[STOCKPHOTO] Fees for Webmaster?
Mike Shipman
I've been spending a lot of time working up my web site and have been
thinking about hiring a webmaster to do some design work and periodic
updates. I have a question about what to expect to pay for a webmaster for
periodic work on a relatively small web site. I'd like to hear from those of
you who have hired webmasters (Privately please, unless the moderators allow
general posting). If you could help me with:
1. How did you find your webmaster?
2. What is an average rate (hourly) to expect to pay for design work and
periodic maintenance for a small site?
3. Is your webmaster local?
4. What services
To keep responses to a minimum I would like to limit responses to those with
web sites that have similar characteristics to the following:
1. 6-10 pages (internal links) in length (image # variable)
2. No cgi, applet, or JAVA scripting
3. Perhaps one order/response form
4. Guestbook
Thank you. I know I could ask in other forums, and I will. But,I would like
to hear from individuals within the same field as I regarding their
experiences. Thanks.
Mike Shipman
Blue Planet Photography
Stock * Fine Art * Décor * Instruction
PO Box 44569 Boise ID 83711-0569
208.327.1016 (voice)
m...@micron.net (email)
http://www.webpak.net/~man/ (web)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsored by The STOCKPHOTO Network - http://www.stockphoto.net/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manuela Collini
Mike Shipman wrote:
>
> From: "Mike Shipman" <m...@micron.net>
>
> I've been spending a lot of time working up my web site and have been
> thinking about hiring a webmaster to do some design work and periodic
> updates. I have a question about what to expect to pay for a webmaster for
> periodic work on a relatively small web site. I'd like to hear from those of
> you who have hired webmasters (Privately please, unless the moderators allow
> general posting). If you could help me with:
>
> 1. How did you find your webmaster?
> 2. What is an average rate (hourly) to expect to pay for design work and
> periodic maintenance for a small site?
> 3. Is your webmaster local?
> 4. What services
> To keep responses to a minimum I would like to limit responses to those with
> web sites that have similar characteristics to the following:
>
> 1. 6-10 pages (internal links) in length (image # variable)
> 2. No cgi, applet, or JAVA scripting
> 3. Perhaps one order/response form
> 4. Guestbook
>
> Thank you. I know I could ask in other forums, and I will. But,I would like
> to hear from individuals within the same field as I regarding their
> experiences. Thanks.
>
Hi Mike,
We are a photographer and a illustrator situated in Sweden
who do webdesign as well.
You might want to take a look on our site and contact us
in case you like what you see.
Cheers
Manuela and Barnabas
--
-----------------------------------------------
Collini Design
Östra Ringarp 455
286 91 Örkelljunga
Tel: 0435 521 70
http://www.mkdata.se/usr/manuela.collini
e-mail: manuela...@mkdata.se
-----------------------------------------------
Tim Butterfield
Anyone interested in having a web presence should have an idea of what
the possibilities are and what might be the best fit for them. Philip
Greenspun, the guy behind http://photo.net/ , is a web developer as
well as a professor at MIT working on scalable web sites. He has
published a book, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, which has
a free online version at http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/ If you want to
develop a web presence, you might want to take a look at it and find
out about the different options that are available. For example, you
can have a static site, a dynamic site, an e-commerce site or a
combination of these. Each will have different hardware/connection
requirements, from simple web site hosting to co-locating your own
server. Also, which is more important to you and your customers,
functionality or flash. You can create a plain, functional site first
and then hire a graphical designer later to give a fancy interface to
that functionality. Sometimes, developers will add flash at the
expense of functionality. While it may look good, it might not
provide what is needed or may hurt the performace of the site. Will
your customer wait two minutes for a page to load or will they give up
and look at another site? Find out what you want to do before hiring
a developer. You will then be a better judge of whether a developer
is capable of doing what you need or if they are just blowing smoke.
Tim
Jeff Boucher
A lot of good suggestions from Tim.
