Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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Written by Gurdip Singh
February 22, 2006

Can anyone tell me what sort of per-hour rates are the norm in the US for website maintenance work such as content amendments, addition / deletion of web pages, images, Flash animations, etc?

I'm not referring to hard programming here (such as the development of scripts, etc).

Thanks in advance.

Gurdip Singh

Gurdip,

You'll probably get a broad range of responses here, but I think I can speak from the lower end of the spectrum. I am not a full-time web designer, but I've built websites for a handful of clients over the years. One client in particular publishes religious sermons. He has no technical knowledge of the Web, and needed a lot of help getting online, so several years ago I built his website. More recently, I converted his website to a Movable Type blog-style content-management system, which makes updating the site a lot easier.

Although my client, with a little training, could probably maintain his website himself - he would rather I do it, in part because I also proofread his sermons as I post them. So all I do nowadays on this site is perform minor maintenance and update content whenever he has a new sermon. For this I charge $20 per hour, with a minimum 1-hour charge. It usually takes me 20 to 30 minutes per update, most of which is spent proofreading. I could probably raise my rates, and may do so in the future, but this has been a great client for three years, and he always pays in advance. I hope this helps.

Noah Masterson, Publisher

dc-baby.com

This is pretty unusual for me, posting like this, but I was surprised not many have responded to Gurdip's question about site maintenance rates. Is this information better kept on the "down low," or are there other reasons (like lack of time, ambivalence, etc) for not giving feedback here? Just curious...

-adam

We love doing web maintenance and there seems to be no end of it since it is "below" many designers and SEO consultants.

If you can find someone to do it, then you can expect to pay whatever the going rate is for what I would call "skilled" but not so much "expert" rates. It's also not hard to find someone still in school that can do the work and be inexpensive, but with less experience people you may run into changes not being made correctly, and work not being proofed before it goes on the site. Getting into that habit takes some time after you screw up some things and don't check your work (guilty!).

The other thing that you can run into is the person not making a backup of the page or entire site before getting down to work. If you as the site owner don't have a backup of your site (let's see the hands now...), then you could be looking at some extending down time while they fix problems they caused, or contacting the original site designer for repair or a backup copy of the site.

I'm sorry I can't give you an exact figure, but I wanted to try and point out that there are a number of factors that can affect the cost, and many are not clear on the surface. If it helps at all, I would expect to pay between the standard web designer rate to about half of that. We charge our full hourly rate as an SEO because what the work does not demand in technical ability, we feel we make up in speed and quality. We also don't charge for every small change if it doesn't take very long, like updating a phone number of address.

Thank you,

Chris Nielsen

consultant-directory.com

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Written by Michael Linehan
February 27, 2006

Personally, I didn't answer because I don't think there is anything remotely resembling a "norm". You can have your site built by your plumber's nephew for $200 in a Front Page template, or you can use a real graphic designer. Similarly for programming. Similarly for maintenance. Does the maintenance truly only involve addition and deletion of content?  Probably it's also going to involve optimization of that new content.  The client might also want some editing advice on how to make that content truly effective --- and even whether it should be in the site at all.

In other words, does the client just want a keyboard puncher to put content in no matter what?  I'd suggest that is part of why so many people have sites that do nothing.  The site owner doesn't know what content works for the search engines or to make a sale.  Neither does the keyboard puncher.  They just stick it in.  Maintenance, if it's going to be worth much, should probably be much more than mere "maintenance".

So I wouldn't quote for maintenance without really understanding a client's needs and what I can offer them.  Since there's no norm for that, there's no norm for maintenance - not if it's actually going to be useful to the client.  If price is the deciding factor, you're pretty much doomed as far as I can see.  False economy is rife. What's the use of spending $500 and making nothing when you can spend $1,000 and make $20,000.  The question becomes not "How much does it cost?", but "How can I find the latter $1,000 person?"

Michael Linehan

marketing-alchemy.com

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Written by Mark Roberts
February 27, 2006

Ok, i'll bite here.....

I have 3 ways of charging:

1. Hourly Rate. If someone wants just a few simple things every so often, I charge $25/hr. Minimum 1 hour. Note, I am a developer, not a graphics designer, I outsource that type of work and generally just pass on the cost.

2. Flat Rate. If it is a relatively low maintenance, but regular, and will avg about 5 hrs/ month, I charge $30.00/mo flat rate + $25.00/hr over that (however that is negotiable). Some months I may put in 6 - 7 hours and maybe the next month 0 hours. This works out great for the customers budgeting of expenses. For customers whose average requirements are 10 hours / month I up that to $60.00/mo flat rate.

3. Job Rate. For customers who need a new site built from scratch, I always work off of a well defined quote stating that I will do a, b, and c for $xxx. After the job is complete, I usually revert to a flat monthly billing rate for taking care of future modifications.

I have been working this way for several years now and it seems to work well for me and I have never had any complaints from any of my customers about service or rates and they keep coming back for more and send referrals to me.

