To charge or not??

[UKBusinessLive]

Hi Guys

Over the past 3 weeks i've been learning CSS and i'm very interested in making menu tabs, especially Dropdowns :) Now as i'm learning and making some good looking samples i want to try and make a few dollars out of it. There are a lot of webmasters and site builders that i guess would welcome this type of service.

Whilst i will always add a few menus on VB.org for free, i feel that now i need to branch out more and target new sites and people that would like a service like this.

Take a look at the sample in the picture, Thats about 6 hours worth of work with all the links, and urls, so now you'll see that i can't do this for free for everyone, unless your a member of VB.org ;)

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2009/01/18.png

What i had in mind was a menu bar with say 6 items and within that say a max of 6 submenu's and the odd menu link off the sub if required, That alone would take me about 2 hours to do including the graphic's. So as you see it's not unreasonable to charge a fee for this time spent, but how much????

I was thinking of advertising a figure like $25 per menu (?18) for a couple of hours work i don't think thats expensive?? :confused:

All i want to know is what sort of fee do you guys think is reasonable, and what would you be prepared to pay???

I was thinking of perhaps adding this service to ebay?? Theres nothing on there like this, I guess that once you've done a job for someone, word gets round, and theres always the repeat customer, who's forever happy!

So in short, What would be a fair fee for something like this, and where would be the best place to market a service like this.

I'd like to hear from experianced designers and graphic artists as i respect your talent 100%, I know i'm only starting out but hope to be up there with you all soon ;)

Cheers

Gerry :D

[Shelley_c]

9 pound an hour is generous, very generous. I wouldn't work so cheap but I understand your starting out. If I take a job on it would be around 24 pound an hour. Then, you have to consider the scale of the projects and maybe go with a ball part figure (all inclusive). To answer your question. I don't think you'll have to many grumbles in gaining a customer base. And, on the offchance you get the odd grumble simply don't take the job, I don't.

Your time is money and so is your expertise yo developed over time. And this is coming from a person who provides 70% of her online work for free. :eek:

Just because you provide your work in the past for free don't be afraid to set an amount for your graft. Heck, other people are in on the action and your no different wanting a slice of the pie. goodluck with it.

[UKBusinessLive]

9 pound an hour is generous, very generous. I wouldn't work so cheap but I understand your starting out. If I take a job on it would be around 24 pound an hour. Then, you have to consider the scale of the projects and maybe go with a ball part figure (all inclusive). To answer your question. I don't think you'll have to many grumbles in gaining a customer base. And, on the offchance you get the odd grumble simply don't take the job, I don't.

Your time is money and so is your expertise yo developed over time. And this is coming from a person who provides 70% of her online work for free. :eek:

Just because you provide your work in the past for free don't be afraid to set an amount for your graft. Heck, other people are in on the action and your no different wanting a slice of the pie. goodluck with it.

Thanks Shelley, I value your wisdom and respect your work 100%, Plus your mad like me which helps :D

We all start at the bottom, i just want to offer a service, one which i feel can make a differnce and one which alot of sites leave out because of the complexity of the coding.

I love helping people out and would always go out of my way to help where i can, its my nature, But at the end of the day, Goodness dosn't pay bills ;)

Start off small and see how it goes, Thats what i'll do, plus the small fee is mearly a token of goodwill as oppose to "Per Hour Billing" Hopefully by gaining a few clients on route, I can start to build up a portfolio of what i do.

Do you think something like this would sell on ebay?? or is there an alternative venue for promoting this idea??

[Shelley_c]

I think their are people here which will be able to provide you with a better anwser for promoting your services/goods.

At present, by posting some of your work here is a good start to your portfolio, your site is another (as I'm sure you have tabs implemented?) What I would do to start off is post your work on other graphic,webmaster sources (the stuff you have already posted here) this alone will throw your work out to a wider audience. I would post a note (if your supporting your free stuff that you've posted) is state that you will only provide support at the org. This will stop you from jumping on many sites and have requests dotted around here and there.

On a side note. when people say they have to pay the bills and eat when making the transition to paid work bugs the shit out of me. Not by the people that say it purely because people feel the need to say it and hoping the potential customer base accepts it that you need to make a living. Never feel the need to explain that you need to eat, they know, they can use their common sense and know you are providing a paid service. they either (like my parents used to say) like it, or lump it. :p

Anyway, I'm sure other people can jump in and help you a little more on the different aspects of monetizing etc and give you some good advice.