Although (I'm not sure if you meant this Tim), I would strongly suggest you
don't throw something together, then have someone fine tune it for you,
unless you have a reasonable grip on this already.
This is your 'store front', the coat of paint on your new house. Think
first impressions here. A number of my clients have been people who fully
intended on 'fine tuning' their site...........months go by, in one case a
year +, in the meantime, the site that is supposed to represent you and your
talents 24 hours a day/7 days a week/around the planet - looks like
roadkill.
If you insist on laying the groundwork down, do yourself a favor and
don't upload it until you turn it over to whomever you hire to fine-tune it.
You never know who could be visiting or stumbling across your site - make
sure it looks great!
*I mean, it could be the client who is willing to pay the triple day rate,
month after month , all expenses, and you keep all the rights for stock,
the sales of which will allow you to retire to some warm sunny private
island (that you now own)!!!!!! <BBG> (whew, I HAVE to get rid of this
nitrous bottle........)
Cheers,
Jeff
Jeff Boucher Photography / Bonsai Studio and Design
bouche...@earthlink.net
* STOCK-ASSIGNMENT-DIGITAL-WEB DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT *
- Ask about our web position and design services-
Tim Butterfield
Jeff Boucher wrote:
>
> A lot of good suggestions from Tim.
Thanks.
> Although (I'm not sure if you meant this Tim), I would strongly suggest you
> don't throw something together, then have someone fine tune it for you,
> unless you have a reasonable grip on this already.
> This is your 'store front', the coat of paint on your new house. Think
> first impressions here.
I definitely do not mean to just throw something together. For the
development stage, work on functionality first. Once it functions
correctly, make it look pretty. By then, you also know that the code
on the server should be working properly. Making it look pretty can
be anything from just a basic clean up and making sure the screens
look ok to hiring a graphic designer for a major update. Either way,
it must look acceptable before presenting it to the clients.
Part of the problem of starting with the design (look and feel) first
is that you can begin to limit yourself to the features provided by a
particular browser because you like something it can do. When the web
site is finished, no other browser will work with it. The company I
work for did this to one client and it really ticked me off. You
could only use their site with Internet Explorer. The client is now
doing a partial rewrite to add support for Netscape. By starting with
functionality first and keeping the client side code, that sent to the
browsers, as much plain HTML as much as possible, you get the benefit
of (almost) any browser being able to access the site. It will also
prove the functionality of the server code. Once the site works, you
can start adding additional client side code to provide the flash,
keeping in mind incompatibilities between different browsers and even
different version of browsers.
> If you insist on laying the groundwork down, do yourself a favor and
> don't upload it until you turn it over to whomever you hire to fine-tune it.
> You never know who could be visiting or stumbling across your site - make
> sure it looks great!
All you have to do for this is to change the index.html file to
index-in-testing.html. This prevents it from loading as the default
page but still allows you to type in the URL to look at it and test
it.
> *I mean, it could be the client who is willing to pay the triple day rate,
> month after month , all expenses, and you keep all the rights for stock,
> the sales of which will allow you to retire to some warm sunny private
> island (that you now own)!!!!!! <BBG> (whew, I HAVE to get rid of this
> nitrous bottle........)
This makes me wonder something else. Is the client more likely to
hire you because your web site used some Shockwave or because of your
stunning images?
Tim
Peter
>From: "Mike Shipman" <m...@micron.net>
>
>I've been spending a lot of time working up my web site and have been
>thinking about hiring a webmaster to do some design work and periodic
>updates. I have a question about what to expect to pay for a webmaster for
>periodic work on a relatively small web site. I'd like to hear from those of
>you who have hired webmasters (Privately please, unless the moderators allow
>general posting). If you could help me with:
>
>1. How did you find your webmaster?
>2. What is an average rate (hourly) to expect to pay for design work and
>periodic maintenance for a small site?
>3. Is your webmaster local?
