What should I charge for something like this?

Hey guys, this isn't a project request, but closely related.

I am working on getting a contract with a company to create their web site. The thing is, it has to be completely self reliant. By that, I mean that the person needs to be able to update the different sections through a web interface, and then be immediately available on the server. This part is the easy part, and not too hard for me to price.

What I am having trouble with is that this company has independent sellers that are affiliated with the company. They want to each have their own site, but the company wants to have a little control, and make them part of the company brand, and therefor hosting them under the companies .com name. The independents should be able to customize the look and feel of their site, but should be done through a interface so as to drastically reduce support for the system. I plan to create customized client software maybe to help keep things in control because besides graphics, text, and layout, these people are going to need customized forms/scripts. The admin of the companies site, should be able to easily set up accounts for each independent that wants a site.

All the details are not hammered out yet, and I will probably redesign this "thought" many times. The system will start out with a little over 100 independents, but quickly scale up to over 500 within the year. The potential within 3 years is close to 1000 independents or more nation wide. You get the jist of it...

How much would you charge for something like this? Keep in mind this is something that is going to take a solution, not something you can whip up in a weekend. It will be enterprise quality, meaning all the bells and whistles, and stable. No half ass solution. I am thinking it will take 2 programmers 1 month to fully complete, another month of testing and rework time.

Any independent developers out there that have done this sort of thing? What did you charge? What's it worth?

Not a single person going to take a stab at this...??

2$

...would estimate about 20 to 30 grand. Considering how much time it would require and the pay for the other programmers. A good rule of thumb: take as much as they're willing to pay :)

Btw, I did some stuff at a middle sized company which paid $75,000 for their phone routing system!

-Joe

Thanks for the figure JoeCool. I was thinking about around 15K myself. How much time did it take you to do that phone routing system? Did you have any help?

15 grand ........

theyll love you for that ....

ffs m8, your gunna have to think about this some more

you are gunna need to employ AT LEAST 1 more programmer to do this, and unless the programmer is gunna be a m8, then you will be spending that sort of money on wages !!!

1 month ....... yeah rite, and the rest ...... you are going to have to ask for a lot more time than that .....

besides, if you ask for more time, the company you are doing this for might actualy realize how much effort this envolves ...

these things arent cheap .... goto a software warehouse and ask for an approximate cost of what they would charge for this sort of thing ... and then pick your jaw up off the floor and dance around saying "i'm rich .... i'm rich .... i'm rich .... oh, is that a ferrari on my drive .... and oh yeah, i'm rich i'm rich i'm rich"

I didn't do the phone routing system. It was some phone company guy working for a couple days.

They also paid a ton of money for their contacts database which wasn't even custom tailored.

With companies like this, you have to show them that IT doesn't work on a punch-card low paid system. You need time and money. Lots of it too :)

Besides, think about future workers. If you take low pay, what will they expect from those guys? If they're big enough to need this kind of system, they're big enough to pay the big bucks.

Go for $30,000- if not more. The worst is that you'll have to bump it down.
Thanks,

Joe