Webmaster Fees - How Much to Charge?
 

I'm a newbie adult webmaster. I've set-up and managed mainstream sites, and I'm quite experienced in CMS back-ends, HTML, CSS and a little PHP. But apart from running a couple adult blogs in the past, I'm relatively new to the adult side of things.

Here's my question. I've been asked project manage, set-up and webmaster a custom VOD CMS. Basically, I'll need to liaise with the developer, set-up the HTML templates for the front-end (all the design work will be provided, CSS, Images, HTML etc). Upload content and test the system before going live.

There are two ways I can go with this:

Option 1 - Charge a one-off, set-up fee and hand over the finished project. Or,

Option 2 - Charge a smaller set-up fee, and agree a monthly maintenance fee.

I know there are pros and cons to either options, but what should I be charging for Option 1 or 2?

It's a small operation with limited funds, so I can't pitch too high, but at the same time I don't want to undersell myself and end up working for pennies!

I appreciate it's a bit of how long is a piece of string, or how much do you think you can get away with type question. But some ball-park, starting figures would be really helpful.

Thanks :)

Better for you is to charge a Fixed Price then later he will probably hire you for updates that you can charge by the Hour if you want

Thanks. I'm also looking for some ball-park figures, because I know they're looking for a fixed fee, with a bit of flexibility for contingencies.

From looking at the back-end, I estimate I'd be looking at about 7 days work for the set-up and testing. And about 5 days per month maintenance, updates etc.

Any ideas on what figure to pitch just for the set-up, and what to pitch for the monthly maintenance?

Edit/Delete Message

£300-350 a day. Same for the rest, because maintenance should be fully scoped and updates are on a per project basis. Make sure you have concrete scope on the project, detail as much as you can in an FSD and stick to it. Deviations are treated as CR (Change requests) and can be billed as seperate ad-hoc projects. Get Balsamiq and get sign off on layouts and pages before work. Detail as much as possible. Once they get to know you, you can ramp down the scope of an FSD and work in a more agile process. Provide a daily update, preferably 15 mins on Skype detailing everything done, and everything to do.