>4. What services
>To keep responses to a minimum I would like to limit responses to those with
>web sites that have similar characteristics to the following:
>
>1. 6-10 pages (internal links) in length (image # variable)
>2. No cgi, applet, or JAVA scripting
>3. Perhaps one order/response form
>4. Guestbook
>
>Thank you. I know I could ask in other forums, and I will. But,I would like
>to hear from individuals within the same field as I regarding their
>experiences. Thanks.
>
Hi there,
I can tell you first hand what some will cost. I am a photographer as well
as a computer scientist, I work in the Bioinformatics industry. I do
maintain a number of websites.
Your site is consired to be small. Some people might charge by the hour,
but they are generally not professionals, and they do not maintain this
sort of thing for a living.
From scratch, including the pages and standard form collecting programming,
with a few images. A small business/personal site would typicall cost
between $500-800. This really depends on the complexity of the page. A
professional would charge starting at $35 per page, including some image
work. IF you want some significant image preparation, then a charge per
hour would be invoked; typically $50-75 an hour.
For a proper commercial site, it is alot more since there is much more
programming. Pages then might cost about $200 each, but they are very
graphical scripted and may interact with databes and so on.
if you need a little help in maintaining a site of about 10 pages which
would include some simple image preparation then I would just give you a
flat hour rate for maintenance or a based on an estimated number of
updates, a monthly support fee. If you needed an hour per week of some
serious work, then I would charge for 4 hours time. For a commercial site
(non personal/business), it would be much higher and I would issue a
service contract lasting 1 year, to be paid for the year.
Is $35 a fair price for a personal business page. Very much so if the
creater is touting tools such as images manipulating software like
photoshop ($1200 + etc), web page maintenace software, etc etc.
Your site seems fairly straightforward and simple. Even though you would
not expect scripting or cgi, I would use them anyway, since I have a
library of tools.
I would also suggest that you have a clear plan for the use of your site,
including an update schedule etc etc, so that you do not wastes your money.
I hope this helps.
I could help you further if you wish.
Why do you need help? Are you a full time photographer that must spend more
time shooting that working on a computer? I know many photographers where
this is the case, so they would need to hire somebody to handle a web site.
Is it a lack of computer experience? There are a number of ways you can
build a site yourself and keep it updated.
Is it cost. to manage a site, I have found that you need some good
software. Per year that is going to run you $1500.00 or more, including a
hosting service.
Peter
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Peter Wilkinson | ...what is the use of studying |
| B.Sc. Biochemistry | philosophy... if it does not improve |
| | your thinking about the important |
| pw...@videotron.ca | questions of everyday life... |
| pa_w...@alcor.concordia.ca | - L. Wittgenstein |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
Jeff Boucher
Peter wrote:>Some people might charge by the hour, but they are generally
not professionals
Followed by:>if you need a little help in maintaining a site of about 10
pages which would include some simple image preparation then I would just
give you a
flat hour rate for maintenance or a based on an estimated number of
updates, a monthly support fee. If you needed an hour per week of some
serious work, then I would charge for 4 hours time
So then, can I safely say you are not a professional?
>Is $35 a fair price for a personal business page. Very much so if the
creater is touting tools such as images manipulating software like
photoshop ($1200 + etc), web page maintenace software, etc etc.
I'm not sure what this means either, unless it's a tongue in cheek
understatement on being a 'fair price'. I wouldn't fire up my computer for
$35.
Cheers,
Jeff
Jeff Boucher Photography / Bonsai Studio and Design
bouche...@earthlink.net
* STOCK-ASSIGNMENT-DIGITAL-WEB DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT *
- Ask about our web position and design services-
'When the chips are down, the buffalo's empty.'
Mike Shipman
Thanks all who replied with excellent suggestions and information. This is
an important subject (several threads have had the topic of the pros and
cons of having a web site) and I'm sure the info helped others as well.
Although I do have some experience with HTML programming and web design, I'm
not a professional in that field. As one person asked, yes, even though I
like tinkering with my web page, I would rather spend those hours outside
shooting photos. I received much more information and suggestions than I
was asking for (thanks all the same) and was really only asking for some
average costs for setting up and maintaining a web site of 6-10 pages, etc.
