Like after you do the site and they want updates or something, how is that work charged to the client?
A fee,hourly rate?
Any replies would be appreciated thanks
Hi Midnite,
There’s been a number of similar topics here in the Business and Career Management forum.
I’m sure some of the more experienced designers will give you some hints and tips on how to work out your own rates.
Midnite,
I have done this two different ways:
- Set Fee: In a contract I will state that I will provide them with X number of hours of maintenance on their site each month for X number of dollars. I normally charge them each month even if I don’t use those hours, that is the reason I use a contract. It is up to them to contact me about updating the site. I do sell them on the idea that a frequently updated site is a better one if not for their customers, but for the search engines. Since I will still bill them if they don’t utilize those hours I will use a lesser hourly amount to figure the maintenance cost.
So instead of $75 per hour I might only charge them $50 per hour X 3 hours of maintenance = $150 per month for no more than 3 hours of maintenance
- Hourly Fee: I will offer them the ability to update their site each month, but I will tell them that they have to have the updates they want completed to me no later than a certain date. This allows me to schedule in their updates around my other projects. Using this method I will use my normal rates.
I hope this helped.
I normally go with a mixture of the two chad has proposed.
I’ll generally charge roughly 50$/month for no more then 3 hours of maintenance (cause all sites are db driven the only maintenance would be if something actually broke somehow). After that I charge the normal 75$/hour for any extra hours.
It works out fairly well 
so how many years of experience do you need in order to become a webmaster??
also how do you go about becoming a webmaster. thanks if you can help 
Many years ago the term webmaster had a different definition than it does today. Before a webmaster was someone who took care of everything related to the website, server, software, design, etc. as you can see in this definition at Webopedia.com:
So if you go off of this definition it can take several years to become knowledgeable enough to handle all of these tasks, especially obtaining the knowledge of web servers and proper setup.
But, if you are defining webmaste as someone who designs websites and maintains them, this can be done in a rather short amount of time, say several months if you put all of your time into learning the necessary skills. Of course, the more time and effort you put into it the better you will become.
In regards to what a webmaster should charge here are a few sites that list salaries of various positions:
I hope this helps. I posted a calculator I created in a previous post if you would like to see how much you should charge, you can find it here: Web Designer’s Hourly Calculator