Mark Roberts

Roberts Computing Systems

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Written by Tamara Heathershaw-Hart
February 28, 2006

Before I post our fees I'd like to point out what clients expect from us for that amount. FYI, we've been designing, building, and maintaining web sites since 1995. Much of our web maintenance work is for fast-track tech companies or companies with high-end marketing needs -- only a few mom-and-pops want or need the level of service we offer.

When our clients ask for an update to their web site they expect that:

1) we can update the HTML text, any behind-the-scenes scripts / code, and any and all graphics, and can design new graphics and provide professional-grade royalty-free photography where needed.

2) before starting work we will download the latest version of any / all pages from the server in case they've had someone in-house working on the site, and we'll make a complete CD backup of the page / section we're working on before we make any changes.

3) we'll place the updated page(s) on a staging server for review and approval before uploading to the live website (and rarely does a client have a staging server so this means we usually have to stage a nearly-complete copy of their entire site on a hosting account that we're paying for).

4) we can work with whatever Content Management System they have, no matter how obscure and no matter what sort of security hoops we have to jump through (e.g. IP-tunnels through their firewall, that sort of thing)

5) we'll keep any unreleased information about the client unreleased -- treating their secrets as our secrets.

6) we'll notice if their changes contradict something on another page, will be aware of any usability issues with the changes they're suggesting, and will point out if there's a better (or more sales-worthy or SEO-friendly) way to say or show something.

7) we'll understand their industry and how their products work, and will keep enough of an eye on their competition to know if the changes look too much like the competition's site or aren't as "good" as what the competition is doing.

8) we'll complete the changes in a minimum amount of calendar time, even if that means weekend or evening work, and will let them know immediately if there will be any problems or delays.

9) if we make a mistake we'll "mea culpa" and make it right no matter what it takes, and we'll even catch their mistakes (like wrong dates on trade shows or wrong emails on press releases) before updating the website.

Our web update / maintenance clients also expect us to design everything from brochures to tradeshow booths, and expect professional-quality photography and video skills as well. We're expected to know about any part of copyright or trademark law that applies to the web, and to be able to open any file they send no matter how old or what software was used to create it. They also expect that we'll be up-to-date on the latest in SEO tactics, will know how to program / code for every possible browser and on every OS, that we're experts in banner and PPC advertising, can give telephone tech support when they download a virus or can't figure out how to resize a photograph, and have seen every web site that's ever existed. And finally, they expect that our power never goes out and our internet connection never goes down (don't I wish).

We currently charge $75 to $100 per hour, with the $100/hour clients getting priority turn-around.

Tamra Heathershaw-Hart

crendo.com

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Written by Beth Earle
February 28, 2006

Hi, Adam

The only reason I didn't respond is because our rates seem to be higher than many others, and I didn't want to steer Gurdip the wrong way.

We charge $100 an hour for graphic design and project management; $125 for optimization; our clients are mostly b2b manufacturers, and the rate is comfortable enough for our target market within that group. Our minimum edits charge is $62.50 (basically the charge for a half hour), and I always tell clients to bunch up their edits and have us do them in a group, rather than one by one -- we can get a lot done in half an hour.

We also perform bi-monthly audits (at no additional charge) of the sites we host to make sure everything is still working right. If we find minor things wrong (a bad link, a missing image -- how does that happen, anyway? -- etc.), we fix that at no charge to the site owner. We don't advertise the fixing-at-no-charge part, but we do let them know afterwards that we performed the audit and made a few changes.

Regards,

Beth Earle

pilotfishseo.com

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Written by Peter D'Aprix
March 1, 2006

I have to agree with the others on one point certainly, there is no norm, we have no standards. I have to think that rates in a competitive and capitalistic world are a balance between what you think your time and expertise is worth vs what the market will pay.

But I have to look at the value of other people's time. In our area of California, a plumber gets anywhere from $45-$75 per hour; a lawyer $250 and up; they guy who blows leaves and rakes up the yard $15-$25 an hour; the person who runs the vacuum cleaner $20-35 an hour; the guy who installs RAM in my computer $100 an hour. So it sounds as though some people here rate their talent, training and expertise at a tad more than the guy who blows up leaves and way below a plumber or other skilled laborer. Frankly I don't.

I handle maintenance for my web design clients at the same rate as I charge for designing the site in the first place. Most of the site maintenance I do involves changes to the site that has an impact on the graphic design of the page and may well involve links and other such things. It would be much to easy for someone not familiar with the underpinnings of the site structure to really damage the site which could cost my clients a lot more to fix than to make the changes correctly in the first place and they seem to know that. But then my sites tend to be sensitive that way.

But I have built sites where it is less so. In which case, knowing that they will want to self maintain (discussed in advance), it is possible to build the sites so that they or anyone else the designate can use Contribute by Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) to make simple text and content changes. But even with that, since they work on the site itself as it sits on the server rather than a copy, what they change goes public. If they don't know the basics of what they are doing, they can really mess up the font settings, break the CSS settings etc.

