How I learned to charge my customers

Re:How I learned to charge my customers by sova on Thursday September 17, 2020 @11:08AM (#24505539)

So if you help someone build a $3M empire the fee would leave them with $2.7M ? Not bad. Seems to be a more astute way to charge for services rendered because the client will actually have revenue to pay you, and the cost/benefit is fairly clear from the get-go. Do you typically both [client and creator] agree on how much value the work will bring in, and is it based on time? (This much in the first year, etc)

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Re:How I learned to charge my customers by curiousllama on Thursday September 17, 2020 @01:55PM (#24507775)

The former - I mostly work with large non-tech corporates, so you need to have a business case to get anything of significance approved anyway. I typically start off at 10% of "the big number on the slide."

If I'm independent, I always work fixed fee & payment schedule. When I've had a big company at my back, I've also worked at X% of realized revenue, capped at $Y.

Now, the important thing this implies is ownership of the outcome. I'm not building "a website;" I'm building "an e-commerce product" (or whatever) with all the expectations that come with it.

Back to the article... looking at the rates again, I think this is the author's next step in pricing. They're obviously very good. To make it as an independent developer, you need to have a clear understanding of value anyway - so why not just estimate the outcome ahead of time and benchmark against it?

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Re:How I learned to charge my customers by neymgm on Thursday September 17, 2020 @12:56PM (#24507025)

I too am interested in seeing how that negotiation plays out.

Though it is still just potential value. There has to be some sort of payment for the early stages if you’re not planning on taking the same risks along with your client.

I have never worked on building any project like that so I’ve no idea but I guess the maintenance and future work could be tied to a percentage of the revenue generated for the company.

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