A general form-I guess this fits

greg252

I think I got screwed.
I\'ve been working with PHP for about a year and a half- for my personal site.
I was contracted to do some work for an advertising agency. Since it was my first project, I thought I gave a great price. Now that the site is complete, I was curious what "professional" programmers would charge. It's all after the fact, but I need to learn.

Description:
Site contained 2 main areas, the publicly viewable area and a content manager backend.
Public area consisted of 3 sections- a series of picture pages (a portfolio) with several rollovers and weird tables, a biography section and a searchable stock photo area. (If you haven't guessed, it was for a photographer).

The management area consisted of an area to update the biography, a section to add pictures to the stock photo section, an area to update meta tags, and this is a big one:
He wanted clients to be able to request "pictures similar to...". He wanted to be able to 1) Add a company, 2) add a buyer for that company, 3) add requests for that buyer under which he could upload pictures. Then, he could have that buyer login and view those pictures. He wanted it very private and not open to the general public.

What do you think. I got it done, but I know I didn't charge enough.
What would you charge?

sfullman

wouldn't touch a database project for less than 2K. If you do the kind of consulting you need to do to make your system integrate with his current system and make it user-friendly, that's 2K alone. If you're going to add security features and esp. multiple logins where users have access to a certain part of the data, add more like 1K to that, and with security issues, add a little more.

Not even considering the graphical interface and look and feel of the site.

[deleted]

"I think I got screwed."

If any screwing has been done, you did it yourself when you accepted the job for the price you agreed on. You can't expect the client to say "hey, that's too cheap, we'll pay more" 🙂

Pricing is different in each country. What I charge here in dutchland is outragious elsewhere, and peanuts in some places.

It also depends very much on your abilities as a PHP programmer. If you're a 'newbie', then you can't charge 10k for a project, you simply don't have the knowledge to guarantee a good product, and your price should reflect that (you get what you pay for)

NEVER EVER calculate on fixed price basis. things like "If you're going to add security add more like 1K to that" are not smart. Implementing security may be much easier or much more difficult than 1K can pay for.

Give yourself a reasonable hourly rate($20-$50 depending on your ecperience), and guesstimate how long it will take you. This means getting a full spec of what the client wants, and working some things out in advance, to see how long it will take to do the real thing.

Then, offer a fixed price to the client for the given specs. Many 'developers' guess they can do the project in X days, they offer a price for X days, then they find out they can't do it in X days and start demanding more money from the client.
That usually means the client cancels the project and you never get to do any work for them again (nor for their friends and relatives).

Always make some sort of agreement with the client that if the specs change significantly during the development, that's extra. (note: if the client wants a blue background instead of a green one, that NOT extra. You depend on the client, they don't depend on you🙂 )

tomhath

Assuming you were paid the price you asked, you didn't get screwed. In fact you might've gotten the deal of a lifetime.

Is the customer happy? Having a reference site for future customers to check is invaluable to you.

Did you keep track of how many hours you put into the various parts of the site? If not, write down estimates now as best you can remember (your estimates will be a lot better now than they will be in a month).

Now decide how much $ you want per hour and multiply by the number of hours you put into the project. That's the starting point for negotiations next time.

Know where you will spend time (so you can estimate better). Learn what you can to to make yourself more productive (so you can give a lower price or enjoy a higher profit).

greg252

That's exactly what I was trying to say... I screwed myself.
I felt confident enough in my skills to accept the job- though, it took about 37 hours (PHP, HTML, hosting-setup), not including meetings, testing and tweaks.

Are there any key questions you all ask or statements that you make to help quote a job accurately?