Freelance work - help with pricing

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Nicko

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I was asked by a family friend to help in the development of an app for their company (wanted someone they can trust). I am doing my honours this year so I haven't done any sort of freelance work before, and have no idea what sort of fees to charge for an app.

They have done the backend and the iOS version of the app, and need me for the Android side. The app itself is similar to facebook, but focusing on messaging and events. I realize that without knowing the actual app, it will be hard for you to give advice on how long it should take/what I should charge. But even a really rough estimate will help, or past examples of what you have charged would go a long way.

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: I suppose from research of other freelance jobs on overseas sites I would say R6000 right now, if I had to pick a number. Is that cheap for an app?
 
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For variable and big projects most freelancers charge per hour
 
R135 and even R250 per hour is very reasonable for technical skills, but you should also take into account that you are not experienced. A lack of experience means you will take much longer to complete a project, and that should come with a discount.

You can charge a flat rate, which alleviates the concern about experience, but then you must know that your employer will not waste your time (which is usually the case).
 
I did some freelance work for the varsity in my 3rd year, and they were more than happy to pay R100 per hour for fairly basic work on a website. Total summed to R12 000.

Hope that gives you a rough indication.
 
Nicko said:
Hmm is R135 reasonable? Works out to R10800 for 2 weeks worth of work.
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What is your time worth to you? R10? R20? R50? R135? R400? R600? R900?

Up to you if you want to whore yourself out for cheap. Just be prepared to be used like one
 
semaphore said:
I charge R600/hr rofl.
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As a matter of interest, how many hours does a typical contractor work at these billed rates? Is there eniught work for a 40 hour (billed) week (or more) if so is it really 40 hours spent or more? The reason I ask is that a family member is a lawyer who bills at R3000/h (he only gets commision on this), but the reality is that he spends close to 2x the hours for every hour billed, since there is also this awareness of the client's tolerance - e.g. They may agree to R3000/h, but the expectation is that they won't be billed for more than 15-20 hours. However clear he makes it that if there are unforeseen issues, the clients still try to make them his problem (well, why wouldn't they, I suppose). It looks like this constant battle to balance personal time and acceptable cost, and it's not like the client ever pays more per hour (well, unless the contractor unethically bills for non-working time).
 
See it as a business. Do the following:

Make a list of expenses that you might occur for doing the job. This include travel costs, internet, telephone calls, etc. You shouldn't have too much. Then look at the work to be done. Ask yourself how much do you want to make out of it. As an example, let's say R10 000

So, you need to charge Costs + Profit and divide it by the approx. amount of hours you might utilise. e.g. ) R5000 costs + R10000 profit) / 50 hours of work. R15000/50 = R300 / hour.

But the best bet is this:

Quote for a fixed amount, allowing two 'major' changes, meaning, you build it, they want big changes. After the two changes, any other changes will lead to a time / material basis, meaning, you will keep charging them per hour for any variations.
 
cguy said:
As a matter of interest, how many hours does a typical contractor work at these billed rates? Is there eniught work for a 40 hour (billed) week (or more) if so is it really 40 hours spent or more? The reason I ask is that a family member is a lawyer who bills at R3000/h (he only gets commision on this), but the reality is that he spends close to 2x the hours for every hour billed, since there is also this awareness of the client's tolerance - e.g. They may agree to R3000/h, but the expectation is that they won't be billed for more than 15-20 hours. However clear he makes it that if there are unforeseen issues, the clients still try to make them his problem (well, why wouldn't they, I suppose). It looks like this constant battle to balance personal time and acceptable cost, and it's not like the client ever pays more per hour (well, unless the contractor unethically bills for non-working time).
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It really depends project to project, my last project was about 100 hours work of work that i actually logged so they most likely scored some extra.

@abzo - Thanks for the compliment. Takes longer than 17 minutes thou.
 
Thanks guys for all your input. I think I will go for R250/hour and take into account any extra time that is caused by my inexperience. Its hard for me to quote a fixed amount as they havent given me all the details about what is required of me.
 