[UKBusinessLive]

I think their are people here which will be able to provide you with a better anwser for promoting your services/goods.

At present, by posting some of your work here is a good start to your portfolio, your site is another (as I'm sure you have tabs implemented?) What I would do to start off is post your work on other graphic,webmaster sources (the stuff you have already posted here) this alone will throw your work out to a wider audience. I would post a note (if your supporting your free stuff that you've posted) is state that you will only provide support at the org. This will stop you from jumping on many sites and have requests dotted around here and there.

On a side note. when people say they have to pay the bills and eat when making the transition to paid work bugs the shit out of me. Not by the people that say it purely because people feel the need to say it and hoping the potential customer base accepts it that you need to make a living. Never feel the need to explain that you need to eat, they know, they can use their common sense and know you are providing a paid service. they either (like my parents used to say) like it, or lump it. :p

Anyway, I'm sure other people can jump in and help you a little more on the different aspects of monetizing etc and give you some good advice.

Thanks Shelley :D I guess that was what i wanted to hear, so thanks for your reply.

What i meant to say when i said bills need to be paid is that whilst i don't mind helping people out and i will, I also need to figure out where i cross the line from spending hours online helping for free to when my time is fully taken up that i have no option but to charge.

Do you see what i mean, I'd love to do a Bob Geldolf and say "Give me all your Money", But its a bit early for that :D

[KTBleeding]

I don't want to sound offensive, but after only three weeks of doing CSS, you think your stuff is worth money? Maybe it is, but from what I've seen from beginners / intermediates, the code is an absolute mess and it's hard to take it seriously.

Also, what would make anyone purchase your menu instead of use on of the thousands that exist for free? CSS isn't really a money making script, it's use should be to make your sites more semantic and easy to alter. It's also not something that is hard to learn..

I'm sure you'd make some money from some people but I wouldn't get my hopes up at all.

You'd probably make more money if you threw it up for free and put adsense on the page. The menu looks nicer than a lot of them do, so that could be what is used to draw more people in.

[UKBusinessLive]

I don't want to sound offensive, but after only three weeks of doing CSS, you think your stuff is worth money? Maybe it is, but from what I've seen from beginners / intermediates, the code is an absolute mess and it's hard to take it seriously.

Also, what would make anyone purchase your menu instead of use on of the thousands that exist for free? CSS isn't really a money making script, it's use should be to make your sites more semantic and easy to alter. It's also not something that is hard to learn..

I'm sure you'd make some money from some people but I wouldn't get my hopes up at all.

You'd probably make more money if you threw it up for free and put adsense on the page. The menu looks nicer than a lot of them do, so that could be what is used to draw more people in.

Comment taken, Thanks, thats why i posted on here, I feel pretty confident now that i can happily create a nice menutab for someone, Be it a forum or website, Its something which i've enjoyed doing and i'm looking forward to broadening my horizons. although i've dabbled with it for around 3 weeks solid i've had basic experiance and this is improving on a day by day basis. Whilst i don't profess to be the best, I will do what i can and will see the projects through 100%.

Alot of menu tabs are very messy with css, javascript and html all chuked in, this make it very hard for the end user to identify and correct any errors or bugs, pure CSS menus are a lot neater and simply coded. This is what i'm hoping to excel in.

Anyone can slap together any old bit of code, stir in a bit of adsense, But i beg to differ

Its worth a try, I'm not one to just give up.

Thanks for your comments as always i value all comments as i don't want to go into this half blind.

Cheers buddy :up:

[KTBleeding]

Perhaps I misunderstood your intent. After reading I am under the impression that you will be charging people $25 to put your menu on their site.. meaning you go in and do the work for them? Originally I thought just like most scripts.. you buy it, you download it, you install it..

If it's the other way, then absolutely you should be compensated for your time. I would charge hourly over a flat rate. There have been so many times when you think a job will be simple and only take a few minutes and have it take hours because of the previously existing code being a wreck.

[UKBusinessLive]

Perhaps I misunderstood your intent. After reading I am under the impression that you will be charging people $25 to put your menu on their site.. meaning you go in and do the work for them? Originally I thought just like most scripts.. you buy it, you download it, you install it..

