How much should you charge a small business for a website?
Real pricing guidance for the local-business website side hustle — what to charge, what affects the price, and how to avoid underpricing your first few clients.
Underpricing is the most common mistake in the local-business-website side hustle — new builders often charge $50-100 because the AI generation itself is fast, forgetting that the business owner is paying for a working asset, not for your time.
What actually affects the price
- Complexity of the interactive feature — a booking calendar with real availability logic is worth more than a simple contact form
- Number of pages/sections the business actually needs
- Whether you're also handling deployment, a custom domain, and ongoing updates
- How competitive/urban the market is — a business in a competitive city market gets more value from converting website visitors than one with little foot-traffic competition
Realistic starting ranges
For a single-page site with one working interactive feature (contact form, simple booking): $150-350 as a flat build fee is a reasonable starting range for your first handful of clients, building toward $300-800+ once you have real finished examples to show. For a multi-page site with a more complex feature (real appointment scheduling, a menu system): $400-1000+ is common once you're not pricing purely on inexperience.
Don't just charge for the AI generation
The business owner isn't paying for the minute it took to generate the site — they're paying for a working asset that gets them customers, plus your judgment in customizing it, deploying it, and making sure it actually reflects their business correctly. Price the outcome, not the time.
Recurring revenue is where the real money is
A one-time build fee is good for the first sale. A small monthly fee ($20-50/mo) for hosting, updates, and minor content changes turns a single sale into recurring income — and most small business owners would rather pay a small monthly fee than manage their own site.
How to raise your prices over time
Your first 2-3 clients are effectively portfolio-building — price accordingly, but don't go so low it signals low quality. Once you have 2-3 real, live examples to show a new prospect, you have real leverage to charge closer to (or above) the higher end of the ranges above.