Goodies to Go ™
February 24, 2003–Newsletter #221
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
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Featured
this week:
* Goodies Thoughts –
The Value of Web Development.
* Q & A Goodies
* News Goodies
* Feedback Goodies
* And Remember This…
Goodies Announcement
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| Goodies Thoughts – |
The Value of Web Development. |
Every now and then one of my friends
will ask me how much they should charge for doing
web development work. I am usually a bit at a loss
for the best way to answer a question like that and
so will often give an answer something like
"everything you can get away with; not a penny less,
and, if you’re wise, not a penny more." Of course
that’s not particularly helpful, but then it’s
difficult to provide a truly useful answer to that
question. Then, however, I was asked the same
question by a reader. Hmmm! Then another, and pretty
soon another. When HTML Goodies and Goodies To Go
readers want an answer, who am I to deny them?!
It is still a very tough question, and it’s
impossible to provide a numerical answer that would
have any real meaning in all the parts of the world
that are graced by our readership. Instead, I have
tried to think up a method for deriving an answer
that will hopefully provide some guidance, and
enable you to come up with a good number yourself.
There are four elements that go into a price: time,
materials, overhead and mark-up. I think it will be
easiest to look at each of these in reverse order.
Note that these elements are for your own use only;
I wouldn’t recommend sharing your calculations with
your clients!
If you want to include a mark-up, remember these
tips: apply a uniform percentage across all the
other elements; don’t be greedy or you’ll lose
business; remember that this is a great place for
you to give something away in the form of a
discount.
Overhead is actually fairly easy to figure out! Take
your monthly costs and divide them by your time.
That’s your overhead! For example, suppose your
office space, utilities, phone, internet connection,
insurance etc. adds to 2000.00 each month and you
work 50 hours a week on your web development.
Assuming four weeks to a month, your overhead is
2000/200, or 10 per hour (in whatever currency you
are calculating!)
Materials are probably non existent unless you
choose to use stock photos that include licensing
fees, or you wish to consider hosting cost as a
"material" cost. Use as close to actual cost as you
can, applying your mark-up, if any.
Time is what you are selling. Your time is the true
value in your website development effort. Consider
what is a reasonable amount for your time on an
hourly basis. Again, don’t be greedy, but rather be
as realistic as you can. What could you earn for
your work as an employee of a company? As a
freelancer, your time would earn a little more than
you would be paid as an employee because employers
provide other benefits to their employees. When
selling your time remember that this fee is all you
are going to get for your time, and be fair to
yourself as well as to your client.
Let’s say that you have arrived at an hourly rate of
15.00, that there are no materials involved, that
your overhead came to 10.00 and that your mark-up
decision was 10%. 10.00 + 15.00 = 25.00, plus 10% is
27.50. There is your hourly rate. That amount times
the number of hours you work (plus the materials —
in this case zero, with mark-up: still zero) is the
value of your effort and the amount you should
charge.
If your client wants to know ahead of time what the
total is going to be, you will have to estimate your
time. To do that you will need to have the client
give you written, detailed specifications for the
site. When you then present your estimate you will
have to specify how you will handle changes or
variances from the original specifications that
occur. The chances of changes coming along are
usually very high, and it is not uncommon for the
total changes to involve more time than you
originally estimated for the entire project. Be
certain that you clearly handle this issue with your
client in advance of starting work; it has a very
large potential area for dissatisfaction in either
direction if not handled properly.
Finally. keep an accurate and honest log of your
work time. This is how you will get good at
estimating your time requirements. It’s also how you
will justify your charges to your client, if you are
billing on a time basis. Not only will your
estimating improve as you build experience, so too
will your ability to fine tune your rate to the
market in which you are selling. Stick to your
formula. Don’t suddenly start making guesses at the
final number. You need to know the elements so that
you can adjust them as they change and see the
effect on your final number.
Just as your estimating skills improve, so too will
your coding skills improve, especially as you
continue to use Goodies To Go to keep on top of
things, and HTML Goodies to pick up new technology
skills and advice! As this happens, your time will
become more valuable — but then, you already know
how to adjust for that!!
Thanks for Reading!
– Vince Barnes
Q
& A Goodies
Questions are taken
from submissions to our Community Mentors. You can ask a Mentor a question by
going to
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/.
Q. How do I open a separate window when a
link is clicked, rather than overwriting the
current page?
A. Add target="_blank" to the link tags.
Q. My question involves creating a
default style that would contain font-family,
style, etc for all elements. I’d then like all
styles to default to these setting except when I
specify an override. Is this possible?
A. Create your style as body {} and
whenever needed, create other styles and put
<div class="otherStyle"> to override.
Q. I am making a website and I downloaded
a .psd file that was supposed to be a layout for
the website. I am not sure what to do with the
file.
A. A ".psd" file is a PhotoShop file. You
will need either Adobe PhotoShop or another
image editor that can read ".psd" files to open
it.
Q. When I try to insert a snippit of Java
Script into an already completed HTML page
everything gets scrambled up and I have to
delete the Java Script portion to get it working
again. How can I put a Java Script somewhere
other than at the top or bottom of an HTML page,
without disrupting the HTML coding?
A. As long as you use the script tags it
should not affect your html (unless that is the
script’s purpose). The script tags look like
this:
<script language="JavaScript">
some java script statements
</script>
Q. I have link that is targeted to open
in a new browser window. I want to force the
behaviour of the new window but cannot find out
how to do so. The behaviour I want to force is
as follows:
The browser window has no nav bar, address bar
etc.; the size of the browser window is dictated
by me.
