The first concern of all freelance programmer must always be the preparation of a briefing. This stage is time to gather all the initial information and make the highest number of questions to the client. Request references and clarify any doubts that your customer may have. From that, you can already follow the following steps:
1. Definition of the project scope
The definition of the scope of the digital project is essential to provide a price. This is the moment in which the developer will identify all that will be necessary to deliver the demand according to what has been requested. In addition to this, you here identify the activities that will be made.
Suppose that the client wants to hire the creation of a website; This involves web hosting, languages of programming or CMS, design, production or acquisition of photos and content production services. As you can see, are aspects that must be defined with the customer. Each of these components will include your demands and the final price.
2. Time of execution
Get an estimate of the time required for the development of the project and defines how many hours you can spend per day or week for that activity. With that information, it is possible to calculate the time of execution of each work. The price tends to be based on hours of work, whereas the knowledge that the professional has to develop the contracting activity.
3. Knowledge
The level of knowledge to develop the Service contracted directly influence the value of the project. Every freelance programmer has an area or specialty, and the cost of the work will depend on much of that. If the customer decides to have a WordPress website, the value will be different from a website developed in Java or PHP, for example.
4. Fixed costs
Get a survey of all the fixed costs to develop a web project. This means thinking about renting your space, the internet service that you use, etc. I.e., they are all the tools that you use to carry out the contracted service. Example: Let’s say that you work 80 hours per month at a coworking and going to spend 20 hours to develop a particular project. The cost of these 20 hours must be reviewed to the customer as well as other fixed costs. Therefore, ideally define your average fixed costs to facilitate the elaboration of budgets.
5. Costs extra
As the name implies, extra costs are any costs which may vary according to each project. In the case of development of a website, it will be necessary to hire a web server hosting, maybe buy a template for the website, photos on banks of images, etc. At the time of stipulating a price also you must consider this type of expenditure.