Here's my situation... What I have now is a clothing store, that does monogramming/jewelry and some other things. I've been in business almost 30 years mostly wholesale and just recently started retail as well and of course we have to have a website... Currently we have a Facebook page, a Google+ page, an older wholesale website and for just the past year and a half we now have a retails website. So, I have this kid that works for me. Does everything I need on the computers, the equipment, hell problem solving in general. He did some research for me on web services, eCommerce, etc etc... we had 3dcart first, now we have big commerce. This kid not only runs machines that make our products, he then takes photos of these products, then edits the photos to be ready for the web and finally builds the web page for it and puts it all together. I want to compensate him fairly. He has an hourly wage where he comes in and does a number of business critical tasks in his role during normal business hours, however the stuff for the website he's done on his own time, and he hasn't been compensated yet. He also designs our fliers, does a lot with our Facebook stuff... but everything about the site he's done, and I think there's about 80-100 items on it at this point.

What I have come asking of you is to share a bit of your knowledge.... for anyone who would be willing and able to take on this role.... however should I figure out his pay for his contribution...? Are there any common, least troublesome ways of calculating and in turn compensating someone creates from nothing a page with a product which he himself made at our shop, and puts all the items details in, sizing charts and then of course there's the options of what color, what size, what monogram font, what thread color, Initials to be monogrammed, monogram style etc.... so the customer can get their custom item.

I don't claim to know all there is about it, and it may even sound more complicated that it does to me.... If there were such a thing for example that people advertised their services such as: FULL Functional web pages with photos and options, photos are from your products not stock images. $10 per item listing. See that would get me in the right direction but I don't know if that's even a thing...

I humbly turn to you all for any guidance on this.
Thanks in advance.
Best to you all and to yours.

6/9/2016 12:09:48 AM

Im not sure what's going on here

6/9/2016 1:28:37 AM

It's great to see that you sincerely want to pay him what his work is worth. A lot of people in your situation would just take advantage.

How are you thinking you'd like to structure his payment? Are you thinking of raising his hourly wage, giving him a one-time payment with additional payments per item he sets up, cutting him in on a percentage of the revenue the site generates...?

Has he actually asked for more money? If he has, did he give you a figure? Do you know how much you can afford to pay him? Do you have a budget for your online retail operation? Have you tracked sales enough to notice whether his contributions have made a difference in your revenue?

If you're a small business, it may very well be the case that he has put in more work than you could have actually afforded if you'd been paying a professional. I've been in that kind of situation myself, cutting my teeth on work for an employer because the opportunity to develop those skills was valuable to me. Do you expect he'll stay on with you for a while? Do you expect to have more product development work for him? If you do, you should probably have an honest conversation to find a compromise between your desire to pay and your ability to pay.

6/9/2016 7:20:08 AM

I work at a place doing one job and over some period of time I have also worked on our stores website. I know what I'm getting paid doing one job, but I'm not getting anything for any of the web stuff I've put together... I'm trying to figure out a way to bill my boss for the work I do on the website. That's all I just over complicated the hell out of what I was trying to say I'm sure.

6/9/2016 7:27:57 AM

...

So you mean you totally misrepresented which party you are in this situation, right? Because you presented yourself as the business owner, not "the kid."

6/9/2016 7:56:39 AM

lol

6/9/2016 8:47:46 AM

In that case, like most bosses, they consider that part of your job now because you did it without asking for any additional pay and then continued to do it. At this point you could ask for an increase but don't expect them to go for it unless you get lucky and they are actually nice. Basically, be prepared for them to expect you to keep doing everything you have been for what they have been paying you. If you are ok with quitting or being fired you can simply let them know that this stuff wasn't in your original job description and you were just trying to help out but now it has turned into an ongoing thing and you would like to be compensated for the additional work or you are not going to continue to do it. That usually doesn't end well though.

6/9/2016 9:09:35 AM

^ there is a slightly less "ultimatum" way to have that conversation

talk to the manager about defining a new role for you, one that formalizes the work you have been doing on the website, and then talk about new compensation. Once you determine how you want to determine the role, you can use salary websites to determine compensation levels.

Don't expect to be paid contractor rates when you are an internal employee since employer's offer benefits to compensate.

If you actually built an entire ecommerce website for this company that is being used by customers (and is not a complete hack job), that is a serious contribution that should be rewarded. If you factor in 10-20 hours for the checkout portions of the site, and a certain amount of time to set up the product pages (did they take 10 minutes a product or what?), and bill out at $50 an hour, you can get an idea of what to charge. You have left a ton of information out, so I don't know what level of site you created, if it is able to updated by someone other than you, if it is backed up, ongoing maintenance requirements, etc. Based on what information you have given, here's my wild-ass guess:

15 hours for checkout: $750
10 hours for product page: $500
96 items at 10 min/item: $800

This really only applies if you were building a module onto a site that already existing (could reuse site design). I think these numbers are very low, but again I can only assume the level of work based on the information you provided. If you were thinking $1000 bonus for the work, that would be low in my opinion. It would be key to figure out how much value this has added to the business and scale the bonus amount based on that.

[Edited on June 10, 2016 at 2:11 PM. Reason : ]

6/10/2016 2:10:44 PM