How much is coding worth?

[c4onastick]

I'm designing an application for a friend of mine. Its basically just a data mining app that checks on prices and analyzes trends in his competition. It consists of a few different graphs and some stats on the market. Up until now we'd just been doing each other favors (I'd code some stuff for him, he'd find me a book [read: PS3] that I wanted), but his business is starting to take off so it's time to bring it out from under the table. How much is a project like this typically worth? (I'm not really a professional programmer, but I do have some experience from stuff I've done on the side and little projects at work) The value of this project to his company will be pretty great, but I've never really had any professional experience to help determine what a fair asking price should be.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[Daniel0]

I don't think it's unusual that a website including a design would be at several thousands dollars, but I don't know about an application. I don't get paid for programming, but do it in my spare time, so I don't know what the pricing is. A good idea would probably be to charge per hour.

[ober]

I normally stick with the hourly thing... and right now I work for $30 to $50 per hour (depends on the client and the complexity).

[c4onastick]

Thanks, I assumed that sites like this are usually in the thousands. I will create a UI (grudgingly, I like to make things work, its not as much fun to make them pretty), but most of the coding I've done does the dirty work. I guess I'll start keeping tabs on my hours (usually just code in my spare time), hopefully get a good idea of where to go from there. Thanks!

Keep the estimates rolling!