How To Bid A Development Project?

Question

I have landed a side project where a company wants me to develop a database / smart client to track participants in their various programs. This app will be written in C# and MS SQL Server.

I was wondering if there are any tips on how to actually bid out a price for the job?

1. Should I charge a flat rate (if so how do you charge it?)
2. Should I charge by the hour (if so what is a going rate?)
3. Should I enter into some sort of contract?

Any comments or tips would be very helpful, as I am completely new to doing "side gigs" outside of my normal programming job.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Yes you should enter into a contract, you need to spell out the terms and conditions of the work the expected deliverables and payment. You will also want to indicate who owns the source code.

I prefer Time & Material contracts, that is they pay an hourly rate. This allows them to change the scope without having to renegotiate the terms. If you go with a fixed bid project then as the users starts to learn what they want and change the specification, which they will, you will have to make a choice. Either you do it for free or you negotiate a scope change.

Answer 2

Your goal is to get the gig, and once you have it, make enough money for it to be worth your while, right? With that in mind, you can do flat rate if the client demands it, but otherwise try and get it hourly, because there will always be snags, and the client will always throw changes at you from the first day to the last minute that will suck down your time if you let it. Either way, get a contract that specifies what you are going to deliver and how to handle change requests.

I did a succession of fixed price contracts for a client once, and it worked great. Then they said they were having a little problem getting a signature on this contract from head-office, but if I were to just do the work they'd make sure I got paid for the work eventually. So I spent two months working on it, only to be told that they had been turned down by head office and so I wasn't going to get paid. I'm 90% sure they'd made a copy of my work before I could delete it from their servers, but nothing I could prove in court. So I'll never work without a signed contract again. If they don't sign a contract on day one, get the hell out of there.