What to charge for a mobile app?

Hi everyone,

I need to write a mobile app and am not sure what to charge for it. I know most people charge by the hour but I want to give a flat rate because it may take longer and it's a learning curve for me anyways. It's basically a program that the user will login and view their account information and signup for available classes. The information is currently on a ms sql server and I plan to call some aspx pages to post and retrieve data. Doing this in spare time from my regular job and a weekend I can have it done in a week. Is $2000 too much to ask? Or maybe $2500? I know it's hard to judge without knowing the specs but I just mean from the client's point of view if that seems fair?

Thanks!

There really isn't enough information to give you an answer of any value. What is 'fair' to the client is relative to the client. I've worked for companies where $2500 was an expense that they wouldn't think twice about. I've worked for other companies where this level of expense would require a senior VP's approval and lots of review. It is relative to the client and how much they want/need the app.

Brad!

Thanks for the reply. I knew I didn't have enough information. I told the client it would be $2500 at least and he was fine with it. With this being my first mobile app I would be doing for a client I just wanted to get my foot in the door for the experience.

If you don't get paid per hour (which is what I prefer, changing specs can take plenty of time) you can guess how much time it will cost you to build. But an other method is the see how much money the app makes for your client and take a fair part of that.
A simple app, created in a few hours, that generate a lot of turnover of worth more for a client as a complicated app that took many hours to create but doesn't create any turnover...

Hello,

we charge 30$ per hour!

At the company I work for, we charge
If Industrial related: 1000USD/day (9h)
Else: 800USD/day (8h)