How much money does one usually charge for writing freelance software?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How do I charge for self contracted jobs?

My friend and I were offered to write some software for a local research center. We wrote a simple test program in Java that took about a week or so to finish. Now, with some new requirements, the center purchased a library for .NET we requested and will write the full program in C# .NET. The center now asks us the question, "How much do you want to get paid?" How should I reply to this? I have no idea how to judge these kind of things, as this is my first time actually getting paid for writing software.

Answer 1

Some guys gave great answers to that question on this one : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1054165/how-do-i-charge-for-self-contracted-jobs

Answer 2

Pricing mainly depends on these factors.

1. How long will this project/code take ?
2. How valuable is the client and project to you?
3. What is your operating cost? What is your expected profit margin ?
4. How difficult is this work ?
5. How clear are the requirements ?

What is your pricing method ? Fixed price ? or Hourly? Even the Fixed price is calculated based on the estimated hours and your hourly rate. Easier way is to estimate the total hours required to complete the work plus some buffer effort to absorb changing/unclear requirements.Now multiply this with your hourly rate. Adjust your hourly rate based on your experience, expertise & any discounts that you may like to offer to this client.

Good Luck !!!

Answer 3

I love the market. Markets are amazing things.

Here's a simple question, and it really does boil down to this.

How much do YOU and your friend want?

No. Really.

It's your time, it's your life. Hours are the one thing you won't get back. What is it worth to YOU to do this project for THEM.

They, on the other hand, have an idea of how much they want or are able to pay for it.

If your price is below or equal to how much they value the project - then it's a win.

If not, and you're too high, then I guess you're either not getting the project or you're willing to sell your time for less than you think it's worth. So, was your valuation correct? Not what is THERE valuation of YOUR time, what is YOUR valuation of YOUR time.

The "Market Price" is what the market, at large, seems to be willing to pay or charge for things. But that really depends on your market, and who's in it, etc.

If you set your price fairly, to how you value your time, and they take it, then you have a fair deal, yes? You didn't get "ripped off" if you bid "too low", because it's your evaluation, fairly made. Right? And they won't be "ripped off" if it's too high for them, because they set a budget as well.

Regret over "I could have got X for less or I paid too much for Y", that's absurd. Barring getting raped by some mechanic in a remote desert outpost, you have the information you need for your time, and they have their budget, and their ROI numbers, etc. to make a fair judge of "what is it worth to them".

Different people value different things different ways. Maybe you value your time less because the project experience is more important than the time. Maybe they want this done when you planned your honeymoon -- cha ching! worth a bit more to you, isn't it?

So, make your price and go from there.

Answer 4

It really comes down to how much you value your time versus how much the client values the work you'll be doing.

For me, I value my time differently at different times. For example, this is summer time and my kids are out of school, so I want to spend as much time as I can with them. Therefore, I'll bid higher today than I would have in March. In October I might be thinking that I need some extra cash for Christmas, so I may bid lower to improve my chances of making a little extra spending money.

The one thing I always try to do is evaluate how valuable my finished product will be to the customer. If it's not very valuable to them then they will not want to pay me much - often times I'll just ignore these. If it is very valuable to them then I'll usually bid even higher than what I value my time at.

As Will said in his post, you are selling your time and once it's gone you'll never get it back. Make sure you don't sell yourself short because your life gets shorter every day.

Answer 5

In Europe, a typical developer gets $600 per day. Lot more is you are not just a programmer (team leader, scrum master, business capabilities, etc).

I think in US it's more, but I can't tell you how much, since I don't know the freelance market there.

This is what the freelance developers are asking here. Of course, the end user (the customer) is paying sometimes a lot more since you are typically passing trough a body shopper.