How much to get paid

kamolahy

So I may have landed a strange but good opportunity. I am working with a close friend who may want to fund my business idea. As most entrepreneurs, I need to make money to live in the process. The gentleman I`m speaking about runs a large organization that needs a blog done. I told him I could do it and would be very good at it. I am good at what I do.. with evertything from launching to SEO and getting traffic, I would be able to get it a lot of recognition and attention. I run a couple of successful blogs on my own unprofessionally. Well, I don`t do anything like this professionally so I don`t know what I could charge. He is asking me to name my price. I told him I could do that, but am having a hard time at valuing myself. What do you think would be reasonable. I`m going to provide content, give it traffic, do all the P.R. and basically run the whole thing for awhile while I work on my own business launch. How much would something like this cost? I don`t know what kind of price I could charge!

InactiveMember

I always like to recommend "The Strategy & Tactics Of Pricing" whenever someone has a pricing question. It`s a great book, really fascinating.
Writing a blog is writing. Developing the blog is development. SEO optimization is another line of work. If you`re providing integrated services, you probably can`t charge an hourly rate equal to the total cost of employing separate professionals. Do you have any idea how much your friend makes per hour? Charge 20% less per hour for your services. Just an idea.

kamolahy

He makes a TON, so I don`t think i could charge that much. I thought of asking for a flat monthly rate just because I`ll be spending a LOT of overtime the first 2 weeks, and it would cost a fortune for him if he did an hourly rate. I want to be the cheapest option for him, but I need to be paid for the level of professional work I`m doing. 

MerchantServices

Charge him $150 dollars a month, no less. If, that is not enough, charge him up to $2,000 a month but no more.
Keep us posted on the outcome.

kamolahy

Call me crazy, but starting, designing, building, and running a large blog for a big business i think ought to warrant well over $150 a month. It would be my full time work. Is $2,000 an ultimate ceiling?

InactiveMember

I think you might need to find comparables. How much are people being paid for similar work? Unless you`re very specialized or uniquely qualified, blogging and web work are commodity products. You can earn a lot more than $2000 per month only if you have clients who are willing to pay more than $2000 per month. I get the feeling - and I might be wrong - that you and the market could have very different ideas about what your services are worth. What number did you have in mind? $5000?

kamolahy

well, something around $2,500/mo... but that`s considering I`d be working nearly 60 hrs a week at the beginning. So really, I`d be making around $10 per hour. You could find unprofessional work for around that amount. I just don`t want to undervalue myself.

collider

This really depends on how much he stands to make as well.  You could do an hourly charge up front and then take a percentage after that.  This way you are rewarded the better you do, but you are also making some money upfront as well.  If you think that he stands to make $5K a month once it`s running, then you could say you want the $10 an hour to start and 10% after that.  How much time did you plan on putting into this after the first push?

kamolahy

Well, after the initial push we should be able to go down to even part time hours. In my experience, an organization like his should be easy to get the initial traffic to because they are heavily reputable. However, once the people know of the blog then some of his in house guys will take over. This is great for me because I`m building a business, but right now most of the work for my business is on hold until we launch our website. So as of now, I can put in a ton of time... Once that all levels out though, the transition should be smooth. I want to make it possible for him to do things with his own team in the end though.

TONSQUAD

I would recommend that you price yourself between $30 to $40 per hour. This way you can earn a living and still be charging a fair rate for services. rendered. After you finish your first project, take a step back and evaluate. Hopr this helps.

steve

I always like to recommend "The Strategy & Tactics Of Pricing"
whenever someone has a pricing question. It`s a great book, really
fascinating.I started looking at this book online and just
ordered a used copy. Amazon would only show a couple pages of text but
what I saw looked very interesting. Thanks CookieMonster for the
recommendation.

nevadascul

One place to look for salary figures is Salary.com.  They have salary figures for web page designers and similar positions.  You can also go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics web page for salary figures. 

kamolahy

Hey everyone! Thanks so much for the replies. I really appreciate your input. I have taken each response in and soaked it up. I`ll likely be doing this as a one time thing, for now... if that makes any sense. I`m working on starting a business, and so this is something I can do in the mean time to get paid and manage my bills. However, I`ll be doing something else, but closely related. That`s why I want to take this wage thing seriously. I don`t want to undercut my abilities and make sure that any future opportunities are reflected in this work. I`ll see how things go. I made the proposal about 1 week ago, and haven`t heard back. The person I`m dealing with is a great friend and very professional, so I don`t see why he wouldn`t respond if his feeling was "no". He wouldn`t leave me hanging on. I`m thinking of contacting him again, but we`ll see.

kamolahy

The design isn`t the only thing I`m doing... I`ll be adding content, getting traffic (SEO, cross linking, and general web marketing), and basically running the whole thing for a few months until it has good amounts of steady traffic. So, really I`m doing a few jobs.