The site I am developing will be running on an
intranet using an MSIE browser and WinNT server.
A. This script opens a new window:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript">
<!–
window.open (‘titlepage.html’, ‘newwindow’,
config=’height=100,
width=400, toolbar=no, menubar=no,
scrollbars=no, resizable=no,
location=no, directories=no, status=no’)
–>
</SCRIPT>
The first parameter is the file that opens in
the new window, the second is the name of the
window, the third is the configuration of the
window like size, toolbars and such. "No" keeps
them off, and "yes" includes them.
Q. I can’t figure out why, when the link
below is clicked, the called page opens in a new
window. The page that the link is on is loaded
into a frame. I want the link to open the called
page in the current window (not the current
frame). Can you explain?
<a href="../index.html" target="top">Home
Page<./a>
A. To open a link so it takes up the
whole window, which means it becomes the
"parent," use target="_top". To open in a
specific frame, use target="framename" (make
sure you’ve named your frames in the <.frame>
tags). To open in a new window, use
target="_blank".
Q. I am creating a e-commerce site; is
there anyway that I can connect to an Access
database with Javascript?
A. Javascript cannot do it. It is only
client side and cannot read or write to files.
News Goodies
Yahoo!: 2003 Big Year for Enterprise IM
[February 24, 2003] At IM Planet Conference and
Expo, an exec with the portal player says corporate
IM use will explode this year, however progress must
be made on interoperability between major services.
Click
here to read the article
Sex.com: Internet Will Not be Crippled
[February 24, 2003] The adult-oriented business
disagrees with VeriSign’s claims that the court
settlement it procured in appellate court will harm
the Internet.
Click
here to read the article
Sun Aims Education Initiative at Microsoft
[February 24, 2003] The word processing battle
intensifies with the release of Sun’s EduSoft
portfolio and an expansion of its no-cost StarOffice
licensing plan.
Click here to read the article
Microsoft Goes On Offensive in Sun Antitrust Case
[February 24, 2003] The software giant makes
counterclaims of unfair competition.
Click here to read the article
Hosted Windows Apps Coming Online with Linux
[February 24, 2003] Codeweavers, whose CrossOver
Office allows users to run Microsoft Office apps on
Linux, is teaming with Tarantella to allow the
software to deliver the Microsoft Office suite over
the Internet.
Click here to read the article
Public Floods Copyright Office With Fair Use
Requests
[February 21, 2003] Electronic Frontier Foundation
organizes push for government to grant four
exemptions to DMCA.
Click here to read the article
Study: Companies Failing at Online Customer
Service
[February 20, 2003] U.S. companies are failing at
online customer service, forcing consumers to bypass
email service for the telephone, according to a new
study from Jupiter Research.
Click here to read the article
Microsoft Woos Academic World
[February 20, 2003] Microsoft moves to expand
presence in academic sphere — and give students
experience with its development environment — with
grants and announcement of new Visual Studio .NET
Academic Edition.
Click here to read the article
Microsoft Rivals Line Up for Mobile Software
[February 19, 2003] RealNetworks strikes a deal with
Ericsson; Nokia with IBM and Oracle.
Click here to read the article
Intel CEO Calls For More Convergence
[February 18, 2003] Craig Barrett leads the charge
for combining the micro world of the company’s
processors with the real world products like cell
phones and optical networking.
Click here to read the article
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Please don’t send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/
Thanks for all the email this past week! I received
many, many replies regarding Peter Moles "Site of
the Week" suggestion. Here’s the scoop: with a vote
of gazillions for, and none against, how could we
refuse? We are discussing the exact mechanisms we
could use, and will have it ironed out in the very
near future! Keep a close eye on your Goodies To Go
– you’ll be able to get advice (and free publicity)
for your site
Thanks also for all the other suggestions. There are
some very bright minds out there, and we’re all
going to reap the benefits of them! HTML Goodies and
this newsletter will continue to grow and evolve
according to your wishes. Thanks also for the
encouraging compliments.
Welcome to Dr. Websites’s subscribers!! Following
the merge of the Dr. Website newsletter into Goodies
To Go, we hope that you will find our newsletter to
be everything you want in a Web Developer’s weekly
update! Also, check out our Mentors Section: https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/
— you can get help from some great experts by
submitting your questions there.
Top
And
Remember This . . .
On this day in…
1988 Supreme Court OK’s Satirizing Public Figures
Back in 1983 Hustler magazine printed a parody of
Jerry Falwell. The piece portrayed Falwell’s first
sexual encounter as a drunken chlidhood experience
with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell a religious
conservative and founder of the Moral Majority
political advocacy group, sued Hustler and its
publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel and won. Flynt
appealed and, because of the constitutional
implications, the appeal led to a United States
Supreme Court hearing. In an 8-0 decision, the
Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision
and $200,000 "emotional distress" award, saying that
while it was "in poor taste" the piece fell within
the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of
speech and of the press.
Born today in 1786 was Wilhelm Grimm. With
his brother Jakob, the "Brothers Grimm" created
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, giving us such characters as
Rumpelstiltskin, Snow-White, Sleeping Beauty and Tom
Thumb. Thanks guys!
Thanks for reading
Goodies to Go!