I have that information now, and will chew on that for a bit while I decide
what to do next, where I want my web site to go/do etc.
Thanks again for all the help.
Mike Shipman
Blue Planet Photography
Stock * Fine Art * Décor * Instruction
PO Box 44569 Boise ID 83711-0569
208.327.1016 (voice)
m...@micron.net (email)
http://www.webpak.net/~man/ (web)
Peter
>From: "Jeff Boucher" <bouche...@earthlink.net>
>
>Peter wrote:>Some people might charge by the hour, but they are generally
>not professionals
>Followed by:>if you need a little help in maintaining a site of about 10
>pages which would include some simple image preparation then I would just
>give you a
>flat hour rate for maintenance or a based on an estimated number of
>updates, a monthly support fee. If you needed an hour per week of some
>serious work, then I would charge for 4 hours time
>
>So then, can I safely say you are not a professional?
no, but I see why you ask this, sorry for the confusion. In general I
estimate the cost of a site from an initial estimate based on a package. So
a base price for the site is drawn up. Once the site is built, then there
might by update fee billed hourly (several hours at the time). My point
was that (at least for me), when asked to build a page, I start from the
beginning with a minimum fee.
Many people are touting some experience with web page design, and are
trying to make a fast buck. But the sites they generate generally suck:
they are non programmers who are just using WYSIWYG tools and have very
little grapics experience. Avoid them
It is also not in the interest of a photographer to make a shoddy looking
site. This would make a bad imnpresion and publishers remember this.
For the most part, Photographer's individual sites are the pits. Very few
are functional at all, let alone attractive. Most are just fyers. The only
ones that seem to be good are those photographers you are graphic designers
or computer geeks like the rest of us. The are generally young and are up
to date with today's trends, but then there photographs are pretty average.
This would improve with experience of course. It seems though that one is
either great at one and ok at the other. It is hard to put in equal amounts
of time into both, since they are both artistic and are time consuming.
>>Is $35 a fair price for a personal business page. Very much so if the
>creater is touting tools such as images manipulating software like
>photoshop ($1200 + etc), web page maintenace software, etc etc.
>
>I'm not sure what this means either, unless it's a tongue in cheek
>understatement on being a 'fair price'. I wouldn't fire up my computer for
>$35.
Neither would I, but 15 hours of work at $35 I would if it is the case of
an individual photographer, who just wants to get a basic web presence. It
is not a huge sum by any means, but I do not need to make so much money of
somebody who is getting their feet wet, and who is asking for a very simple
site.
Small to medium businesses I would not fire up my computer either for that
much, I aggree with you here. Estimating for a site build, if it included
simple ecommerce capability and a small databases, would just start at
$8000 or so. This price can vary alot ... depending on the needs of the
company.
Money is not always an issue, surely you would not object to being generous
with somebody who is starting up? Most of the time, I do those sites for
nothing, just to get them (friends of friends) started, then they are on
their own.
Peter
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Peter Wilkinson | ...what is the use of studying |
| B.Sc. Biochemistry | philosophy... if it does not improve |
| | your thinking about the important |
| pw...@videotron.ca | questions of everyday life... |
| pa_w...@alcor.concordia.ca | - L. Wittgenstein |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
Cobl...@aol.com
Jeff Boucher
Peter replied>Money is not always an issue, surely you would not object to
being generous with somebody who is starting up?
Absolutely! (In fact my partner thinks I may do that too much! :) - I agree,
I have been given a helping hand when I got going (although no one had
websites then), and it's the right thing to do. Good karma baby!
Also good to see you were at least referring to the $35 as an hourly
basis. I misunderstood and thought you would charge $35 for the page - my
apologies!
Cheers,
Jeff
'Web-chimp, burner of celluloid, drinker of dark beer (and not necessarily
in
that order....)
