Oimachi2:
- How much to charge agencies to subcontract
- I have 15 years experience and can build pretty much anything
- But in the real world, agencies want affordable rates, no matter how "valuable" I think I am.
- My retail rate is $40 and it seems to be too high for agencies, and I keep losing opportunities
Many of us have been there, perhaps it's worth looking at this from a purely business perspective (model, efficiency, profit), even if it means looking into different directions. How much to charge is a complex game because depending on your client, they might be looking for cheap prices, and you should not want to be the cheap guy because you will never get out of there, but also, perhaps you have way too much experience and they still just need someone to put a nail on the wall, so, they will pay average low market price for that, regardless of your picasso skills. Yah, sadly how valuable you are (objectively or from a personal view) can have little impact if all they are looking for is a price that allows them to keep their profit margins safe. What matters here is to stop loosing opportunities.
What I have learned is the web is VERY volatile, including work derived from agencies, this means it doesn't matter how great of a job you do, most of those sites won't even be alive after the first year (or two tops), specially not having direct access to the clients because you won't be able of providing advice and guidance. It's rare to find an agency that does proper SEO ensuring the clients have long lasting websites. This can also happen with direct clients if they don't allow you to guide them. So in my opinion, it's charge-once and bye bye, not much investment and ROI there.
I do believe you should charge based on what you can provide, and given your experience, it's different from the average joe, but agencies pretty sure won't engage with this, and thus, you will be loosing opportunities. Not to mention the websites you build might not be something you want to include on your portfolio because they don't speak about your work 100%.
I mentioned approaching this from a purely business perspective, because in terms of income and time/profit, you might be doing better on something else, like, painting walls (just an expression). In my personal case, I ended up rejecting offers to focus on something different, as it was more efficient than dealing with clients or agencies, the problem was I wanted to do what I like to do "websites", but I ended up moving away, yes, and I don't regret it. Someone from this forum with lots of experience in Europe shared in the past how he moved to the tshirt business.
The previous paragraphs might sound too general, let's go to the specifics. Building a website: text, copy writing, photography, video, HTML+CSS, coding, etc. Sometimes doing all of that ends up turning into cheap money, but sometimes focusing on one of those services ends up being more profitable, like let's say photography or video. I started in photography, and in this regard I enjoyed more getting there, doing the job, leaving, delivering and getting paid, VS the whole show. So yes, from a purely business perspective, sometimes focusing on just one service/product can simplify your life, workflow and income. Hope that I made some sense of these words.
