Re: Pricing for PHP programming???

"Siim Einfeldt aka Itpunk" <siim_e@pshg.edu.ee> wrote: > But here I have to disagree with you. Yes, some guys who charge only $10/h > might sometimes be better than $200/h, but you can´t say that there is > *no* corralation between rates and quality. Sometimes there actually > is. $10 versus $200 is a little extreme, but I agree that there is sometimes a correlation between rates and quality if we're talking about programmers or firms that deal with larger, better educated (in terms of software development) clients. If we're talking about individual programmers that deal with smaller clients I don't find this to be the case. Because smaller clients tend to understand the technology and the process less and often can't recognize the difference between a guru and a hack. > I usually don´t charge for hour either, rather per project, but your > example of $5000 and $100,000. Well, what is the purpose of your > doings? Many of us like what we do, but the second reason (if not the > first) for doing it, is money, you can say whatever you want, but this is > true for mosy of the peops. Obviously I want to be profitable. But my primary motivation is to be doing challenging work, to enjoy what I'm doing and to build software that makes my clients happy. Sure, we could be like this other company and charge $100,000 for a project that's worth $5,000 but we won't do that. Why? Because it will inevitably come back to haunt us. In this business you have little more than your knowledge and your reputation and a tarnished reputation won't get you far. YMMV. > And lets talk about clients just a bit more. A decent firm, before it > starts buying something, it looks on more than one direction, they make > their job on getting to know the prices and services that are being > offered to decide where to order something. Again, I think we're talking about different kinds of clients. A large corporate client looking for someone to fulfill a large project will spend a lot of time doing research, soliciting quotes and in general will be well educated in terms of what's involved and what it should cost. A small brick and mortar company or shoestring budget startup headed by a non-technical person might not have that luxury and generally doesn't have the time, energy or expertise to make a qualified decision. My experience is that a lot of these type of clients only speak to 1 to 3 firms. And these other firms are often not qualified - they don't understand the business world or don't even do programming. In fact, last week I spoke to the head of a small internet startup that was soliciting bids for a search engine for his site. His site consisted *entirely* of hundreds of identically formatted static pages that were created by combining text and images in Photoshop. He got bids from 2 other firms before me about building a search engine for the site. We were the only firm that informed him that no search engine can search text from within an image (meaning the other firms had no clue) and that if we built him a database driven site with an admin interface to upload images, create records and modify text he could save 15 minutes per page built for the site and modify the entire look of the site in under an hour. Based on his projection this would save him about 300 hours a year. These are the type of clients we typically deal with 80% of the time. We're comfortable doing it, but we don't rip them off just because they're uneducated. > $100,000 instead of $5000? You shouldn´t. In some other fields you could > say that they just didn`t have any other candidates to choose from, but > when talking about programming and php, well, you just can`t say it, can > you? Most of the projects can be done even over the internet, no problems. My reality is different than your reality. I don't know if I want to trade places or not. <grin> > shouldn`t count on all the jobsites available in the internet, rather word > of mouth, this is the best way. Amen. If you do good work for a fair price and make the experience pleasurable for your clients the work will come. It's like any business. People want to work with people they like and if your customers like you they'll mention you to others. -- Steve Werby COO 24-7 Computer Services, LLC Tel: 804.817.2470 http://www.247computing.com/