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Back when I was running a web development company, I toyed with this idea a few times, but couldn't find a way to do it and not lose money. Hope your experience

by zavulon 12y ago

Back when I was running a web development company, I toyed with this idea a few times, but couldn't find a way to do it and not lose money. Hope your experience is different. Good luck!

brandonhsiao 12y ago
Interesting, what happened that made you lose money? Were you pouring more time into the projects than you were getting paid for?
- rhizome 12y ago
  That's usually how it works.
- zavulon 12y ago
  I didn't actually go ahead and implement it - I just couldn't make the math work. In my opinion, there are too many unknowns with this model - you're quoting the price of a project without knowing all features, talking about design iterations, supported browsers, and a million other things. And if you substantially increase the price after getting the requirements, clients won't like that, because the most important number for them is the first number you tell them - in this case, $2,345. I could go on, but I don't want to discourage you. You should try it, just be careful not to lose money. Also, if you're in the western world, make it $10,000 or $20,000, that's a more realistic number :)
  - hayksaakian 12y ago
    think about it like fiverr There are a lot of unknowns, the only known is that it costs 5$, that's all some people need to know.
joshlegs 12y ago
nightwatch was a terrific movie, btw. just curious, but what kind of business model did you end up going with?
- zavulon 12y ago
  Yeah, book is much better though, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it! I wasn't able to find a way to present what we were doing as a product, and kept going with a traditional model of getting project specs, doing discovery on requirements and budget and then putting together a quote.
  - joshlegs 12y ago
    yeah, it seems the movies veered off a good bit, based on the wikis i read ;) interesting. I think that's the basic business model my boss has. it seems to be working now, but i'm always curious as to what other models are out there

by zavulon 12y ago

Back when I was running a web development company, I toyed with this idea a few times, but couldn't find a way to do it and not lose money. Hope your experience is different. Good luck!

brandonhsiao 12y ago

Interesting, what happened that made you lose money? Were you pouring more time into the projects than you were getting paid for?

rhizome 12y ago
That's usually how it works.
zavulon 12y ago
I didn't actually go ahead and implement it - I just couldn't make the math work. In my opinion, there are too many unknowns with this model - you're quoting the price of a project without knowing all features, talking about design iterations, supported browsers, and a million other things. And if you substantially increase the price after getting the requirements, clients won't like that, because the most important number for them is the first number you tell them - in this case, $2,345. I could go on, but I don't want to discourage you. You should try it, just be careful not to lose money. Also, if you're in the western world, make it $10,000 or $20,000, that's a more realistic number :)
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  think about it like fiverr There are a lot of unknowns, the only known is that it costs 5$, that's all some people need to know.

joshlegs 12y ago

nightwatch was a terrific movie, btw. just curious, but what kind of business model did you end up going with?

zavulon 12y ago
Yeah, book is much better though, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it! I wasn't able to find a way to present what we were doing as a product, and kept going with a traditional model of getting project specs, doing discovery on requirements and budget and then putting together a quote.
- joshlegs 12y ago
  yeah, it seems the movies veered off a good bit, based on the wikis i read ;) interesting. I think that's the basic business model my boss has. it seems to be working now, but i'm always curious as to what other models are out there