How much should I quote?

[Mr Chris]

Hi Guys,

I've been working with php & mysql for a while now and have been asked to build a property website with a cms.

The site has:

[b]live site [/b]
- Quick Search on the front
- Quick Results returned on a 1-10 paginated page with thumbnail
- More details with pics
- Calenldar of avaliable viewing dates for renting properties


[b]CMS[/b]
- Log-in
- Change Password
- Add a property
- Search for a property
- edit a property
- add a viewing date
- add an area (town where combo box values are updated via a php page)

But I have no idea how much to charge for this as a quote.  I know somebody that charged nearly £10,000 for a project like this(!) but that also included feeds to other property websites. 

I was thinking of quoting more in the hundreds?  How to you guys get to a quote?

Thanks

Chris

[.josh]

Sit down and figure out about how long it will take you to make it, test it, put it on their server if needs be, whatever else it takes for you to hand it to them and walk away never to touch it again, etc.. in hours.  Then multiply that by how many dollars/pounds/whatever an hour you think you are worth. 

Offering maintenance/support for it should be an entirely different fee. 

That should be your minimum fee.  Then sit down and think about..for lack of better words..how much extra you can squeeze out of them.  For instance, if you feel it will cost them $1,500 for you to even consider it, ask for $2,000 or even $2,500.  That extra $500-$1000 is a buffer for you two to negotiate. 

Me personally, I would ask for $2,500 but do it for no less than $1,500. But that's a tentative number, based on the info you provided. That number would be subject to change based on lots of other factors that would come into play, like further details about the company, time tables, etc...

But I have to add a disclaimer to my personal estimate: I know my estimate would way underbid the going rate for things like that. 

I figure about 80 hours (2 weeks) worth of work at about $20 an hour for that = $1,600 then throw on a buffer to negotiate with.  But that's me.  $20 an hour is pretty cheap labor for coding.  I see most people charging $40+ an hour. 

But like I said, that's just a rough estimate.  You have to sit down and figure out exactly to the letter what they want out of you, from design to functionality to support for it, to how soon they want it, etc.. 

You just have to balance fair with profit.  You're there to make money, but you wanna be fair too.  If you can bust it out in a week or less, don't charge them for 2 weeks or a month's worth of work.  But also, don't make promises you can't keep, either.

My personal estimate on that is going off practically making it from scratch.  Ideally you would have your own library of classes and functions you've already made throughout your time of coding, that would speed up your work in the first place.

[steelmanronald06]

i'm getting $2500 to make someone a construction site where they can edit the news by themselves....that comes no where near the coding you have to do.

[Jocka]

^ .. . wow. What is that like maybe 20 hours of work you got there? (asking steelmanronald06) As for ur quote. I'd say anything on or around $1500 would be fair. I've been known to drop EXTREMELY low like $400-ish but I wouldn't recommend it. It makes you look cheap. It's better to charge something they expect to see. If you say $500 then ur cheap, if you say $5000 then your out of ur mind. So like $1500-$2500 would be ur best bet.

[steelmanronald06]

It is less than 20 hours of ACTUAL work, but you have to take a few factors into account:

* The actual programming and design

* Meeting with them to get the information they want on the site

* Meetings after you get a rough draft on a design to determine what needs changed

* Possible re-design if they don't approve of the first

I took all that into account when I set my price.  My price includes an unlimited "I hate that design, do over"s, about 15 hours of work, and all the meetings.

[Jocka]

now thats a good way to think out a price. I never took that all into account. Sure wish I would've because it seems they ALWAYS want something added or "this isn't right". Good thinking (*taking notes*)

[steelmanronald06]

Ha ha!  I thought that was common web design/programming procedure. Hmm...Well, since your taking notes, I might as well add stuff to the above list.

* I normally state that when it comes to actual programmed scripts, such as a news script, to add to it or re-do it will require an agreed upon fee added to the overall price.  Like, I built a member system once and they wanted me to add a new member status, Product Manager, so I had to go back in and add some more member checking and add in some functionality for the Product Manager. I charged $100 dollars extra, tagged it onto the overall fee, for that.

