In almost every industry there is some short of standards set for pricing.

If I was an auto mechanic I could look up how many hours the manual says a job should take and multiply that by my hourly rate and give you a price for a job.

If I was in the construction business I could add up the footages and multiply that by what I charge per foot however, I am in the web design business and not only are there no standards but there are many factors that can change a price.

For example, I might look at what someone is wanting and be thinking, “wow…that is going to take 30 days to write the program” and someone else could look and be thinking, “cool, I just saw an open source software that will do everything they are wanting and will only take 5 minutes to set up”.

Then there is also the problem with what is going on in the person’s life that is giving the price.

For example, I might take on a project today thinking it will only take a couple minutes and three days later be on the same project because the client keeps moving things around and changing their mind. Or, I might have just finished 5 days worth of work in two hours.

Both those feelings would affect the way I priced my next job.

Last month we had more work then we could do and was having to hire more designers and programmers, while this month we are having to look for work for them to do.

That also affects how I price a job.

I do apologize for my prices not being set in stone and if I saw away to do so I would. But unless someone smarter than myself comes up with some sort of standard for pricing out a web design jobs my prices will always jump around a bit.