Question

I was asked to develop an app on android and blackberry platforms.I thing its fairly straight forward app.Now I have to quote a price for them.I have never done something like this (I am still in collage) so I have no clue as to what would be a fair price.

Answer 1

I’d go with 18 euros per hour in Germany for a college student, but be aware your question is very complicated. Mobile development is an expert field yet, so commands a high price (just look at the amount of questions on SO that basically say “Hey I just started, how can I display hello world”). Therefore you can demand a bit of money.

However, if you live in a relatively inexpensive country such as some eastern european countries or India, you will have to demand less, as well as if you can be easily put on the line with those programmers. If you are good and are confident that your client will pay up, I would go around 1600 euros per two weeks of work, so if you work like 4 hours per day for two weeks in the evening, it’s 800 euros. Adjust for dollars.

Don’t forget to factor in bugs, or add a fixed price for maintenance. You would also be wise to negociate possible additions, and you can modulate with giving out the source or not (make it less expensive if you only turn out the APK, more expensive if the client gets the source code). Don’t forget that if you have written your code in a modular way, you may also negociate that the modules are your personal libraries and may be reused in other projets.