A friend wrote to me last week asking how I decide what to charge for a custom blog design. She had her first proper client waiting on a quote and she was stuck on the number. I know that feeling well. My first custom quote went out in 2018: 250 euro for a food blog, typed with shaking hands. That project ran six weeks and ate about forty hours.
Pricing gets easier with practice. It stays a little uncomfortable too. Here is the system I use now, after six years of selling templates and taking on custom work beside them.
What the project actually costs you
Before I look at the client at all, I look at my own calendar. How many hours will this take, honestly? I count the discovery calls, writing the brief, design rounds, building the theme, the small fixes after launch, and the emails in between. Emails always add up. For a full custom blog design with a logo and a set of page templates, I plan for 25 to 35 hours.
Then I pick the hourly rate that keeps my studio running. Rent, software, fonts, the accountant, the new monitor I bought last spring. My rate has moved three times in six years, and yours should move too. Write it down where you can see it.
Hourly rate or project price
Both have a place in a small studio.
When I bill by the hour, I get paid for every minute I work and a client with fuzzy scope can start with a small block of hours and see how it goes. The awkward part is that the client carries all the risk if my estimate turns out wrong, and they know it. Some of them watch the clock, and designing under a clock is miserable work.
So for anything with a shape I can see (a logo plus a theme, a brand pack, a media kit design), I quote a fixed project price nearly every time. The client hears one number before we start, and I carry the risk of my own estimate. Managing that risk well is part of what they are paying me for.
Hourly still appears in my studio for open-ended work: a retainer for monthly updates, or a day rate when someone needs me for launch week.
Write the scope down before you name the price
The price follows the scope. Always in that order.
Before I quote, I write a short brief: which pages, how many design concepts, how many revision rounds, whether I’m coding the theme or only designing it, who handles the content, and the date the client owes me their photos and words. Two pages of text is usually enough. Both of us sign it, and I attach it to the invoice so there is exactly one version of the truth.
The brief is where pricing lives. A four-page blog with one concept round is a different project from a twelve-page magazine layout with custom illustration, and the price gap should be big enough that the client feels it.
Scope creep, and the polite way to stop it
Scope creep arrives dressed as small favors. A second logo variant, one more round of revisions, a shop page that was never in the brief, “just a quick template for newsletters.” Each one is genuinely small. Together they are a week of unpaid work.
My contract says two revision rounds are included and everything else is quoted separately. When a request lands outside the brief, I answer the same way every time: “Happy to do that. Here’s what it adds to the project.” No apology, no lecture. About a third of the time the client says actually the original version is fine, and everyone moves on.
I also keep a little menu of add-ons with prices on it (extra page template, shop styling, newsletter header, matching social graphics). Pricing extras in advance turns a negotiation into a selection.
Take a deposit
I take 40% before I open any design software, and the balance before handover. Files, logins, and export packages move after the final payment.
The deposit does three jobs. It funds the hours I’m about to spend, it tells me the client is real, and it makes both of us treat the start date as a commitment. In six years, the only two projects that collapsed were both deposit-less.
For bigger builds I split the balance into milestones: 40% up front, 30% at concept approval, 30% at launch. Smaller projects go 50/50. Either way, I never finish a project while waiting on money from it.
Getting paid without drama
I send a proper invoice the moment each milestone lands, with the due date spelled out and the accepted payment methods listed. Bank transfer and card payment both work fine. Card payments cost me a small processing fee on each transaction, so for tiny add-ons I quote round numbers that absorb it rather than adding a fee line the client has to read.
Late payers are rare when the paperwork is tidy. When someone drifts past the due date, one friendly reminder on day three and a firmer one on day ten usually settles it. My rule is that work pauses at day fourteen, and I say so in the contract so it never becomes a personal argument.
Raise your prices when the work gets better
My first custom design was 250 euro. The last one was eighteen times that, and the difference is almost entirely practice: faster hands, fewer wrong turns, better judgment about what a project needs.
Review your prices twice a year. If you are booked out more than a month ahead, your price is too low. If quoting a project still scares you a little, good. Price the work, send the quote, and let the client decide. Half of them will say yes, and the ones who say no were never going to be easy projects anyway.