to get theirs up to date, it looks like it fell of the ark

I would agree with some of the other posters, get yourself a contract setup ASAP with some kind of SLAs.
Your customer needs to know what you are going to do, and you need to lay down the law in a nice polite way about what you will and won't do.
THe last thing you want is to make promises that you cannot deliver on.
Also, you do not want the customer to start with:
"Oh, I only need 3 or 4 pages and a shopping cart"
Which then becomes:
"Well, now I need 15 pages and a integrated search engine, as well as management of my stock, warehousing and Point of Sale while you are at it"
You get where this can land you??

We have had a few clients that do not understand about sticking to the terms of the contract and have ended up getting themselves in trouble with expectations. Make sure that the customers expectations are fully covered, and that if it goes outside the scope of the SLA, that you simply tell them that any additional features will be covered AFTER everything else is done.

Thanks for the responses, I haven't technically taken on the job yet, just wanting to get all my ducks in a row first, by drawing up a plan of what exactly i need in order to accomplish this project, and the peeps on this forum are usually the best to get answers from.

Thanks for the detailed post ozziej, I think that helps me a lot.

 

[frikkie6000]

Thanks for the responses, I haven't technically taken on the job yet, just wanting to get all my ducks in a row first, by drawing up a plan of what exactly i need in order to accomplish this project, and the peeps on this forum are usually the best to get answers from.

Thanks for the detailed post ozziej, I think that helps me a lot.

Register your domains here http://co.za/

Hosting Here www.afrihost.co.za

Payment Gateway here www.monsterpay.com / www.payfast.co.za as these are the easiest and still allow customization

What more can I say