Our pricing policies are simple so you won't have any surprises down the road. And if you've priced website design elsewhere, you'll be pleasantly surprised by our fees (especially since we're offering so much more than just design and hosting).

Here's the straight talk on how it works:

Our basic setup fee for a new website is $875 for individuals, $1,275 for ensembles and organizations. This covers everything discussed in the Startup Package, from the domain registration (if needed) to ten hours of data entry and content processing — this means putting your list of works, schedule, repertoire, bio and other information into our database, as well as making your photographs, press kit and sound files web-ready. Quite simply, the ten hours will be applied to any work for which we would otherwise charge you our hourly rate.

For most individual performers and composers, ten hours is ample time for such work, unless you have an extremely busy performance schedule or large list of works. Ensembles and organizations will usually require more than ten hours. All work beyond ten hours is billed at our hourly rate (see below).

The setup fee does not include website design, which is discussed in detail below.

Maintenance Fees

Wired Musician charges you a monthly fee for hosting your website. This fee includes one hour per calendar month of updates to your website. After one hour, we then charge you the hourly rate of $85. When you send us updates we'll keep you informed of how much of the included hour has been been used. In this way you can choose either to have us continue at the hourly rate, or put off further updates until the following month, if they are not urgent.

These included hours are not transferable to other members or accounts, and they do not accrue.

Your first month of Maintenance is included in your setup fee. It's possible to get up to the first three months for free, if you register additional domain names through Wired Musician at project start. Please see the Startup Package for further explanation of this offer.

We have different flavors of Maintenance Fees designed to accommodate every cash flow and budgetary situation. Normal Maintenance is our highest rate, and Discounted Maintenance is the lowest, offered for allowing us to display the Wired Musician logo in the footer of your website.

We also offer reductions for pre-payment of your maintenance fees — as much as 23% off the Normal Maintenance rate. Regardless of which you choose, you get the same services and one hour per month of free updates. Here are comparison charts broken out by Individual and Ensemble/Organization:

Design Costs

This is the most uncertain aspect of your costs, as there are so many variables here. The minimum cost for a simple, single-layout design will be around $300, but it is of course possible to spend many times that amount. Factors that will affect your design costs are:

• Do you want a simple or elaborate design?

  The cost of design, not surprisingly, is directly related to the complexity. If the site uses many rich graphics or animation, the costs increase dramatically. This will be true of any designer you work with, of course.

  Many websites have multiple layouts. For example, some display a "splash" page that visitors see when first entering the site, and then a secondary layout that is used for all other pages. Having multiple layouts will increase your design costs by about 25% for each layout beyond the first one. (In general, we regard splash pages unnecessary to good website design, and recommend against them.)

  We can help you make some decisions about this process when we first begin our discussions. If the budget is tight, we can come up with a design for most individuals that will cost no more than $200 over the basic setup fee. If you decide you want to upgrade elements of your design later on, it's a simple matter with the Wired Musician system. We created this system because we believe a good website is a living, dynamic thing, and that goes for the design, as well.

• Are we designing your website from scratch, or are we "importing" an existing website into our system?

  You might think the brand new design will be more expensive, but that's not necessarily the case. The Wired Musician system uses state-of-the-art web technologies, so if your existing website was done in an older version of HTML it could require a lot of time to reconstruct it.

• Are you using a Wired Musician designer, or your own?

  Our designers are very familiar with the Wired Musician system and know how to deliver designs that can be moved into it quickly. We're happy to work with any designer you wish, but suggest you keep us "in the loop" as the design is being developed. Our input to the designer on technical issues will likely save you some money later on.

Hourly Costs

After the first ten hours of setup work (which are included in your setup fee), our current hourly rate is $85. This hourly rate also applies to modifications and updates to your website after website launch (less the one free hour per month we give you [see our Real-Time Reign Policy]). We calculate billable time in 5-minute increments, which ensures that you're not paying for time not worked.

If you already have a website you would like to transfer to Wired Musician, the basic setup fee of $875 for individuals or $1,275 for ensembles and organizations still applies, and the ten hours included in the setup fee can be applied to the time spent "reconstructing" your site into our database-driven system. Once the ten hours have been used, the hourly rate goes into effect.

Reconstruction of an existing website into the Wired Musician system can add as much as $200 for individuals and $500 to $800 for organizations/ensembles. This cost could be more if the website is very complicated in design, has a great deal of content, or is written in an older version of HTML. We will provide you with a complete analysis in our estimate.

So What Does This All Add up To?

Here's a breakdown of what you can expect your expenses to be in the first two years. These charts are based on the assumption that setting up your website does not take more than 10 hours, that you choose a design that does not involve elaborate graphics or animation, that you choose the discounted maintenance option and that you pay your maintenance semi-annually.

For Individual Members (performers, composers)
Estimated First Year Expenses
Basic Setup	$875.00
Website Design	$300.00
Discounted Maintenance for 11 months, Paid Semi-Annually (5% reduction for semi-annual payment)	$312.98 (2 payments of $156.49)
Billable Overages: 2 hours @ $85/hr (i.e., time over the 1 hour per month included. Based on an average for individuals)	$170.00
First Year Total	$1,657.98
Estimated Second Year Expenses
Discounted Maintenance for 12 months, Paid Semi-Annually (5% reduction for semi-annual payment)	$341.44 (2 payments of $170.72)
Billable Overages: 2 hours @ $85/hr (i.e., time over the 1 hour per month included. Based on an average for individuals)	$170.00
Second Year Total	$511.44

The first year expenses can be further reduced if you register additional domain names through Wired Musician (because we'll give you additional free months of maintenance), and if you pay annually, which gives you an 8% reduction in maintenance.

We will always alert you if modifications to your site are going to take more than 1 hour in a given month. This allows you to decide if some modifications can be pushed off to the following month and thus avoiding these overage fees.

Payment Schedule and Financing Options

Once you have decided to proceed with setting up a Wired Musician website, we will create an estimate for you. If you agree with the project description and price on the estimate, payment will generally proceed as follows:

• One fourth (25%) of the estimate total to start the project.

• One fourth (25%) at the point a design is agreed upon or your existing design has been reconstructed into the Wired Musician system.

• Any remaining balance must be paid prior to activation of the site for access via the internet.

For individuals, other payment schedules can be arranged where necessary. The balance due at the time of site activation can be spread out over 3 months with no interest. Please don't hesitate to ask us for help in making this work for you. (Sorry, this offer does not apply to organizations.)

"Fixed" Estimates. We understand that budgets are tight and usually inflexible. When we give you an estimate, we'll stick to the amount there as long as the project scope or definition does not change.

Related Topics

Now that you understand Wired Musician's pricing policy, you'll want to know exactly what you're getting. Check out these areas:

• What's included in the setup costs?
• What's so special about a Wired Musician website?
• I'm sold! Tell me how to get started!