Thank you everyone for sharing valuable information and insights. I was looking for first hand information about current pricing and trends in website development and this one post has helped me learn everything.

I am not a web developer, but I can answer your questions based on recent experience a friend of mine had.

He is in the finance space - I think this contributed to the hefty price in the quote ($15K to build a WP site). I told him that was too much considering his existing site has less than 50 pages and it wouldn’t be customized (using an existing WP theme).

Monthly maintenance was going to be around $8K - but the firm would write and post articles along with building backlinks and working on SEO.

The agency works specifically with finance companies, so they do a lot of networking. Also they were published in Forbes, which is what made them more appealing to his company.

My tip here for you, is to get published in the place(s). Also, a lot of smaller companies, prefer local developers, so use local SEO strategies, like Google My Business to start getting clients.

I don’t know how they started out their business, but you will get a lot of traction with local SEO and outreach.

Hope this helps and best wishes!

Ecommerce websites, and websites for suppliers.

Charge by the hour. $150 an hour.

Word of mouth.

Set up own website. Found industry specific business with horrible websites. Cold called. Over delivered. Got recommended.