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Hello, I helped a construction company created a website 2 years ago as a side project aside from my full time job. They pay for the web hosting and everything, but they email me for small updates here and there. I have been doing the updates for free for the past 2 years. How much should I charge per hour to maintain the WP website?
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How much you charged to build the site / how many hours it took = hourly rate
Does that get you a rate that you are happy with?
Personally I charge a flat yearly rate to my clients for the maintenance based on the complexity of their website. Some things I take into consideration are what plugins are they using, what theme are they using, and is there any custom code separate of the plugins/theme; just to make a few.
First, you need a clear definition of “maintenance” – in a clients mind, this is anywhere from making sure everything is updated and backed up, to being their personal developer that will drop everything to post new blogs or update content or add new features. Having a clear definition of responsibilities helps, a lot.
Personally, I charge $95/month for maintenance alone or $125/ month for maintenance and hosting. Actually, I think prices were recently raised slightly but I don’t have it in front of me. Anyway, maintenance is purely maintenance and does not include any changes to the site. But, it does include resolution of any issues related to WP, plugin updates, theme updates, etc. The vast majority of the time, it’s just doing the backups and making sure everything is up to date. Done. But if something does happen, an update breaks things or there’s malware or whatever, that’s all covered.
I simply have the client message me to make a request and I provide a quote. Once they agree, I get started. Most tasks are small, hence I will charge a small fee for.
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A client referred me to their friend, so I did a few edits for free. So I would say that you can use your judgement there. I would rather get a referral than a small fee for a maintenance item.
It’s going to depend upon the local market, your skill level, you work load, and whether you have long term goals of expanding this out.
I’d say somewhere between $75 and $100 an hour is pretty reasonable for a freelance rate.
If you call up the local contractor, they’ll probably charge that for their skills (electrical, plumbing, etc). Now, the guy actually swinging the hammer might only make $25 an hour, but there’s a lot of overhead beyond that and you don’t want to sell yourself short in preparing for the expectation of acquiring additional overhead yourself.
You’re working business to business and these guys can’t do what you do, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling you up. Accept that as validation that you have technical skills that aren’t easy.