[flexcoders] What is a fair price - Opinions Please.
I have been asked to make an AIR application that is a 100 question quizzer. Wants it done by next Tuesday. Simple quizzer that compares the answer to what the person entered then adds either a 1 or 0 to a running total. Client would like to know a price on it, but I never developed a Flex/AIR app for a client before, only for work. What is a fair price either for the project or per hour to keep it honest? Opinions Please.
Re: [flexcoders] What is a fair price - Opinions Please.
Fair is a complicated subject. When figuring out what you should charge for something you should look at a number of factors: - What is your time worth to you? - This can be measured by any number of personal measuring sticks. How much free time do you generally have available, how interesting does this project look to you, do you think you can re-use this code for anything ever, will you achieve some level of personal / professional satisfaction from it. - Personally, if I don't have a lot of extra free time, or if the project looks to be a pain, I charge considerably more. If that kills the project, so be it, if not, WOOHOO! - As for calculating an actual billable rate, one way to figure out what your professional time is worth is to take your annual salary at work, divide it by 2000 and that very roughly what you make an hour. I typically double it to cover taxes and then charge that. So for example you earn $50,000 a year at your main job, you basically earn $25 an hour, So a good starting point for charging for your time is $50 an hour. Using the How much do I like this project scale, you can then adjust that rate accordingly. If the project is going to be a pain, bump it up, if it's going to be fun maybe lower it. - What can the person afford to pay? - This is one of the hardest parts of any job, you may come up with what is a reasonable amount to do the job, but the client may choke. Great sales people have a sixth sense for the threshold a client has for a job ($$$). With one off freelance jobs it can be hard to guess what a person has available to spend. I've been offered projects where the client wants to build a competitor to eBay and has about $500 to spend... - Depending on your relationship with this client, you might just want to ask what they have available to spend on the project upfront. Then go back and determine if it's enough for you to get it done. HTH =] -- Alan Rother Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Manager, Phoenix Cold Fusion User Group, AZCFUG.org
Re: [flexcoders] What is a fair price - Opinions Please.
This all seems reasonable. Its more or less the metric I would use too. It will probably sound daunting to a private client though. If you want to break into doing this on a regular basis. You might want to charge considerably less especially as you said it was your first private work. Its in your own intrest to provide value for money untill you have a decient client base. This depends on how likely prospective clients are to talk to each other. Regards, Wes On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Alan Rother alan.rot...@gmail.com wrote: Fair is a complicated subject. When figuring out what you should charge for something you should look at a number of factors: - What is your time worth to you? - This can be measured by any number of personal measuring sticks. How much free time do you generally have available, how interesting does this project look to you, do you think you can re-use this code for anything ever, will you achieve some level of personal / professional satisfaction from it. - Personally, if I don't have a lot of extra free time, or if the project looks to be a pain, I charge considerably more. If that kills the project, so be it, if not, WOOHOO! - As for calculating an actual billable rate, one way to figure out what your professional time is worth is to take your annual salary at work, divide it by 2000 and that very roughly what you make an hour. I typically double it to cover taxes and then charge that. So for example you earn $50,000 a year at your main job, you basically earn $25 an hour, So a good starting point for charging for your time is $50 an hour. Using the How much do I like this project scale, you can then adjust that rate accordingly. If the project is going to be a pain, bump it up, if it's going to be fun maybe lower it. - What can the person afford to pay? - This is one of the hardest parts of any job, you may come up with what is a reasonable amount to do the job, but the client may choke. Great sales people have a sixth sense for the threshold a client has for a job ($$$). With one off freelance jobs it can be hard to guess what a person has available to spend. I've been offered projects where the client wants to build a competitor to eBay and has about $500 to spend... - Depending on your relationship with this client, you might just want to ask what they have available to spend on the project upfront. Then go back and determine if it's enough for you to get it done. HTH =] -- Alan Rother Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Manager, Phoenix Cold Fusion User Group, AZCFUG.org
