Pricing, cost evaluation for a site.

[trust]

You need to factor in that this was also a premade layout though.

See: post #1

sorry I think I kind of skipped most of your post last night :P

[MyndFyre]

My company charges varied rates based on what kind of work is being done.  For me they charge $200 an hour.  I'm not sure what they charge for design or production.

[rabbit]

What do you do, though?

[CrAz3D]

What do you get paid though? ;)

I've always found that interesting how they charge $XXX for YOUR time, but then they only pay you $XX.  At least that's what I found re: paralegals and whatnot

[MyndFyre]

What do you do, though?

I'm a senior .NET application developer.  I do mostly web backend and mid-tier stuff (I don't make web apps pretty).

I get paid $35 hourly.  Not bad for being ~1yr out of college....  Without a CS degree.

[CrAz3D]

x86/64] link=topic=9697.msg123264#msg123264 date=1182971683]

What do you do, though?

I'm a senior .NET application developer.  I do mostly web backend and mid-tier stuff (I don't make web apps pretty).

I get paid $35 hourly.  Not bad for being ~1yr out of college....  Without a CS degree.

straight up




When doing free lance work, did you create written agreements with whomever you worked for?  Also, did you send them monthly bills (my buddy mentioned I'd most likely end up being paid for updating the site monthly/weekly/or even daily if need be).

Ought I do something like that?  Create a simple agreement and a billing layout?

[MyndFyre]

The most important thing to do is to incorporate.  Look into forming an LLC so that if someone's not happy with what you've done, you're shielded from the guy taking all of your PERSONAL assets. 

Second, definitely agree on a contract.  Clearly define in your agreement what work is in-scope, because if you don't, you'll create scope creep, and the client won't be happy when you keep having to add additional stuff past the deadline.  Remember that contracts can always be amended by the agreement of both parties.

For freelance work, my standard rate is typically anywhere between $55 and $85 hourly.  But be sure to bill fairly.  Writing one class that adds two numbers is definitely not an hour's worth of time.  My rate varies based on the type of work (I charge low usually for design work, for example, because I'm not good at it, but I charge enough to still make money outsourcing - a friend usually would charge $50/hr, minimum 8 hours, to do design work for me, so I charge $55/hr).  Development, depending on the client, gets billed at about $85, because I'm good at what I do.  If I was going to make a website for the local democratic party, it might be closer to $135/hr.

Be sure to not price yourself too high or too low - too high will disqualify you from the job, and too low will make you seem noobish.

[CrAz3D]

Lol @ the Democrat thing.

I figure I'll charge about $15 straight across the board.  Including design, modifications, updates, new things, removing things, image design, etc.

I am a complete newbie to this and it is also for a semi-friend (dude I talk to a lot from my F150 site), that's why I figured I'd charge about $15.

So far I've estimated about 40 hours put in over the last 20 days.  Figure I'll charge like $500 for that ($100 less than if calculated at $15/hr), and $15 per hour past the date an agreement is settled upon.

1. Definitions and Clarifications
1.The agreement is only for work done in relation to the web site http://www.ramcoauctionsinc.com.  Any work to be done on another project will require this agreement to be amended and agreed upon by both parties (myself and Ramco Auctions, Inc.) or a new agreement must be created.
2."Work" is meant to include, but not limited to, the following: uploading files, downloading files, researching functions, writing functions, designing layout, modifying layout, creating pages, modifying pages, removing pages, adding properties, modifying properties, removing properties, adding images, modifying images, creating images.

2. Billing
1.Work done will be charged at $15 per hour and calculated to the nearest tenth of an hour for billing purposes.
2.Billing data is to include dates of work performs, description of work performed, the general time of work performed, and a total of the time for the work performed on a specific date followed by a total amount to be charged.
3.A bill containing a total charge amount for the work performed for the current billing cycle will be sent out on or about the 20th of each month.  Payment is expected in full and on, or reasonably close to, the 15th of the following month. (i.e. A bill  will be sent out July 20th and payment will be expected on or reasonably near August 15th)
4.In the event of two or more missed or incomplete payments, interest will begin to acrue at the rate of 10% per year or .833% per month.  Interest will continue to grow until the entire amount is paid in full plus the acrued interest.