If it's the other way, then absolutely you should be compensated for your time. I would charge hourly over a flat rate. There have been so many times when you think a job will be simple and only take a few minutes and have it take hours because of the previously existing code being a wreck.

Thanks, I was just asking what sort of money would people be prepared to pay, I'm all for helping the little guy out, at the end of the day you get a nice bit of coding, your supported 100% and rest assured, the little guy will help out much more than say a company charging $100 an hour for the same job.

I agree ther are loads of free scripts out there, some old, some new, but to get something thats original and just for your site, same colors etc, needs custom coding and graphics. My idea was to start off small, charge a token fee and take it from there, to me its a hobby at the moment, but who knows in years to come :cool:

Thanks again Tyler for your reply :D

[JacquiiDesigns]

There is software like the SoThink XHTML Menu Creator (http://www.sothink.com/product/dhtmlmenu/?gclid=CPu3lOm4rZgCFQKHxwodk3B-9Q) that creates similar menus - But that coding from scratch is a real talent UKBusinessLive - I'm sure there may be many web designers and vB skin designers that would make use of your talent. Yes! Some people would like such sophistocated menu styling for their forums. And surely if I were offering such a menu design for my client - The style would be a good $45 more expensive with the menu than without ;) ---- Anyway - Nice job = Good luck with it.

Jacquii.

[UKBusinessLive]

Thanks Jacquii :D

[GSeybold]

That looks great UK. I'm impressed!

[KTBleeding]

There is software like the SoThink XHTML Menu Creator (http://www.sothink.com/product/dhtmlmenu/?gclid=CPu3lOm4rZgCFQKHxwodk3B-9Q) The company I work for used this before I started. The generated code by this thing is extremely terrible and takes up WAY too much space for what it does.. Programming a generated menu like this was such a pain.

A nested UL or OL for a menu is much easier to work with, offers a great hierarchy if for whatever reason your css isn't supported (some hand held devices), and it's semantic.

I've created literally hundreds of menus over the past couple of years. The best advice I could give is to stick with straight css/html. My latest menu uses 15 lines of css, and then the html for however deep the menu structure needs to go. I'm sure you can imagine how good that is on your server loads.

Then if the client wants animated dropdowns, and a timer on it (this is pretty big, because straight up css :hover elements lose the drop down the split second you mouse off of it) then I use jQuery and a few additional lines of js.

It's a much better approach than using SoThink, so if any of you are looking into it, then perhaps you should give Mr. UKBusinessLive some of his first business and get a much more effective drop down navigation.

[UKBusinessLive]

Thanks Tyler,

I have been looking at jQuery, and it looks very interesting, That certainly cleans up the javascript.

What i'm going to do is to make a Forum menu bar with dropdowns that members will be able to edit quite easily prior to adding it to their site. I'll add it here for free, just a basic one, and we'll take it from there.

if anyone wants anything different then we'll look into it a bit more deeper. Tonight i spent the best part of 4 hours trying to do one thing and its not worked, I have books open and printouts everywhere, but i'm not going to give up, Thats the exiting part, to keep pressing on, no matter what the odds and finally getting it to work as you want it, is the grand finale :D

I try and set myself challenges every week and then spend all week trying to get it right, i've learnt from my mistakes and picked up a few tricks on the way :D

[lasto]

UKBusinessLive - if there is demand for what you do then why should`nt you get paid.
Making people`s menu`s for their site is no less than someone who designs or codes.
It all involves work and time so good luck m8 on your new adventure :)

[UKBusinessLive]

UKBusinessLive - if there is demand for what you do then why should`nt you get paid.
Making people`s menu`s for their site is no less than someone who designs or codes.
It all involves work and time so good luck m8 on your new adventure :)

Thanks buddy, I want to be able to help guys on here for free, but at the same time, make a few ???'s for other sites, every little helps, so they keep telling me :D

By doing basic ones for free here, hopefully will give me my much needed technical experiance as well as having a few sites for my portfolio.

But the main part will be websites and other forums and for a price ;)

[UKBusinessLive]

Hi everyone, Just finished my first dropdown menu, so i'd like to share it with everyone :D

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=203521