I’m currently working with an agency outsourcing me work. They pretty much outsource all of their web work to me, I’m trying to figure out my rate per project. Most sites I build for them are on WordPress with a customised back-end so it’s very easy to update, I put a lot of detail into that. I believe my work to be of a very good quality with regards to responsive design, code, testing and design details such as spacing, alignment, typography etc.
For most of their projects, they have a graphic designer who designs the initial design in PSD format for the desktop version to help give me a design to base off. I will then take this design (trying to adhere to it), adapt it where I see fit, make it responsive and develop it onto a fully functioning WordPress website. Most of these sites will usually have a full blog/news section as well.
What sort of percentage per project (like the above) do you think I should be looking at? As I believe I’m doing the bulk of the work. I even deal with some of the client liaison.
I think you should think of it more in terms of how much you need to earn to maintain yourself and grow, and then leave it up to the agency to tack on whatever percentage they require for their operations and let them handle it from there.
But don’t stick too strongly with those guidelines. Remember there are market factors at play too. If your work is really, really good, you’d be in high demand and low supply (they’d be throwing more work your way than you’d have Time to do), so you could afford to crank your demands up a bit to help you get through lean times or to improve your operations.
Keep in mind the people providing the work to you probably worked hard to be in a position to be able to get the leads in the first place. You are benefiting from the work they put into building their business. They also probably have to continue to find new ways to innovate, so you are just seeing them in one sliver of time, and they may be completely different in the future. Rather than think about what they owe you, I would focus on developing some of your own clients so that you can set the pricing that you get paid.
The most difficult part of the web design industry is finding a good lead and converting that into a paying client. Good sales people are thin on the ground. Good coders/designers are in plentiful supply, however. So your leverage may not be as great as you hope!