TREV...@aol.com
In a message dated 29/9/99 3:18:18 pm, pw...@videotron.ca wrote:
<<For the most part, Photographer's individual sites are the pits. Very few
are functional at all, let alone attractive. Most are just fyers. The only
ones that seem to be good are those photographers you are graphic designers
or computer geeks like the rest of us. The are generally young and are up
to date with today's trends, but then there photographs are pretty average.
This would improve with experience of course. It seems though that one is
either great at one and ok at the other. It is hard to put in equal amounts
of time into both, since they are both artistic and are time consuming.>>
Can you give names of what you think are good photographer's sites? I think
Edmund Nagele does a good job with his, but he isn't young or a computer
geek. I'd like to know what is a good site before I start my own.
Yours Bob Croxford
Iglo...@aol.com
Dear Bob,
I spent a long time on the phone a few months ago with Tom Till. You probably
know his work, but if not he is one of the most prolific large format
landscape phtographers in the US (on par with David Muench, Pat O'Hara, Jeff
Gnass, etc.).
He lives in Moab, Utah and decided that he had a correct set of factors that
would allow him to open a fine art print gallery for his work (high tourism
traffic; affordable labour and rental real estate, etc.). The gallery has
been a financial success, and I particularly asked him about his website's
role in that success. What he said was interesting.
He had figured out that roughly 25 percent of his print sales were "remorse
purchases". A couple wanted to buy a print, mulled it over in the gallery and
passed, but did at least take a business card with a URL. Days or weeks later
they realized they had maybe made a mistake, went to the netsite and looked
at the print again and put in their shopping cart. He feels as if the Netsite
brings him little or no direct inquiries from publishers. This is not
surprising since he is already so well known within his niche
market.(www.tomtill.com).
If you want to see a website of great sophistication check out Frans
Lanting's site at www.lanting.com. Besides profiling his work and immense
international reputation, keeping students updated about upcoming seminars,
etc., he has also done something interesting with his book sales.
For a number of reasons none of Frans' books previous to "Face to Face" had
done well, despite spectacular performance on the magazine circuit. In most
cases I see it as marketing ineptitude by the publishers, some of them quite
large (Sierra Club Books, Aperture, etc.).
What he has done is buy back large blocks of remainders for direct sale via
his website, and at book signings done after his "airport hotel"
workshops--morning workshop in Detroit, evening workshop in Cleveland ($$$$$).
If you want to see a site effective at selling fine art prints visit my
friend Bill Neill's site at http://www.williamneill.com. Bill's large format
work straddles a very fine edge between being viable both to commercial book
publishers and as fine art. His books, despite some very prestigious
publishers (e.g. Bull Finch Press--formely The New Yorl Graphic Society),
rarely provide income beyond the advance (averaging $7-12,000 usd). However
they have proven a very powerful catalog for print sales, especially during
workshops (they serve like "certificates of fame").
Anyway, that's my take on some sites where I know the proprietors well (Frans
I wish I didn't know--but that's another story).
Best regards,
-- Gene
Iglo...@aol.com
In a message dated 99-10-01 20:51:01 EDT, you write:
<< From: Iglo...@aol.com
Dear Bob,
I spent a long time on the phone a few months ago with Tom Till. You
probably
know his work, but if not he is one of the most prolific large format
landscape phtographers in the US (on par with David Muench, Pat O'Hara, Jeff
Gnass, etc.). >>
=====
SNIP
=====
DEAR LIST MEMBERS:
THIS WAS INTENDED AS A PRIVATE POST TO BOB CROXFORD (TREV...@AOL.COM) AND I
HIT THE WRONG BUTTON. THE CONTENTS OF THIS POST ARE PRIVATE AND PERSONAL AND
WERE NEVER INTENDED FOR "PUBLICATION" ON A PUBLIC LIST. MY APOLOGIES FOR ANY
OFFENSE OR BREACH OF PRIVACY TO PARTIES MENTIONED.
SINCERELY,
EUGENE FISHER