Am I undercharging? Is that a problem?

[CloudCover]

Hi everyone,

Everywhere I go I hear that you shouldn't undercharge, as it makes people think that you're not very good. At the same time, I'm new to freelancing (set up 3 months ago - although I've been working in a design role for 3 years previously), and I don't want to look cocky. I've got a couple of decent clients (Oxford University, the National AIDS Trust, a PR firm in the North East) and they've always been happy with my work. I also do a bit of work for an agency, who charge £30 per hour for my services (I charge £20 when clients come direct to me). On the other hand, I don't have a website; I've not had time to teach myself to code it and I don't want/can't afford to hand it over to someone else. This is obviously a real problem, as people like to be shown a portfolio.

My questions are these, given the above:

1. Is £20 per hour too little to charge?
2. Will that be damaging my profile, rather than bringing in business volume?

Any comments at all would be greatly appreciated.

Rich

[JMCDesigner]

You need to ask yourself that question. If you think its too little, justify why your work is worth more. As for your online portfolio, there are plenty of resources out there that let you build a website without having to code. It might be as simple as setting up a blog with links to your work, wordpress is pretty popular.

[CloudCover]

Hey,

Thanks for the advice. I certainly think that I'm worth more than that, I put a lot of work in to making things look right, and while I wouldn't call myself a heavyweight I think that (printwise) I meet the specs for a middleweight.

I hadn't thought of wordpress - that's a great stopgap. Thanks a lot!

R

[bigdave]

Theres nothing to say that you cant use a coder and start to take on web work. Just quote per job rather than per hour. Find out what the coders rate per page is, decide how long it's going to take you to design the site and thats what you charge the customer. A mate of mine makes a living from outsourcing web work. eg; I give him my price for design, his coder give their price for coding and then he sticks 10% on top so its definately viable.