Pricing Solutions -- for example?

[Wickerman]

Hi -- I've been moving into freelance Filemaker developing over the past few years, at first doing some by-the-hour work performing improvements on existing solutions (adding non-exitsing listviews, laying out simple reports, cleaning up data, etc. And have recently begun taking on projects from scratch. Things are going well, and I'm learning quite quickly.

One thing I'm uncertain of is . . . how much to charge! At first I asked $50/hour, but now that I'm getting faster at everything, I feel I can ask $75/hr. But at some point you develop efficiencies where you can re-use stuff you've already built to some extent and the hourly rate idea starts to have less relation to reality. Also, it's very difficult to know hat is reasonable to charge for a project qwithout knowing what other developers charge for similar work -- am I offering a very inexpensive service, or am I actually overcharging clients for work that a more established development team or individual could knock off in their sleep?

Any suggestions for figuring out what the 'going rate' is for various kinds of solutions?

Here's an example. I do a lot of work with collections -- image collections, archives, museums, etc. A typical cataloguing database might include:

1) A 4-level hierarchical database (Collection > Series > File > Item) with buttons and scripts for record creation at each level.

2) Basic record security with creation / deletion locked down and permitted by scripted permissions based on privilege sets.

3) 15 - 20 fields at each level of the hierarchy

4) A List view at each of the 4 levels

5) Five related tables at the 'Item' level to keep track of conservation actions, exhibitions, and other similar information.

6) A Table holding a lexicon of keywords imported from controlled vocabulary for tagging the items. A join table holding individual 'tag' records (1 lexicon word tagging 1 Item). An interface on the 'Item' layout for creating these 'tags.'

7) A keyword search feature that displays the results of searches in an index-style layout.

8) Hard-copy print versions for all these various functions (say a dozen different ones -- like a 'Collection' inventory, a full 'Item' record, etc.)

9) Definition of 5 different privilege sets and creation of 10 user accounts to accord various users the appropriate level of access to the database.

10) Approximately 10 hours of contact time with the client to determine the needs for the design.

11) Approximately 10 further hours of contact time with the client to test / refine the design along the way.

Okay -- so this would be a not terribly complex solution with not a whole lot of bells and whistles, but a certain amount of layout work, relational design, scripting, etc. And designed for the use of 1 - 5 people in a single office. Recognizing that this is a rather artificial exercise, would anyone be willing to suggest a ballpark range, however broad, of what a client might expect to pay for this size of a solution? $1000? $10,000? What?

Albert

[Ted S]

Wickerman,

I can't tell you how much to charge for anything because I'm an in-house developer and I believe that market conditions tend to prevail anyway.

This may not help your directly but take a listen to the Adatasol podcast that was recorded at Devcon a few weeks ago. It was a discussion among some of FM's rock stars that focused mostly on the different pricing models and ways to bill customers.

http://podcast.adatasol.com/

It's the episode labeled [Nr 115] from August 24th 2009

You will probably find it interesting.

[Rich R]

That's an excellent podcast - I was at that roundtable and it was very interesting.

We changed our pricing policy last year from hourly to fee based - One Fee for the entire project. This has made bidding and sales so much easier and we've seen a 35% increase in business.

The key here is writing a clear project definition and make sure the client understands it.

We also sub contract out the same way. If we have a project that gets parceled out to subcontractors - they get paid for the result - not the time. We decide the fee up front of course.

We have found more resistance from our developers than our clients.

Our clients LOVE this pricing structure.

The first worry is change control and how would we handle a project gone astray.

The answer is obvious - Don't let it go astray.

You must set the tone at day one with the client so they clearly understand what they're paying for.

Our clients have been more than happy to say - Ok - we want to add this module but we can wait till the initial project is complete.

Makes more business for us later on - and again - the client has a fixed cost to budget for.