So you have no real world experience in writing apps? This means you also don't have an accurate measure of how long things actually take. If you estimate it is going to take you 1 month, double that.

That said, charging R20000 for 10 days ( 250 x 8 x 10) work with no experience is probably unethical. You are charging them for you to learn. With me making assumptions from info given, with no other experienced devs involved in the project to mentor you, there is a high probably that this app will have to be rewritten or become a massive headache and money pit to maintain and extend. Please do not take offense at this.
 
dude, 250 per hour for someone in honours who has no clue wtf they're actually doing is retarded.
your time is not worth 250 an hour, and if you think it is, you're in for a ****ty time when you go job hunting.

what i would be more concerned about is making sure exactly what the terms of your agreement are.
you're freelance now, and you're taking on a project.
if you find a job in a years time, and the project is done and delivered and they want updates, are you available to them?

do some analysis, break it down into a set of clearly defined deliverables and make sure you all agree on what "done" means BEFORE you write a single line. make sure you define who the source belongs to, who any interesting idea's based on the project belong to, and make sure your ass is covered.

nothing worse than trying to get rid of some dude you helped out six months ago.

and fix your pricing ffs.
look at how much people with your experience are making in the actual job world, where they're in an environment dedicated to training them up. realise you'll be muddling around on your own using google and stackoverflow as your only source of reference and so you'll prolly take a really long time to do things that wouldn't take most experienced dev's that long to do. if a starting salary for an honours student is around 12-15k per month and you're charging 20k per month, then to quote k's choice... somethings wrong
 
I'm starting to see where all the low figures on the MyBroadband salary surveys come from... Some people really don't think much value of their time.
 
xrapidx said:
I'm starting to see where all the low figures on the MyBroadband salary surveys come from... Some people really don't think much value of their time.
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Yeah, 12k-15k per month? That was low to average for honours grads in Cape Town back in 2000.

To the OP: I think it really depends on how awesome you are at what you do. If you and your client have reason to think you are a much better choice than an unfamiliar, but experienced contractor (I don't know - maybe you are top of your class, and have been developing code for 15 years, and have a bunch of hobby android apps under your belt), then R250/h seems fine to me. If you don't feel that you know where to begin and aren't so confident about your ability to produce an on-time solid project until you have more experience, you should consider charging quite a bit less to avoid a fall out.
 
sp4ceman said:
what i would be more concerned about is making sure exactly what the terms of your agreement are.
you're freelance now, and you're taking on a project.
if you find a job in a years time, and the project is done and delivered and they want updates, are you available to them?
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THIS. Especially with family/friends... it can turn into a real nightmare.
 
_kabal_ said:
So you have no real world experience in writing apps? This means you also don't have an accurate measure of how long things actually take. If you estimate it is going to take you 1 month, double that.

That said, charging R20000 for 10 days ( 250 x 8 x 10) work with no experience is probably unethical. You are charging them for you to learn. With me making assumptions from info given, with no other experienced devs involved in the project to mentor you, there is a high probably that this app will have to be rewritten or become a massive headache and money pit to maintain and extend. Please do not take offense at this.
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I never said that I haven't worked with apps before. Worked with Java my whole school/varsity life and have done a few simple Android apps in that time. I am just inexperienced compared to professionals in this field. I realize I will probably need some time to learn as I am a bit rusty with my Android development. Which is why I said

and take into account any extra time that is caused by my inexperience
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I suppose that is a bit ambiguous but what I meant by that is that I will deduct any hours that I spend figuring out functionality rather than being productive. Same applies with messy code. If I am not satisfied with it, I am not averse to rewritting it in my own time.

I completely get where you coming from, but I would rather charge R250/hour and excluded any extra work caused by my inexperience, than charge R150/hour. Because if later on, after doing this app for them, they want more work from me and I all of a sudden say "Now its R250/hour" it will just cause issues. Also, it ended up to R227/hour (25 Aus dollars). R250 just ended up being too random of a number.
 
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