"How Do Web Designers / Developers Price Their Work?"
One of the first and most important issues a freelance must address is how
much to charge for their services. If you’re interested to know what are
the necessary elements to consider while quoting for a project, you’ve
come to the right place. This article can serve as a reference to both buyers
and bidders.
There is more than one method each individual determine the price of a particular
project. Depending on each individual, some might charge by the hour or by the
total cost of the project.
Hourly charges are the easiest for the service providers and eliminate the
possibility of losing money on a job. However, hourly charges are often not
acceptable to the client for several reasons. First of all, buyer generally
wants to know how much a particular project is going to cost.
The next problem is that most buyers don’t understand hourly rates. Luckily
at Vezine Content Management, all quotes are base on the total cost of the project;
hence, this confusion had been eliminated.
The key to an accurate estimates lies in clearly defining the scope of the
project, breaking the project into small individual tasks, and finally, estimating
the time required to complete each of these tasks. It is essential for buyers
to provide as much information of the project as possible.
Then lock in the scope of the project with a written contract or agreement.
Seller should make sure buyer understands any work outside of the agreement
will be billed separately.
Purchasing Pre Made Software
Often then not, purchasing a pre made software is better and more cost effective
than hiring a personal developer. Although some pre made software are near but
can’t meet your expectation, you are well better off go ahead and purchase
the software which nearly meets what you want and ask for some custom fine tuning
by the developers of the software.
Using this method, you can benefit by having a better-built system since the
developers are already familiar with their own software and since they are already
in business, you don’t have to worry about being scam.
For example, I recently bought Vezine Content Management software, which the
features nearly meet, what I want but not totally. I still went ahead and bought
it and ask the Vezine developers for some custom works. They are more than happy
to help me accomplish what I need for my website.
Their charges are extremely reasonable especially when it comes to built bits
and pieces, which could sum up to 10K++. Overall, the system works great for
me now. Everything works beautifully and as what I expected.
Conclusion
Whether to find a personal developer or to buy a pre made software is up to
you. This article is here to gives you an insight of my experience.
Good luck!
About the Author:
George as a Web Designer has been involved with numerous server side programming
with PHP and MySQL in the past and current. Visit Vezine Articles for more info. |
