AymanFarhat wroteAgree, in addition , a pure flash website is not a best practice, it costs more, takes time to load and is poor when it comes to data driven content and flashy stuff does not always mean great things, that's my opinion at least, after all a website != to a T.V.
I agree, flash requires more work and is hard on older browsers. It is also hard to maintain and modify.
Although it can be great when used properly. Check amazon's windowshopping (if its called this way, i forgot). Its a flash interface to browse previews of games, movies, books that sell there, and it is just great.
AymanFarhat wroteFurthermore, as Mir said, I prefer using an open source e-commerce CMS rather than spending the time on re-inventing the wheel and having a system with security flaws here and there.
So you prefer reading documentation and learning stuff and uploading 10 megabytes of mysterious php code :-), and ending up modifying complicated code (because no matter how rich a cms is, it will never be 100% what you want.)
I respect this decision.
Personally I try to avoid that, but I try to win time also.
Lately, I was writing an ecommerce site, and I found open source code, yet very simple and short code that implements most of the functionality I need (someone else sharing their work). I took it and improved it and added to it... :-)
As for the rates, I think a good way would be to see how many hours you work on the project, and then bill by the hour. With time you should be able to make an estimation of the work time needed beforehand.
This way you're not ripping off anyone, yet you're not working for free either!
And btw, how much would you bill an ecommerce site? ... lol
@ Tigerhackers, thanks for the list, I think its well indicative of average prices here.
@ Mir, thx for the tip
xterm wroteGod damn you guys are cheap >.<
This is Lebanon.
But you probably can get cheaper... I heard indian developers work for almost nothing, and american companies will build a small website for $150, yet its most probably quick templating stuff.