Entry Level Developer Pricing

[mscott1286]

I am a beginner-intermediate user/developer in Filemaker Pro. I am also new to this Filemaker forum.

I have recently been asked to develop a computer programming solution. I would like to do this in Filemaker Pro being as I would like to gain as much experience as possible working with the program. I had an initial meeting with the customer to go over requirements and parameters for this solution that he needs. Basically my question is based on the fact that I am new to the development community and really have no idea what kind of benchmark to look at in terms of charging and pricing. I know an employer that I have worked with in Columbus says that he has contacted several professional, certified Filemaker developers and they charge anywhere from $150-$200 / hour. Obviously I am no where near this level at this point but basically I just wanted to gather any insight into what kind of price range I could look into giving this customer given my position as an entry level developer and wanting to use this project as a way to get my feet wet with some hands on experience developing software. Am I looking at charging a per hour rate? A flat fee? Combination of the two? And in what ranges would these numbers look like. Like I said, this is my first real-world project that I've been given the opportunity to develop for so please assume that I know nothing in terms of the financial aspect of charging for software development.

I hope I communicated my question effectively, if I can provide any additional information in order to answer it more fully, please let me know. I appreciate any help and information you can provide. Thank you.

[Fitch]

It's hard even for experienced developers to estimate project time accurately. You should stick with an hourly rate. If you do provide an estimate, make sure the client understands that's what it is, and not a fixed bid.

Try to come up with as detailed a spec as possible up front. Divide the project into phases or milestones and estimate the time for each one. Discuss with the client that if the first milestone is way off you'll want to revisit the remaining numbers.

The spec is important because clients invariably come up with feature requests that were not part of the original agreement. Talk to the client about this so that they understand these requests will be billed as change orders. My guess is that this client wants to get the job done cheap, so it's possible they will try to shoehorn extra features in without paying more. Again, this is why you use estimates, not fixed bids, and bill hourly.

Your rate is up to you. Do you think the $200/hr developer works twice as fast as you? Then charge half as much.

[mr_vodka]

Since this is your first contract project w/ FM, I personally would think that you may want to chalk one up to a learning experience and charge a flat fee but as Tom said, make sure that you document the requirements and work effort; otherwise it will almost be inevitable that the client will push scope creep.

Just my :twocents:

[BruceJ]

You'll likely not get the contract if you go with an hourly rate and can't realistically get very close to the final price.

My suggestion... give them a decent price (this is a learning experience for you, but you still need enough left over for beer money). Then, for added features latter on - yes - they will have many - charge an hourly rate.

I know that some of the most sophisticated solutions I've built take me about 6 hours to completely create a particular function or work process. I charge $75 an hour. That would be $150,000 per year as a full time gig. I think I'm good, but don't think the market would give me $150,000 per year for plugging away with a friendly database program like FileMaker.

I always keep in mind the logistics of the organization. If I know that anything over $10,000 makes it a capital purchase, I'll always go under that if possible. If the may user can sign off on purchases up to $5,000 without having to get approval from his CEO, then I do a couple of smaller projects for $4,500 then link them together. Be creative, know the business and use your salesmanship.