Also, I don’t think you’re alone in finding low budgets clients to be more difficult.

It’s a funny thing though, in my experience of working at both ends of the budget scale, more often than not, it’s the clients with less money that are the more difficult ones.

Make no mistake, there client work out there that pays well and is commissioned by people who know what they want and have realistically budgets in mind. Personally, I don’t seek out projects like this as I find the agency work much easier to come by – but they do come along and I’m grateful when they do (I’m working on one right now).

The important thing is not to fall into the trap of producing lots of low priced sites for small (and, it has to be said, often) difficult clients – I just don’t think it’s a good business model and it baffles me how many people go down this route when they start out on their own – then when they fail they act surprised.

I would say that quite often small business contacts often require far more contact/account management than larger businesses – they are quite often commissioning digital work for the first time and don’t necessarily understand how to play their part in making a project run as efficiently as possible.

I get a fairly regular stream of enquiries with a budget more akin to what you might spend on a fridge freezer than a website – I guess all you can do is explain the process you take and highlight why it is worth paying for an experienced professional rather than the next door neighbour’s brother’s friend’s son.

I would say that a small business who “can’t afford £300 for a website” won’t be in business long. Even at the lowest level, £300 is surely a realistic sum to spend for anyone running an actual company, ie, an entity that makes money. £300 for an individual is perhaps another issue, but honestly, if a business can’t find £300 for an online presence — which in many areas is a vital advertising/communication mechanism — then it’s doing something wrong.

Or, more likely, they’re focussing their spend in the wrong place, or they simply don’t value their online brand. I suspect that a company who claims not to have any budget for a website will cheerfully spend a few hundred pounds a month on print advertising. I’d argue that an online spend offers better value for money, but then I would. For some businesses, print advertising might be a better option. Either way, it’s a case of “what we want to spend our money on”, rather than “what we can afford”. If a company wants a great website, but only wants to spend £300, then they can’t have a great website, in my opinion.

I’m also interested in Howie’s comment that “A good all-round developer should be able to build a small CMS business site in 3-4 days”. Personally, I’d respectfully disagree with this. I can only speak for myself, and I’m sure Howie’s model works very well, but in my experience this just isn’t possible.

I’ve found myself in the past thinking, “Well, it’s only a simple HTML build, and I can plug in my standard CMS, and then just drop the content in. It’ll be easy!”. I agree that it is indeed possible to get something up and running in a few days. All too often, though, you then spend a few more days fixing minor issues, and tweaking the site based on client feedback, and revising some templates, and then some of the content needs updating, and then you need to upload the site to their server and so on. Before you know it, that “3-4 day project” has taken seven or eight days in total.

For any Content Managed site, I’d always quote a healthy amount of time, to allow for contingency and to be up-front about how long it will actually take to deliver the finished, working website in its entirety. That’s not a case of squeezing budget from my clients, it’s a case of making sure that everyone has realistic expectations. Telling a client that it’s “3-4 days”, if it then takes me twice as long, is in no-one’s interests.

It’s hard for me to give advice to people who do private client work as I rarely do it. I do take it on now and again but I do find it tends to be more complicated.

The 9-5 life is the one thing I like most about my work. Often, as well it’s far less stressed because agencies call you in to assist the team and consequently you know the collective responsibility for the project is resting on more shoulders than just your own.

You’re on to a good gig, but I don’t think it’s soley the fact they are professional agencies who know the ‘going rate’, I also think there is the personal contact issue – morally most people can’t pay peanuts to a professional who is in their offices for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Another point is when working in someones offices they can see just how much work and skill goes in to each aspect of a project, when a small business asks for a site all they see is pretty graphics, bit of animation and some text, they will have no idea of what goes on behind the scenes, the costs, the skills, the technical know how, etc – they think they can either buy a $100 site from a freelance website or even get one for free from Microsoft or Google, so why would they want to pay $3k or $5k?

In light of that, how can you possibly justify this article?

A good all-round developer should be able to build a small CMS business site in 3-4 days. There are plenty of business’ that will spend £1200-£1500 on a simple site,and many more with £3-5k to spend on bigger sites. That sort of money can go a long way with a freelancer. How far would it go in an agency?

I’m not saying it’s as easy or lucrative as agency freelance work, but it can be rewarding. I calculate my costs for developing a client site using a day rate. I estimate the effort in days for each element of the project, and add a buffer to allow for project management.

Your comment about 9-5 is the most valid. The biggest issue, I find with freelance work, is not the pricing model, but the work schedule. Expect to have several jobs on the go, and sacrifice your evenings when there’s work to get done.