3. Miscellaneous
1.There is no guarantee on any work, only an effort in good faith on my part that the pages will be as intended.
2.There is no guarantee on my availability to work on the web site.  I am a full-time student and hold a separate part-time job, however, I do feel that I have enough time outside of class and my part-time job to be able to perform satisfactory work on Ramco Auctions, Inc.'s web site.

That's what agreement stuff I've come up with.


Are you a corporation?  Are there fees (man, I should really know this from either my business class and/or working for a lawyer that does incorporations ::))

[CrAz3D]

Well, it's all settled.

$250 for what has been done so far (low I know, but when I started it was just a fun project) and $50/month for continued updates of simple things (editing/adding/removing properties, editing/adding/removing simple web pages).  Complex page adding/editing will be apart of an agreement if so needed.

[MyndFyre]

One thing that you should have considered is standing up for yourself on price.  Not to say that you didn't do well, but look at it this way - they are making bank.  One sale will more than pay for an entire year of your work even at $30/hr.

A similar but more robust site that my company made is http://www.m3landandhomes.com/.  They charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 for the site, and maintenance/additional features are billed hourly.

These people have the money.  You don't need to feel bad about standing up for yourself and your work.

[Rule]

x86/64] link=topic=9697.msg123291#msg123291 date=1183012634]
They charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 for the site, and maintenance/additional features are billed hourly.

These people have the money.  You don't need to feel bad about standing up for yourself and your work.

Surely you mean $4000 and not $40,000.  The site is professional looking, but it's extremely simple.  It's something most hobbyists could build in a weekend.  If those people have money I suppose that's just more support for this passage from Ecclesiastes,

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth".

[CrAz3D]

x86/64] link=topic=9697.msg123291#msg123291 date=1183012634]
One thing that you should have considered is standing up for yourself on price.  Not to say that you didn't do well, but look at it this way - they are making bank.  One sale will more than pay for an entire year of your work even at $30/hr.

A similar but more robust site that my company made is http://www.m3landandhomes.com/.  They charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 for the site, and maintenance/additional features are billed hourly.

These people have the money.  You don't need to feel bad about standing up for yourself and your work.

Well, thing is when I started we didn't even discuss payment.  It wasn't until the barebones of the site was up that he mentioned it.

Hopefully the $50/month for updating will be a good figure.  We said we'd revisit it at the end of July.

[MyndFyre]

x86/64] link=topic=9697.msg123291#msg123291 date=1183012634]
They charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 for the site, and maintenance/additional features are billed hourly.

These people have the money.  You don't need to feel bad about standing up for yourself and your work.

Surely you mean $4000 and not $40,000.  The site is professional looking, but it's extremely simple.  It's something most hobbyists could build in a weekend.  If those people have money I suppose that's just more support for this passage from Ecclesiastes,

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth".

I'm not sure which of their sites it is we've done (which URL, I mean) - but the one I was referring to is the one that corresponds to this staging web site: http://m3lh.terralever.com/. 

You don't see a lot of the stuff in the back-end, because you're not in the administrator, but we also built functionality to integrate the site's database into the MLS service.  Each day they upload a ~7-10mb file that contains the updates and new listings, including photographs, and the like, which we parse out and integrate into their site automatically.  Unfortunately, the MLS doesn't provide a way for us to query their DB directly.

At $200/hr, that's 200 hours - five man-weeks.  For the kind of functionality, I don't think it's out of the ballpark.

[CrAz3D]

 :o

Wow.

Even though my friend and his company didn't quite get as much as what you all created, it seems to be that they got a rather decent deal from me...hmm.

What would be a good place (online) to solicit myself for simple web things for the time being?

[rabbit]

$25/hour