What Is A Website or Graphic Designer Worth?
How much you pay and how much the job is worth can often be worlds apart.
One of the first questions asked by a prospective client is “how much does it cost?”
Given that we’re in Australia, many of our digital services are outsourced to agencies in India or the Philippines, among others, not great for us living and working here.
No matter which direction you choose, always ensure you provide guidelines and a style guide for your content. Creating a style and branding guide is definitely money well spent and critical to ensuring every piece of content is on brand.
So where do you go and what should you pay?
For small businesses, the question of cost and ultimately budget seems to be one of the major constraining factors in business deciding to move forward, or not, with a marketing employee, freelancer or agency.
Over the past 30 years I have worked in this role as an employee, contractor, for an agency and now as a freelancer. As with a lot of services, the question of cost varies A LOT. Based on the agency or consultants experience, the range of services the agency may offer, the services you require and the size of both yours and their business.
In Australia, costs can be as little as $400 per month right up to and exceeding $22,000 per month. Such a massive variance can make it impossible to decide which agency or service provider you should go with. What are the price differences and why?
A great source is ASTON SOCIAL and PURPLE COW, these prices may amaze you but you WILL pay similar utilising off-shore agencies for;
Volume Outsource Providers
Specialist Social Media Agencies
Full-service marketing Agencies
In house
Give a local a go, support small businesses in Australia.
Hiring Your Own or Freelancers
Over almost 30 years my work as an employee ranges from small and large businesses, a couple of incorporated organisations, and an all service marketing agency. My roles included traditional marketing, digital design, print and digit
al advertising, website design, social media management, mapping to online travel agents (OTAs), booking systems, restaurant ordering and reservation systems and much more.
Now as a freelancer and an employee it's quite often unclear to those who have never been on a marketing team, how much actually goes into it. The pressure to produce, added to learning complex systems can be an intense experience. If the team is small you have to develop an all-round set of skills to get even the simplest tasks and campaigns up and running.
So where do we start and what should you be looking for?
IN HOUSE
Should your business be large enough to employ a full-time all-rounder, meaning someone who can design, edit and maintain websites and social media platforms, manage calendars and schedules, conduct reporting and act on results, design collateral and print material, point of sale, catalogues and product packaging, along with anything else you may need.
Creating content can lead to content writing, photography, video and editing.
You should expect everything to be exactly as required, on brand and to the point, with scheduled posting and routine reporting. Often design styling will suffer, or the reporting and paperwork, as your team member may not have the resources or all-round skills that they require.
Pricing: This depends highly upon the experience level of the person you hire. You can expect to spend around $65,000 per year for a graduate or someone with 3-5 years experience, and up to $120,000 per year for someone with clearly grounded all-round skills, great organisational skills, which may include a degree or 10+ years experience at all levels.
Don't be fooled into believing that a degree or other qualification means they can do the job, experience and current examples of work speak volumes.
FREELANCERS
Services Offered
Strategy: Someone whose expertise is Strategy will look at possible customer bases, audience, your industry and your competitors to determine what may be the most effective strategy for your business.
Content: Most businesses know what they want to say but struggle to create the content to post and waste hours and days looking for quotes, images or just something interesting to tell their audience, wasting valuable time that really should be spent on their core business. As Freelance Digital and Content Managers, we help alleviate this work and provide you with a week, fortnight or monthly content plan.
Engagement: Many small business owners spend untold hours on social media, time that could be spent working on their business. An Engagement Manager looks after your social media posts and engages with your audience on your behalf, responding to comments, reviews, questions and shared content.
How Much Is A Freelancer?
Depending on how much you want them to do, in general, Digital and content providers will charge between $65-$150 per week, per platform, per post. By posting similar content across platforms helps to create package deals to post on more than one platform and keeps the message the same across all.
The costs vary depending on the experience of the person, the number of posts you want per week as well as the level of service you expect and may include reporting on ROI and analysis.
How Do I Select The Right Freelancer?
Freelancers who have experience in your industry will be able to offer a clearer understanding of what your expectations are. Look also for someone who has a similar style and tone to you and your business.
With a background in hospitality and tourism, our specialty is in that area, accommodation houses, food and beverage, travel and activities, but we also offer substantial support for all manner of small businesses. We also partner with numerous development and programming businesses and take pride in being resourceful and flexible.
If you really want to improve the results of your social media pages or you're just plain fed up with managing everything, then look to outsource. You will never know if you don’t ask, so contact a couple of freelancers after you decide what you really need.
Think about providing campaigns, graphic designs, website development or maintenance. You may at times require work outside of the scope of a general agreement, which could then be billed individually after an agreement of terms has been reached by both parties.
Here are some ideas as to what type of tasks to request, but there really aren't any limits and costs will vary significantly:
Website: Update and maintain a website with new projects, links, job updates and other items required and as needed. (New additions to a website probably would not be included but could be billed separately from the standard agreement.)
Google and Bing Business Listings: Kept up to date with weekly or monthly additions, which may include blogs, images, videos, responding to reviews, specials, new product releases and new jobs.
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social platforms: Kept up to date and relevant with a preference of weekly or monthly posts.
Content to be provided may include:
Visual posts may be provided in varying formats.
Video editing and posting can also be produced in different formats.
Advertising designs for Google, Facebook and other digital ads.
Blogs, Podcast or EDM, including research of content and imagery.
Google or Bing Ads: To be kept in line with the business style, theme and quality. Ads may include Youtube Ads, display ads and search ads or a combination of each while maintaining compliance for each campaign.
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other digital Ads: To be kept in line with the business style, theme and quality. Ads may include Video Ads, Carousel and slideshow ads and custom-designed boosted posts while maintaining compliance for each campaign.
We provide online business support to small businesses and can help with anything that is overwhelming, time-consuming, or simply frustrating.
