Agencies 150/HR Charge and 10% Pay.
The point of owning a company is to rail profit and keep you expenses as low as possible which is completely inline with any reasonable business owner–but a reputable business owner or high-tech business charges high and pays their employees very well. Designers will end off working at a corporation rather than agencies because of good pay, reasonable work hours and ability to climb the corporate ladder.
The question is not why an agency wants to charge high in San Antonio, when their services and product is mediocre compared to services in mega-metropolitan-type cities like Los Angeles, New York and Seattle–where the education level of designers and content strategist is higher, but when they get away with charging $150 per hour and pay your employees a mere $15.00 and hour in which most cases the client does not know, then you have to ask yourself where that 90% of the fee goes, because 10% of of $150 is $15.00 and that is where your production is going to, and up to 20% if a second person is working on that project. This still leaves 80% of a client’s money up for question.
The bottom line is; when I am a client why would I pay an agency that charges $150 per hour were more than 50% and up to 90% of that money does not go into production!
Where is that money going? To the owner’s pockets for other causes that is none of your business. And the result of your product is mediocre and not unique.
The same point of opinion, which I will put in simpler means is, do not pay that high, unless they are nationally renowned, won some Webby or national awards, because you are better off with another design agency in San Antonio that charges less, and the employees’ skills are relatively the same.
I will get excuses like overhead and rent. Bullshit. Charge high because you think you can. But if you charge high, pay your employees between $23-$25 an hour in a city that is growing fast. Don’t dumb down your employees with low pay.