Pricing Yourself as a Teenage Web Designer

Teenage web designers who have progressed beyond the phase of donating their web design skills to charity now face a completely different predicament: How to price your web design services. While no set formula for pricing yourself exists, following these guidelines will help you adequately price yourself in relation to your current market.

Don’t Price Too Low

While you might think undercutting your competition will bring in more business, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only will you bring in very few clients this way, the clients you do bring in will mistreat you. Why? Because people value products based on how much they THINK they should value it. As an example, Jonah Lehrer, author of the book “How We Decide” conducted an experiment with wine. A group of people were allowed to compare the tastes of a cheap wine and an expensive wine. Everyone raved over the expensive wine, proclaiming it had a much richer taste. Little did the taste-testers know that the labels were switched! It turns out that the cheap wine was the better tasting, but everyone perceived the expensive wine to be better, simply because of the higher price.

Offering a fully functional website for $500 will not bring you a flock of clientele. Furthermore, the people that do come will not value your services as much as they should. These people will be impossible to satisfy. It’s a paradox of value.

Factor In Experience

Have you generated a sizable client list? Have you participated in any internships? If you have experience dealing with real clients in the web design industry, let that reflect in your pricing.

Factor in Confidence

Arrogance sells. If you believe you have the skills necessary to compete with your local competition, there’s no reason why your rate should be substantially less than theirs. People subconsciously equate pricing with confidence. Many design firms will charge at least $85/hour. Although their work may look like garbage, they have the arrogance and confidence that makes people spend money. Don’t be arrogant to the point of disrespect, but price and present yourself as a contender.

Offer a Unique Product

If all web designers make websites, how can you offer something new? Many steps are involved in the process of building a website: Make one of these steps your specialty, and people will pay extra for your specialization. Do you have amazing UI design? Do you have a custom client login so they can view the status of their site? Do you respond to all emails within 12 hours? Find something you specialize in and people will pay more for it.

Do you have any experiences with pricing yourself to share?

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