Types of Customers
In an earlier issue we identified our customers into three groups: Self Serve, Jump Start, and Full Service customers. Click here to review that article. Let's look at these three groups as you begin to establish or revise (if necessary) your pricing for each type of customer.

Self Serve Pricing
Since self serve customers build their own web sites, I would follow the suggested retail price set by ICServ. Each account has a one-time sign-up fee and a monthly fee:

Self Serve
Sign-up $100
Monthly $49.95

As a reseller, all you really need to do is provide them with a user ID and password and wish them well. I strongly suggest that you take 30 minutes and orient them to the system. Make sure they know the technical support number. There is a risk with self serve customers because there is no maintenance agreement. The risk is that they don't take the time to get into the tools, and then they discontinue your services after a few months. To avoid attrition make sure to contact them regularly, and offer your services when appropriate!

Also be careful that these customers don't take your valuable time without any compensation to you. Your time is worth compensation as a consultant, so make sure to set appropriate expectations. Your consulting fee should reflect your abilities and efficiencies. On the low end, for new consultants, $30 - $50 per hour and on the upper end, for advanced consultants, between $100 to $125 per hour.

Jump Start Pricing
Jump start customers come with a lot of different needs. A Jump Start customer may want 3 pages or 100 pages. Obviously each customer will have to be charged differently. For the most basic Jump Start Plan, we propose 3 pages, basic graphic work, e-commerce set-up and submitting the index page to the free search engines. Each account has a 1-time sign-up fee and a monthly fee:

Jump Start
Sign-up Fee $100
Web Development $450
Monthly $49.95

The exciting thing here is that jump start customers will often want many more web pages. This is an opportunity for you to earn more building web pages. Don't forget to take advantage of the model sites, Team ICServ, and the EZ-SiteDuplicator™ tool.

Note: You can also subcontract the graphic work or the web site to Team ICServ if you feel like you need some help.

Just like the self serve customers, you risk losing the account if you don't call the jump start customer frequently to provide quick ideas and offer your services.

Full Service Pricing
If you plan on being a web master for a client, it is important that you understand how to bid on a job. You will, of course, include the cost of the account in your bid price. Since each customer will have differing needs, you will need to get good at estimating a fair cost. Here are some general guidelines when putting together a bid:

1. Establish your hourly rate
2. Use a site map to organize your web site
3. Get 1/2 down using request for services agreement
4. Plan on time for rework
5. Receive final 1/2 payment using completion of services form
6. Make the site live after receiving payment

Let's follow an example to establish the cost for the web development. We will assume that you will be charging around $50 per hour for your services.

Page Layout & Design
Let's start with a 3 page site with e-commerce: Home, About Us, Products. Click here to view the site map for this site and here to view our blank site map form.

Estimate the amount of time it will take you to create each page. Let's use 1 hour per page in this example for a total of 3 hours.

Graphic Work
Graphic work will include designing a header, developing a color scheme, and creating coordinating buttons. Estimate the amount of time it will take based on your graphical expertise to create a good color scheme for the site, integrate their logo into a header, and design buttons to match. For our purposes we'll say 6 hours.

Photo Work
Commonly the customer will need you to optimize product photos or images taken from their business, and may even request special graphics for certain parts of the site. Let's add another 3 hours to find and/or optimize these graphics.

Copy/Content
Some of your clients may want to provide the text of the web site. However, if they want you to write it, you need to work that into your bid. I suggest you figure an additional 30 minutes per page (assuming 2 to 3 paragraphs per page).

Rework
This is one of the most important parts of the site development. Ideally, your first presentation to your client would be perfect. However, more than likely you may run into spelling errors, graphic problems, or any number of other changes the customer will want to make. For instance, moving a graphic from the right to the left, bolding text, changing the wording of a paragraph, and so on. Although having a set fee for rework may suit some people, it is best to allocate a certain amount of extra time for each page, or for a group of pages. In this example we will give rework time 1/2 hour per page, resulting in 1 1/2 hours of rework time. Depending on the customer, you may also want to calculate additional fees such as long distance phone calls if they are out of your area, faxing costs, or even your time spent visiting them or on the phone.

Web Site Promotion
Preparing META Tags and using the keyword rules taught in the "Web Site Promotion Keys to Success" tape set will take some time. I suggest you plan on 30 minutes per page to properly write the Title, Description, and Keywords. Again, be certain to follow the techniques in the tape set. Then, plan an additional hour to submit all of these pages to the free search engines.

E-Commerce
In our example, the customer owns a retail store and would like to sell products online. We will need to gather information about each of his products and then input that information into EZ-Catalog™. We can estimate 1 hour for every 5 items they want to put online. In our example, this customer has 10 products, so we will estimate 2 hours of catalog work. We will then need to configure EZ-Order™ to accept payments online, set shipping costs, and customize the order form. In our example, we are assuming that the customer already has a merchant account. Configuring EZ-Order™ should take about 1/2 hour. We will add a total of 2.5 hours to the bid for e-commerce work.

Making the Site Live
The last thing you want to calculate is what it will take once the site is completed for it to be live on the Internet. The EZ-NetTools™ system includes a subdomain name for each account free of charge, however, some customers may have a domain name purchased already or will want you to take care of that for them. In this case, it will take additional time and/or money to purchase or transfer a domain name. For our purposes we will assume the customer already has a domain name and will need to transfer it. Let's add 1 hour onto our time to make this change, which will include calling or emailing Technical Support to have the domain name linked to this account.

Let's now summarize our costs:

Page Design: 3 hours
Graphical Design: 6 hours
Additional Graphics: 3 hours
Copy: 1.5 hours
Rework: 1.5 hours
Site Promotion: 2.5 hours
E-Commerce: 2.5 hours
Making Site Live: 1 hour
Total Hours: 21 hours
Total @ $50/hr: $1,050

In our example above we estimated that a beginning web master should charge about $50 per hour. At this rate the 3 page web site would have a retail price of $1,050.

Monthly Maintenance
My definition of Maintenance is the hours spent updating a web site. For full service accounts, I suggest you establish a maintenance agreement. You guarantee a certain number of hours each month to be done within a specific time frame. For example, you could agree to two hours of maintenance per month, to be completed within 24 hours of the request.

It is up to the client to call you for the updates, and it is your responsibility to make the changes in the time frame you promise. Rework that would require more than the two hours agreed upon, would need to go through the bid process.

For this example, your pricing would be:

One-Time Fees:
Web Development $1,050
Account Sign-Up $100
Total Retail Price: $1,150
Monthly Fees:
Monthly Maintenance
(2 Hours @ $50/hour) $100.00
System Service Fee $49.95
Total Monthly Price: $149.95 per month

So, for this example you would bid the job at $1,150 for the web site and $149.95 per month for service and maintenance.

Establishing your pricing may take some practice until perfected. The best way to learn is to put your new knowledge into practice by selling a few accounts. Please remember, we are here to help. Team ICServ will be happy to sub-contract your first few web sites to get you started on your own. NO FEAR! It's time to get jazzed about selling EZ-NetTools™!