Help setting a price for a website?

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iAmThePope

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Hey guys, I am a university student atm and have developed quite a few static websites for clients, but now I have a project which requires me to use a lot of MySQL and PHP back end coding.

Any advice on how to charge for such a project?
Quick info about the project:
One company with x amount of Car Manufacturers as client.
Each manufacturer can log into the site to update their list of available vehicles, prices etc..
Admin logs in and records things such as mileage, amount of petrol put in etc etc.
End of months generates a summary, one for each client featuring only their cars and one for admin featuring all cars
Summary includes things such as total kilometers driven, total fuel used, total utilization etc.
Also needs to be able to add new users
View them at any time
Update them
Delete them(So basically CRUD functions for users)
Will be using large amounts of data from a database gotten from an spreadsheet.

Now... Any advice??
Thanks
 
iAmThePope said:
Hey guys, I am a university student atm and have developed quite a few static websites for clients, but now I have a project which requires me to use a lot of MySQL and PHP back end coding.

Any advice on how to charge for such a project?
Quick info about the project:
One company with x amount of Car Manufacturers as client.
Each manufacturer can log into the site to update their list of available vehicles, prices etc..
Admin logs in and records things such as mileage, amount of petrol put in etc etc.
End of months generates a summary, one for each client featuring only their cars and one for admin featuring all cars
Summary includes things such as total kilometers driven, total fuel used, total utilization etc.
Also needs to be able to add new users
View them at any time
Update them
Delete them(So basically CRUD functions for users)
Will be using large amounts of data from a database gotten from an spreadsheet.

Now... Any advice??
Thanks
Click to expand...

Have you done any similar work before (not a static site)? You have to estimate how many hours of work are involved in something like this and factor in scope creep, testing and bug fixing in addition to development time. I always spend more hours on a project than I quoted, so keep that in mind.

I also suggest looking at a solid framework for your development. I personally love CodeIgniter but have heard great things about CakePHP as well. Frameworks make things a lot easier and quicker in the long run.
 
mcryan said:
Have you done any similar work before (not a static site)? You have to estimate how many hours of work are involved in something like this and factor in scope creep, testing and bug fixing in addition to development time. I always spend more hours on a project than I quoted, so keep that in mind.

I also suggest looking at a solid framework for your development. I personally love CodeIgniter but have heard great things about CakePHP as well. Frameworks make things a lot easier and quicker in the long run.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have done some non-static sites before, but nothing with a scope like this. I am confident I can do this, I have the skills and knowledge, but I just don't know how to charge for it. If charging by the hour, what would be a fair hourly rate for someone who is not a professional?

Also I personally love the Yii framework, have used it before but only for university projects, i.e I created an online department store using the Yii framework so I am quite familiar with it and was planning on using it as well.
 
Have you confirmed that you're not re-inventing the wheel? I'd investigate whether the functions you're quoting on haven't been covered before, if so undercut that price otherwise charge whatever you like.
 
Very basic system if your using a framework. Your going to need to break it out into smaller components and then work from that.This could take you a week, this could take you a year - hard to say as it all depends on your experience, knowledge and actual spec.

But to sum it up your just slapping together a few forms and then your reporting is just SQL statements. The only time consuming task I see is the frontend eyecandy you might need to ad.

You also need to say if your doing SEO? PPC? maintenance? are their ongoing costs like paid data sources? etc. So I would say anything from R10K to R50K depending on the finer details.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Very basic system if your using a framework. Your going to need to break it out into smaller components and then work from that.This could take you a week, this could take you a year - hard to say as it all depends on your experience, knowledge and actual spec.

But to sum it up your just slapping together a few forms and then your reporting is just SQL statements. The only time consuming task I see is the frontend eyecandy you might need to ad.

You also need to say if your doing SEO? PPC? maintenance? are their ongoing costs like paid data sources? etc. So I would say anything from R10K to R50K depending on the finer details.
Click to expand...

I also thought it quite basic using simple SQL statements to update and read from the DB, no SEO is needed for this as it is a closed system with a maximum of 5 - 10 people having access to it. The fancy front end is very simple, it is not for normal users but for a very specific set of customers which will be added to the database by the admin, i.e the driver of the cars. The normal index page for normal viewers will just be a collage of pictures with some descriptions, nothing complex, it is the back end for the 5-10 users that will be the most part. Like say someone at manufacturer x updates something the admin can see it, which is also very simple, as when the page is reloaded it will be automatically updated from the DB. So I'm just not sure how much to charge for this

EDIT: I don't want to over charge the client if I do something that I feel is simple. As the client is very ignorant of technology and how much work is actually needed for this. I feel this would take me about a week and a half maybe two weeks at max. So I do need to take the work load into account also.
 
Last edited:
There's quite a few threads with the same question, especially for n00bs

what is your time worth?

get to a number, multiply that with how many hours you expect to be busy with this project.

There's what you charge.
 
AcidRaZor said:
There's quite a few threads with the same question, especially for n00bs

what is your time worth?

get to a number, multiply that with how many hours you expect to be busy with this project.

There's what you charge.
Click to expand...

We all gotta start somewhere so I might be noob in this but so was everyone else once, thanks for all the feedback guys, I have enough info now I think to make a fair judgement.
 
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