what to charge for repeat web app

cretaceous

hi
anyone have any advice on this:
I built a website app for a client - its grown and grown over two years and is designed to let them manage items they lease out - now their sister company in another country has asked could they have a version of the site... but what to charge?

Features include: (just so you know this is more than a listing thing)
calendared booking
Excel spreadsheet generator
customer emailer thing for marketing (with filters for who gets what)
tables to manage customers and paperwork process
paperwork generator
nifty thing to allow them to reposition the things they lease on floorplans (a javascript widget that feeds into the db)
upload for pics and pdfs etc
multiple access levels for different users
and other bits and pieces

the public side of the site just shows what's available to lease and is not a very big deal - but the admin pages pretty much do everything they need to run the business and have saved them a lot of manual entry on spreadsheets
(we tried to get them to do this from the start but it took 'em a while to grasp what could be done)

Site is hosted by me so they dont have access to the php and apart from a maintenance agreement there's no contract on who owns what

Anyway its built and paid for - but what would you charge for the copy site?
50% of the cost of the original site?
I did it with a business partner and he thinks it should be 30% or so (he didn't sweat over it) - needless to say I think it should be more like 75%

I'm not trying to rip anyone off but they are a big company - I put a lot of hours into the first version and should have charged more
but they can always just get a local company to rewrite it
plus I'm in the UK (high prices) and duplicate is for Australia (I know some things are cheaper there - but webdev?) - its a bit of a dilemma!

thanks for wading through all this - maybe I should flip a coin

Elizabeth

I guess it would depend on the amount of customization put into the new site. If it were me, I'd probably price it just like anything else - how many hours I think it will take me to do something (and then I buffer it up). If you're not doing anything at all then I think 30% of the original is fair... especially if there is potential for future business with them. One thing about larger companies I've seen is that they can be particularly stingy and slow when it comes to payment so you might want to take that into consideration.

Just my 2 cents. 🙂

cretaceous

thanks very much for your comment Elizabeth -
of course to hand it over, I have to fully document the thing - should only be a day or two though
your'e right about stingy!
they want a change and cant understand it's extra work - "your app should just do what we thought of - why should we pay more?"
but the department gets a limited budget to cover all marketing and once it's gone thats it
maybe I'd better lower my 75% expectation - dont want to alienate them!

mpasternak

same price as the first one.

it's the same product, same package, same everything. Just because you've already developed it, doesnt mean you don't deserve full compensation for it.

dougal85

True but one is a custom build, so they generally would cost more.

If somebody comes to you for a fully customized site they would expect to pay more than a pre-made solution. Should he also take 2 years to do it? 😉

Roger_Ramjet

cretaceous wrote:
hi

Site is hosted by me so they dont have access to the php and apart from a maintenance agreement there's no contract on who owns what

Under UK law you own all the Inelectual Property Rights or copyright for the design, software and database automatically and have to specifically assign them away, which you apparently have not done.

Charge them what they can afford which in business should be based on how much money it will make for them. I would get their annual reports and see what the turnover is in Oz compared to that in the UK, then charge them pro-rata for the Australian licence.

You also have the option of offering them the copyright itself which to a multi-national may be a more attractive proposition. The software would then become an asset of the company so they will pay more for it than for a licence to use which is what they've got now.

cretaceous

lots of interesting comments - thanks again

to clarify: no way did it take two years to do - they just kept asking for more features so it was/is an ongoing process - maybe 3 months in all

as for looking at their annual reports the parent company is a massive global thing - but the department this is for is a minnow - and it's a long story as to why the corporate in house team didnt do it - and since its php/mysql it doesnt fit with the in house ".net " (got em!)

anyway I feel better about asking for a higher fee now

etully

same price as the first one.

I charge as much as the market will bear.

Roger_Ramjet

etully wrote:
I charge as much as the market will bear.

Too right!

But how do you figure out what that is???

cretaceous

just what I was going to say Roger - go in too high and they say no thanks
anyway am proceeding on around 70%
(but lookie here 5 more posts till 100 !
but wow Mr Ramjet - 3,882 - and I 've read a fair few of them and highly informed they are all - that'll take me 157 years to match at my current rate of posting )

Bunkermaster

Friendly moderator notice: Post count does NOT impact the size of your manhood.

stolzyboy

Bunkermaster wrote:
Friendly moderator notice: Post count does NOT impact the size of your manhood.

nope... just the amount of clicks you'll never get back in your lifetime 🙂

cretaceous

and too much posting wont make me blind?

Weedpacket

No, but too little posting might, seeing as you'll need something else to occupy yourself.

Elizabeth

This is why I love the E.L.... you can go from a perfectly reasonable discussion to, well.. ahem... other things in an instant. 😃

stolzyboy

tis true... it's a well rounded forum 🙂

cretaceous

Just thought I'd revive this thread to let those of you who contributed know the outcome..
so its what, 5 months later, and we thought the job had gone to someone else when out of the blue we get the go ahead, no questions over cost, they want a load of extras plus modifications so budget is even higher.
lucky I stuck to my guns and didnt reduce price like my partner wanted

in fact the Aussies seem less worried about cost than the Brits, probably because they costed it and found our price reasonable

and now my post count is 101

stolzyboy

No, it's 102!

cretaceous

yeah but I'm a senior member now so I'm allowed count() mistakes

dougal85

So i guess somebody like weedpacket is allowed parse errors?

Well done with the job btw.