Quoting the customer

Express the business side of your digital lives. Share your experiences and/or your comments regarding a business or organization.

No advertising.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
iknownothing
Forum Contributor
Posts: 337
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:53 pm
Location: Sunshine Coast, Australia

Quoting the customer

Post by iknownothing »

Hey Guys,

My business partner and I have recently been given a job, and at the moment, is currently un-quoted.

We were thinking along the lines of AU$3000.

The site is for a team of Business Coaches, who will sell their product/service for approximately AU$2000. Which we will get for free.

The site will consist of a full database driven content system, forum, uploadable movies to be included in the service, which will convert to a flash file, User information, and online payment system (most likely linked to PayPal or bank). Most of the site will be locked to the average user until they have paid for the service, so security is a must aswell

We also designed it, so it will be a design/development quote.

There is 11 Sections in total, all of which will use the database.



As this is our first official job, we are a bit nervous what to charge, do you think $3000 is acceptable, or do you think our range should be higher or lower. We are not aiming to be an expensive web dev business.


Thanks.
User avatar
John Cartwright
Site Admin
Posts: 11470
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:10 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by John Cartwright »

My estimation formation is the following:

Break up each individual component and estimate the amount of hours it will require and add up the total hours. Multiple the total hours by 2 to take into account any unforseen problems, debugging, testing, etc. Multiply the total hours by your hourly rate. Voila. Your quote.
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Post by onion2k »

AU$3000 = GB£1,262.47 = US$2,570.27 = Waaaaaaaay low as a quote for a site like that. A site like that is going to be at least 2 weeks work ... working 8 hours a day for 10 days is 80 hours ... so your price is the equivalent of AU$37.50 an hour. There's two of you though, so split that in half. Do you really want all the hassle of running a business in order to earn AU$18.75 (GB£7.80 or US$16) an hour? Considering that's before tax, business costs, electricity, telephone bills, web hosting, etc.

The only thing that would make it worthwhile writing a site that cheap is if you think the client is likely to refer a lot more work to you.
User avatar
iknownothing
Forum Contributor
Posts: 337
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:53 pm
Location: Sunshine Coast, Australia

Post by iknownothing »

onion2k wrote:The only thing that would make it worthwhile writing a site that cheap is if you think the client is likely to refer a lot more work to you.
Whoops, forgot to mention that.. They will foward work to us, being Business Coaches the come in contact with all sorts of businesses, so we will benifit. Plus the added bonus of us recieving free Business Coaching.

On the same note however, Im not planning to sell myself short, or seem "cheap", as long as were not seen as "Rip Offs" is my only concern.

I did a VERY rough estimate on Jcart's advice, and I'm leaning more towards the $4k mark now. A business associate of both parties, said the client was looking to spend anywhere between $2.5k and $5k, so, being our first job, and the ability to get future work, I think $4k is fair enough.


Thanks for the advice guys.
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Post by onion2k »

iknownothing wrote:On the same note however, Im not planning to sell myself short, or seem "cheap", as long as were not seen as "Rip Offs" is my only concern.
In my experience the price has nothing to do with whether you're seen as a rip off or not. I've developed sites for 10* what I thought was fair and the client has been over the moon because they like what's been delivered, similarly I've developed sites for a fraction of what I think they should have been and the client has been unhappy because the site wasn't what they expected (despite being exactly what they asked for). If you build software that the client is happy with then you won't be seen as a rip off, or even seen as expensive a lot of the time.
User avatar
iknownothing
Forum Contributor
Posts: 337
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:53 pm
Location: Sunshine Coast, Australia

Post by iknownothing »

onion2k wrote:
iknownothing wrote:On the same note however, Im not planning to sell myself short, or seem "cheap", as long as were not seen as "Rip Offs" is my only concern.
In my experience the price has nothing to do with whether you're seen as a rip off or not. I've developed sites for 10* what I thought was fair and the client has been over the moon because they like what's been delivered, similarly I've developed sites for a fraction of what I think they should have been and the client has been unhappy because the site wasn't what they expected (despite being exactly what they asked for). If you build software that the client is happy with then you won't be seen as a rip off, or even seen as expensive a lot of the time.
Yeah, I suppose your right. Communication is the key.
josh
DevNet Master
Posts: 4872
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:23 pm
Location: Palm beach, Florida

Re: Quoting the customer

Post by josh »

They've done studies that concluded the majority of time, workers for ask for 15% less then what the boss would have approved, and the boss usually would have gone 15% higher then what the employee asked for. I think $50 /hr would be a fair rate for this project, keep in mind theres people out there charging $150+ an hr that have to turn down business constantly because they still have such a high demand.
Post Reply