Some designers can create a site in PHP so that the client or those they designate to maintain content can do so using a browser and an admin panel rather than having access to the core site. There are many options based on what kind of a site is being maintained and what type of maintenance is required. This should be worked out in advance of actually building the site.

We don't have unions in this business that I know of. We don't even have guilds that help establish standard practices and pricing values such as professional photographers have had for decades, not that those are hard and fast either. But my experience in recent years is that if you don't value your own expertise and time then why should anyone else? Aim too low and you become an interchangeable commodity rather than a valued expert.

The offshore outsourcing that we have been discussing for a while now has further enhanced that. So you have to offer more than just the ability to put a web site together. We have to ask ourselves "what value am I adding to my client's business that he / she can't get cheaper somewhere else?" That's tough but necessary. Just being able to build a web site is not enough today when anyone's kid can build a web site and now with Google's Page Creator

But just a couple of years ago, Communication Arts (I think it was Comm Arts) published a listing of expected hourly rates and web designers and web programmers were both around the $80 per hour mark. The creative and graphic design rates for the creative work was around $200 an hour while paste up was down around $40-$60 an hour. But you have to factor in your investment in your computer equipment, software, past and ongoing training, business overheads, rent, accountant fees, etc.

Does that help at least a little? I hope so, but your question is one I think we are all wrestling with each in their own niche in this new and changing age where valued skills of the past, even from just 10 years ago, are being supplanted with new skills and / or cheaper costs from abroad for the routine work. Just the digitalizing of many skills have devalued what used to be high priced artistic labor such as retouching of photographs, a topic that like off shore outsourcing, is discussed in The World is Flat. Skills that had high value 10 years ago even 5 years ago do not today.

On that happy note, good luck.

Peter D'Aprix - Visual Communications

peterdaprix.com

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Written by Rick Gortatowsky
March 3, 2006

Generally speaking its been our experience that most webs in at least mid-sized eCommerce have these areas addressed by employee's who are multi-functional bots. That is to say there is usually not enough work in a day for them to be devoted to this task solely.

I suppose pay rates would be dependent on magnitude of the work. Does the employee have to for example simply make ammendments? Do they need to create unique pages by hand and optimize them for search engine effective results? Do they need to archive old pages or amend links within the site to said pages? Do they need simple scan images or do they need to also have to know Adobe Photoshop well enough to manipulate images in fairly complex ways? Do they need take digital photo's and again do they need to fine tune images? Do they need to set up professional quality image displays? For example the front of a TV set looks quite similar to the front of that TV Set. Do they need to take photos at all angles, closeups on & on?

In sizeable eCommerce sites where there are significant amounts of inventory that come in these functions are placed upon employee's that both have a web skill set but also a marketing background. In other words, the corporations are basically highly compartmentalized. They even call varied categories stores. Such as the Electronics Store, The Apparel Store etc. Each has a category manager and each has employee components skilled in said goods genre. I hate to say it but they set things up alot like programming (and as a result run into the same issues of problems in interprocess communications!!! LOL.)

Specifying payment rates would be comensurate to the skill set required. If a person just needs scan images, type in some content to a standard template or database etc... ok. But if they need actually know the varied technologies required for things such as presentation quality displays (ie: Here is a watch vs Here is a watch with a professional background image display, macro photo's of the face, review content from other sites) then thats a tad more complex.

I suppose if I were in a position where I needed someone with these varied certain skills then I would need to sit down and really define what the individual needs to do in precise terms. From there I would look at my organization to see if any other staffers skill sets are of similar proportions. I would need to evaluate exactly how much of this update work need be done on a daily basis so I know the person is going to be busy each day. If its 5 hours of work and they are there for 8 hours a day then I need find 3 hours more work for them to accomplish. So what else needs to be done that may fit this particular skill set. Perhaps some typing, perhaps some data mining whatever.

Now I have a gauge by which I can attempt to set a wage. I would estimate that no LED'rs have responded to the posting because the posting is somewhat vague. I mean, hey, entering data into say one of these "Online ready-set-go" Yahoo stores for example takes a whole lot less voodoo than attempting to negotiate a complex Miva Storefront shop. Thus an accurate measurement need be made by the employer of what the staffer skills really need to be. I find tools like Microsoft Word's outliner ability to be very good at breaking down such things into a form that gives me good perspective. I outline things alot. I am Mr. Outliner. It keeps my most local CPU from becoming spaghetti.

In the case of staff one needs to consider all facets from what the person is to do, is the person going to get benefits such as health care or profit sharing? Paid vacations on and on? Local economy? If the business is in Los Angeles then $12 an hour is not exactly a living wage .vs. $12 an hour in say Iowa which might be just fine. So... many factors to consider and I do not think enough information was given and thus no responses came.

But! For $150,000 a year and a 5 year contract I am available and will relocate :)

Rick Gortatowsky