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I posted this on another site as well, but got no responses there so I thought I'd try here. Sorry if you've seen this before:
Let me apologize, because I'm sure you've all heard these questions a million times.
I know XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS, and some Flash, PHP, and Perl and I'm looking to get started, targeting a certain market. Namely, my brother lives in NYC and has a fair number of actor friends who need a web presence without spending a lot of money. A site would probably entail something around 5 pages - home, resume, press, links, gallery. The hosting would be handled by HostSave (I've used these guys for awhile and my only complaint is the FTP service is slow at times - anyone else have experience with them?).
Question #1 is pricing. My thought would be $300 for a 5-page site using the above template, but I'm really fumbling in the dark here. I've found other web design sites, but they all handle pricing through quotes, and I don't feel comfortable submitting bogus information for a quote to see what they charge. I did find an article on webdesign.about.com, but that was talking $5200 for a 3-week project.
Question #2 is contracts. I found some premade stuff at proposalkit.com, but other than that, nothing much.
Question #3: To do this, do you need some kind of business license? I'd think I would for tax purposes.
Last question: This is more about the flow of working with a client. First off, my thoughts on charging would be to stipulate half payment up front, and half upon completion. That seems pretty safe to me if I have a contract to protect both me and the client. Secondly, I'm unsure on how to handle revisions: I need to set some kind of limit on revisions or the design phase to keep from getting a client who keeps having me change things or sending me back to the drawing board.
Lastly, if I do use HostSave for my hosting needs, what's the best way to handle that? I.E. - assume they have no domain name. HostSave can do both the domain name registration and site setup, so do I get information from them and do it myself, billing my company and passing the charge to the client, or have them do it? If I do it myself, I'd need to then bill the client monthly for the charges HostSave bills me for. Is this the way most people do it, and simply take the site offline after X amount of days of nonpayment from the client?
Whew. OK. I think that's it.
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