it also depends who are working for you, and his location?? sure you will find it cheaper if he was an Egyptian  

it also depend on his experience and previous work he has online.

it also depend if he is in need of money now a day or not

and no need to meet him face to face... most work is finished and uploaded.. and all modification made until it is reach your need.

anyway.. i think you are in need more to a designer, not a developer, since you just need html pages..

xpress wrote: Let's just say for plain html pages. Is it usual to charge a fixed rate per page or hourly?

Depending on the size and complexity of the job, charge a set rate for the 'web pages' and an hourly rate for maintaining the site. Remember to include costs when coming to a price, electricity,phone calls,printer ink,fax,etc All the little things build up in cost so ensure to cover your direct costs first and foremost.

xpress wrote: How much would be reasonable for a page? What are some other ways of pricing?

Charge by the page/site, any other way may get you in to difficulty contractually. Only you know how much work is required so I am afraid it is up to you to price the job. About the only way to gauge this is by visiting design sites to see what they are charging.

If I was being paid by the hour to admin someones site I would be looking at about £25+ per hour for the basics, depending on what you have to do, this figure could be way way higher.

xpress wrote: Also, if you were to work from home and meet with your client periotically, is it reasonable/usual to charge for the meeting since it's easily 4 hours spent without being paid (the time plus the drive...)?

Your kidding right?

Your expecting a potential customer of yours to pay for your travel & time to the interview so you can make a good living from them for as little work as you can get away with.....

Think about it...

(I know what I would tell you the first time the bill dropped through the door and I seen that I had paid for your job inteview....)

Xpress, about prices - I'm afraid it's toooo compicative to describe it in forum topic and it depends on too much other issues, like your previous experience and quality of your work.

Consider this - html developer can get $10-20/hr, site producer - $200-300/hr (if he's good). All other's salaries are in the middle (graphic artists, designers, programmers). Do you really think you are good enough to play all of them at once? :)

God_Struth, about charging of customers with travel expences - why not? When I'm talking with client abt 3 hr roundtrip to another state for meeting with him to discuss his plain 2 page site, which will cost him $600-700, I'm telling him, that my trip will COST him, otherwise I'll waste too much time on that trippin' :))))

When cliens want to meet me for something in their office (with some on-site development for 1-2 hrs) I'm charging them full hourly price while I'm in their office and half price for transportation time (plus - transportation costs). However project managers also must be flexible and reasonable and don't charge clients for transportation in case of 5-6 hr work. Well... everything depends...

WOW.. here a 50 MB webspace + a Flash design + a domain name registeration + a design template = no more than $100

and normally the templates are bought from a ready made well known sites for $50 at least...

this is plus the clients here are

but the problem here too... you may wait for 6 month until the designer finish to you your site...

http://www.webdevbiz.com/articles.cfm - http://www.webdevbiz.com/articles.cfm

Contains good information on pricing web development work. Good read for people who want to hire a web developer as well. Covers what should be covered in a contract, and what would be additional.