How Much To Charge for iOS development | Hacker News Reader

How Much To Charge for iOS development

7 pointszackabaker8 comments

I am a fairly new iOS developer. I am also a sophomore in high school. Recently I interviewed for a job at a law firm. The task is to create a relatively simple application that will allow you to view laws and download them. It will also possibly offer access to newsletters and contact information. Not too difficult. But they have asked me too set the price. I have absolutely no idea how much to charge. I've tried to do research online but I haven't found a good baseline. Also I must keep in mind that they are hiring a high school student instead or a professional developer so I cannot charge them what a normal developer would charge. Could anyone tell me how much they think would be fair to both of us? Thank you!

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I would say if you charged $2k/week and met your promises you would make one hell of a name for yourself. As prof devs we charge more than that, but I have found that the more we deliver the more we can charge and frankly the more we can frankly demand. 4-5k/week is still fairly (cheap) reasonable per developer depending on your area and experience, just to give you an idea. But for a newbie, I would stick with the 1.5k-2.5k/week. And please don't try and charge per hour, our experience is it just never works out in the benefit of anyone. If you are learning on the job, then it isn't fair to the client, and if you aren't and are proficient then your estimate should easily take into consideration the weekly billable rate and hours to complete the project. When you bill by the hour my experience is people feel you owe them every minute and will chase you for it, if you bill by the week and provide them valuable service they are more than happy to let you be and get your work done.

At least that has been our experience over the past few years.

Good luck either way, and make sure you graduate with good grades, regardless of your choices for college! Also, charge 1.5-2k/week and ask them that for the consideration of a discount you want to utilize their name in advertising or as a reference on future work. It is all your risk to deliver and do your job, but pays you back massively over time, not to mention rarely will people object to this if you do your job.

What would be a professional developer's rate then? Should one charge higher if the project involves building the back-end yourself?

Also, exactly what does it take to qualify as a "professional" developer, by which I don't think you merely mean being a mobile developer full-time, but actually having some set of qualifications?

You're probably not very good yet, just judging on experience. The best way to have a happy relationship is for you, the party causing the most risk, to charge a flat-rate for the final product and eat the costs of overruns and tangential development (or profit if by some miracle you deliver ahead of your target). This will force you to focus on productivity and making the right business decisions. It will also lock the cost into value delivered instead of attempting to get something you're happy with for some as-yet-unknown amount of work it will take you that also doesn't reflect the cost to you of value delivered. Flat rate. Charge for value. Figure out how to deliver value, not how to make crystal ball predictions and BS your way through client meetings when you go 2x over on hours. It's safe, low stress, and puts the focus right where it should be.

Also, the flat-rate model lets you ask them up-front, with no loopholes involved, for $X where X is constant and the deliverable is a static goal, Y (don't let them scope creep or else adjust X). Most importantly, you can ask for what you think the value is instead of asking the client to guess how much your vague hourly estimate and project estimate will wind up costing in the long run. They know it's X, no more, no less. Ask medium. Negotiate if it seems like you asked high. Resist if you want to gamble that they're on a fishing expedition or have reason to believe so. Ask X for Y and deliver Y and accept no less than X.

I build iOS apps for businesses and have to set and justify prices for project all the time. I also started an web design company when I was a sophomore in high school and it would have been great having someone advise me on pricing back then so I will gladly help you. Send me an email and we'll figure out how much the app is worth to the law firm and what you should charge them for the app. My email is david . olesch at gmail.

Man, these people are crazy suggesting $2k per week. That might "only" be $25/hr but it's going to take you 2 or 3 times as long as a pro dev studio to make the product (and as good as you are, you're still not going to do as good of a job as them, that's the truth.) So, you'll be charging effectively $75/hr and not doing as good of a job... I would say that's a bit aggressive.

Flat rate is a pretty good suggestion. Another idea is to use milestones. Pick a set of features, deliver by a certain date, they pay you, rinse and repeat. This reduces the risk on them, in that they won't be out for the whole amount. It reduces risk for you, in that you won't be limbo, if they take a while to get back to you on something.

You may be a high school student during the day, but you're a working professional at night.

Charge hourly. Development will take at least twice as long as you think it will. I'd start at around $15/h.

$2000 per week of work

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