* I always ask at the very beginning what they want. We sit down, talk, consider options, and I tell them what all I am capable of doing so they can decide which features to put into their site. Based on those features, is where I get my scripting price.

* I always ask about basic layout structure, and charge based on the answer. Do they want a header, or a full image logo?  A nice full footer, or just something to distinguish the end of the page? One column on the left/right, or two columns one on each side? Do they want any navigation along the top?  Just a few things I take into account.

My typical flow chart on pricing looks something like:

$500 - 5 Scripts at $100 per script
$100 - Add on to one of their scripts
$600 - A layout with a footer, header and logo, and two columns
$500 - Basic fee to cover any possible re-designs
$100 - Basic programming fee, such as database storage
$35 per/hour - My houlry charge to work on the site

That isn't the price list for this project that I am working on, but that is how I draw them up. The Basic programming fee is like, if they want pictures displayed on their site, I normally store their pictures in a database and use a mysql query to fetch them. That is my personal preference for organizing, so I don't charge they script price, but put it all into one basic fee.

[448191]

I'm way offtopic here but:

What is the usefulness of storing images in a db in a nutshell?

I'm curious as I might do so myself if I can find enough reason. Currently I do use a script to handle images, but all it really does is set the headers (specificly caching) and send the file using file_get_contents().

I like the idea of having nothing in your document root than php files, but am a little concerned about the extra load on the db, especially in db intensive applications like a forum or a big store.

[steelmanronald06]

Well, a number of reasons I store in a database:

1) You can add some extra fields for description, title, name, etc.  So you can have a detail of what each picture is.  You miss this when storing in your document root because you have to keep the filename short, like header1.jpg, header2.jpg.  What is header1.jpg? is it the background of the header, or the logo on the header?  With a database you can be descriptive.

2) With it stored in database, people can't link to your pictures.  You have alot of people that link to pictures from your site, and really pulls down bandwidth. If you have so much bandwidth a much, this could hurt you.

3) I heard somewhere that a database can compress this stuff.  So I guess that if that is true, you might save space.

[448191]

1) Good point. I see how that can be useful.

2) I don't really see how storing in a database would accomplish that.
    You will still need an url to link to in your xml/(x)html documents, thus hotlinking prevention has to accomplished in other ways.

3) Images are not very compressable at all by conventional file compression methods.
    Image compression (optimizing) is all that is required.

Point 1 is enough to convince me though, combined with my own motivation of a clean docroot. I'm still a little concerned about load and performance, but as long as it's optional, I don't see any reason not to try it.  :)

[steelmanronald06]

I like it. It is that way on all my sites.

[alpine]

I've stored all article pics on one of my sites in db for a long time myself and find it to be ok, and no problems in performance either (overall experience)

Regarding the hotlink prevention, my solution was to add a md5 date string to the src file to prevent outside hotlinking. The link expires so to speak.

pic.php?access=f260d6bcb7ee8d2e9961d66a00c7d2db&id=25634

[steviewdr]

MySQL will cache a lot of the queries - so it wont be that much of a performance hit.

-steve

[448191]

[quote author=alpine link=topic=116377.msg474735#msg474735 date=1164667100]
I've stored all article pics on one of my sites in db for a long time myself and find it to be ok, and no problems in performance either (overall experience)

Regarding the hotlink prevention, my solution was to add a md5 date string to the src file to prevent outside hotlinking. The link expires so to speak.

pic.php?access=f260d6bcb7ee8d2e9961d66a00c7d2db&id=25634
[/quote]

Easy solution that will work in most cases.

[url=http://alistapart.com/articles/hotlinking]Here[/url]'s an article on preventing hotlinking with mod_rewrite, while allowing search engines. It does depend on the referrer header, but usually the viewer of the leeching site is an innocent participant of the scenario, so in most cases this header will be sent correctly.

@stieve: right, I forgot about that.