What should I charge for a forum skin?

I and an online friend of mine were asked to skin their forums and I just wanted to know what is the basic going rate and what I should base price off of? It will be a skin for Invision boards.

I always go by how long it took me to do it. I don't do anything by set fee. Always hourly.

Here the formula...

-Start witth the hourly salary you think you will be wining if you worked fore someone else (based on your qualifications and experience)

-Multyply this number by something betwen 1.5 to 2 (since you required time to submit price and serach for contract (lets say you spend as much time working than searching for contract you multiply by 2).

This should prove to be a good staring point...

Yet you have to find than answer for yourself... just make sure youdont charge to high and lose the contract.... and not to low so it would not worth-it...

go to vbskinz and get one for $25.00 then charge your customer $100.00

That's what I do...


Ok, not really. But plan out on how graphic intense it is going to be then all the time to slice it, dice it, and code it...

It's like building a webpage template if you want to think of it that way. You have to build the graphics then code it all. So charge what you would for a website. Or use that as a starting point...

Yeah I do pretty much the same thing that pank and the others due, but normally its about 35-40 bux... (USD) but like the others said if there is more work involved its usuallly more money :P

For a custom one of a kind skin I think a fair going rate is $500.00-$750.00 starting price...

I only sell the skins at vbskinz.com so cheap because they are sold over and over. Custom work is much more...

Pank has a real fine point. I have not skinned a vb forum, but have been working on a phpBB one off and on since last summer. They are a lot of work. Not hard work, just tedious. Lots of template files to go through line by line and change code, or re-write. I would almost equate it to creating a site for somebody. So get ready to do some work for a pittance if you are planning on charging less than what Pank has mentioned.