Or more correctly, as a web developer, I am in the wrong part of the right business. The BBC have revealed that the Business Link website has cost us £35m per year for each of the 3 years it has been running. And if you take a look at the site, you'll see that it see that it does have built-in AI, it isn't written in HTML6, and doesn't have Jonathon Ross on it's books... so I can't quite see how it was so expensive. I'm in the middle of a program of updating my entire group of companies' websites. We've commissioned a 3rd party to do most of the work, and it does involve rebranding as well. I've fed some rough figures into my number cruncher and it appears, based on 1st year figures along, this site's costs are an order of magnitude higher (when you scale up my operation to a similar level). If you consider economies of scale and the reduced capital requirements of the second and third years, we are looking at an order of magnitude higher still. Yes, my figures are very coarse, and yes there are complications of scale as well, but that can't account for the fact that this sites costs approx 100x to run (per user) than my sites. We, the tax-payer, are paying £3 per month per unique site visitor for the Business Link site. Further Details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereport...m_website.html
Are you self employed/running your own business? I've just gone from running a business to being employed, and almost all of my past clients have said to me that all website designers they've approached to replace me have been hugely expensive. How much would you/your company charge to do create a custom theme for ZenCart? If like me you'd say £500 - £1000, you're too cheap, as I know of a company who recently paid £12,000 for just that, and the most expensive quote they got was £20,000. Just for a ZenCart theme and install! I decided after learning this that I have too much of a conscience to run a business, which is why I'm now employed. But back to your original point, if you know the company can afford it, you can charge anything you like for a website, it's pretty ****ed up.
I have no problem with an agency asking for a billion squillion quid for this website; but I do object to the previous government saying 'Yes, that sounds reasonable' rather than the more appropriate 'GTFO!'. [PS... I could have sworn that there were several responses to this post already... What gives?]
