BASIC RATES
Site design, layout and production: $50.00 per hour*
Flash animation: $60 per hour.
Copywriting: 50¢ per word (includes unlimited revisions and editing until final copy is approved).

à la CARTE ITEMS
Text graphics: $50.00 per hour
Logos: $50.00 per hour
Miscellaneous graphics: $50.00 per hour
Image Optimization: $50.00 per hour
Clip art creation: $50 per hour
Photography: $50 per hour**
Scanning of images: $5.00 per image, artwork, or document. Price also covers OCR (Object Character Recognition) scanning***

SITE MAINTENANCE
$40 per page (price covers text edits and image replacements/additions only, not page redesigns)
$60 per page (price covers complete page layout redesigns)
More information on how to order online HERE.

BANNER ADS
Animated .GIFs & Static: $50* per banner
Flash animated: $75* per banner
More information on how to order online HERE.

*Banners must be pre-paid.

Installation of SnippetMaster LITE: $75.00
More information on how to order online HERE.

TERMS:
*I require 50% of the lower estimated total as a deposit before I can begin work on projects/deliverables.

**I use a Sony CyberShot DSC-F717 digital camera (5.0 megapixels).

***Price covers: B/W, color, any resolution from 72dpi to 600dpi (higher, add $1.00), 8 1/2 x 11 (letter), or 8 1/2 x 14 (legal). Price also covers batch preparation of documents, removal of staples, shipping materials, media materials (3x5 floppy or CD-ROM), any document shredding and disposal. Client must pay return shipping costs if paper materials must be returned. I use an Epson Perfection 1650 (see PDF for stats) flatbed scanner, capable of resolutions up to 3200dpi.

WEB HOSTING AND DOMAIN REGISTRATION
If you are planning on registering a domain, you can either have your Web hosting company register the name for you -- or you can register through an independent registrar like Network Solutions . Otherwise, you can take advantage of the various free Web hosts (albeit with a longer URL), like Tripod, Fortune City, Angelfire, and Geocities. You can also have your domain hosted by these same Web space providers -- for a fee, of course.

As for contracting with a hosting company, I would recommend Dreamhost. Their Control Panel is user-friendly and they have some very affordable hosting plans. Dreamhost has email tech support only, but they will send a reply usually with a 24-hour period -- sometimes on the weekend. It's really important to contract with a hosting company which has longevity; you don't want your cheapie hosting company folding overnight without telling you! Believe me, I've seen that happen -- and it's no fun losing all of your files (assuming you've not backed up your files) and are forced to reconstruct your website using the WayBackMachine.

AFTER YOU'VE RESERVED YOUR DOMAIN...
Before you decide on a web host, you'll need to know what kind of servers your prospective host is running. I know this sounds like a 'geeky' topic, but it's especially important for the useability of your site. The most common servers will either be Unix, Linux, WindowsNT or Windows2000 based.

If you are going to have any sort of form on your site (shopping cart, email), you must be sure to choose a plan which includes a .cgi bin (or at least a URL where a CGI bin is located, not necessarily on your site). Some CGI files can calculate purchases and send the information back to your customer and to you, others, like formmail, can process contact information and send it directly to you, completely formatted. CGI files are uploaded to a special folder, or 'bin,' and stored there. Your form will point to the URL where the CGI file is located in order to execute the task. Make sure that your hosting company offers free CGI files/scripts with your plan. This will ensure that the file/script will actually work with their server. It will also make it easier for me to set "permissions" for your particular file/script.

SHOPPING CARTS AND E-COMMERCE
For e-commerce, you must have an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) server included with your hosting plan if you plan on having a custom shopping cart actually on your site. This ensures secure credit card transactions through your site. Another (cheaper) alternative is to register with PayPal. With a PayPal Premier account (which is free), I can set up a simple shopping cart for single-item purchases. PayPal is fast and very secure -- in fact, Paypal utilizes the same encryption as the major banks. PayPal will process credit card transactions, taking a small fee from each purchase. If you are able to process credit card transactions manually, then Mals-e can provide a (free) and secure gateway to retrieve sensitive credit card information from your customers and send it directly to you. For a $6.00 monthy fee, Mals-e can link your shopping cart to a separate online merchant account which will process your credit card transactions (this requires another monthy fee from the merchant account provider). You can find a complete list of merchant account providers HERE. Another good shopping cart is QC Cart. QC Cart does not offer any free plans, but they do offer many options and will work with a merchant account.

There are also 'storefront' shopping carts available (for a one-time set-up fee and monthly maintenance fee) which will allow you to have complete control over your inventory. These standalone shopping carts are often very user-friendly, allowing you to pick a template design (some even integrating a third-party design) and to update merchandise information whenever you need to. One such storefront shopping cart is iHTMLmerchant. I can create the static (non-dynamic) pages, then link a 'Products' page to the storefront shopping cart. You can perform your own product maintenance by simply logging into the administration panel for your storefront and making the edits yourself -- it couldn't be easier!

ABOUT DATABASES AND SERVERS
Lastly, if you maintain any kind of database (Access, Filemaker Pro, Paradox, etc) for your business and want to use it for your e-commerce, intranet, or extranet site, you must make sure that your hosting plan supports ASP files. Be aware that most Apache servers running Linux do not support ASP, so you will need a server running Windows2000 (bear in mind that Win2k servers do not support CGI files written with PERL). However, most servers support PHP, which is a good alternative to ASP.