Ask HN: As a freelancer how do I scope a simple font-end development project? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: As a freelancer how do I scope a simple font-end development project?

1 pointmhoad1 comment

For a long time I have limited all of my consulting to areas usually relating to marketing, however recently I have had a couple of clients who were proactively pushing me to help them build or to re-build their sites.

I have done a lot of this as what could only be described as a personal hobby sense for a while now but have never done any development work professionally before where people would pay me money for it.

I decided to start at pretty much the bottom of the barrel here to get my feet wet and take on a simple PSD to HTML 1-page brochure style website.

However, I realised that I have no idea how to scope out a project like this.

How many hours would I be typically be looking at taking an already cut up PSD and turning it into a responsive single page website with no real functionality to speak of? If I had to pick a number I would say 30 seems reasonable but I wanted to ask some more seasoned and experienced developers and freelancers on here.

What are the kinds of things that I should be thinking about here? What is a sensible time frame? How are these jobs typically scoped out and delivered?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Is your question about scoping ultimately for pricing?

A single HTML page could be really easy or take some time, depending on the PSD. I'd guess it could be anywhere from 1 hours to 10 hours. If you're still learning I could see 30 if it's a particularly complex page, although that's a lot of time to spend on a single page.

I advise against pricing per hour and instead quote a fixed price. There's lots of reasons why, just Google "why don't price hourly" and you'll see.

I'd quote them a value and get a feel for how they react. For instance, you could suggest $1000. They might agree. They might say no, and counter-suggest $600. Or if they don't have a counter offer, you can always give them a discount. Again, just quote a price you're OK with, even if it takes you 30 hours, and then once you have it, you're incented to work efficiently (because you're not billing per hour, but per job). Your effective hourly rate on this job might end up at $250/hr, for all you know, if you work efficiently.

Also, PSD to HTML is a pretty commoditized job. You're not really creating value, just being a code monkey. In fact it's not consulting, just contracting. So I don't really suggest you take those jobs on a regular basis, if you want to have pricing power. That kind of job is has plenty of competition from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and other places where the cost of living is really low, and it's a race to the bottom.

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