Estimating and Pricing Web Projects

We went in depth on the tech­niques we use to esti­mate and price projects. We also touched base on the sales fun­nel, com­mu­ni­ca­tion bound­aries, and a few oth­er impor­tant topics.

The lack of con­text makes it hard to sum­ma­rize what we learned and pro­vide mean­in­ful notes. I think I can at least share some links that I col­lect­ed from the chat and that were cov­ered in the hangout.

From Ben P. #

1. https://​www​.stevepavli​na​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​5​/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​m​a​k​e​-​a​c​c​u​r​a​t​e​-​t​i​m​e​-​e​s​t​i​mates
2. https://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​H​o​w​-​M​e​a​s​u​r​e​-​A​n​y​t​h​i​n​g​-​I​n​t​a​n​g​i​b​l​e​s​-​B​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​d​p​/​1​1​1​8​5​39273

Book (2) gets into some tech­ni­cal stuff but also has a good intro to cal­i­brat­ing your esti­ma­tion tech­nique and how to think about an esti­mates con­fi­dence interval

From Bryan G. #

1. http://​blog​.teamtree​house​.com/​c​a​l​c​u​l​a​t​e​-​h​o​u​r​l​y​-​f​r​e​e​l​a​n​c​e​-​r​a​t​e​s​-​w​e​b​-​d​e​s​i​g​n​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​-work
2. https://​www​.entre​pre​neur​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​71068

Ran­dom #

• https://​www​.youtube​.com/​u​s​e​r​/​p​a​t​r​i​c​k​b​e​t​david

Tid­bits #

These are prob­a­bly not as use­ful with­out prop­er con­text but I think they still pro­vide a lit­tle nugget of wisdom.

“If you can’t accu­rate­ly esti­mate how long some­thing will take, you can’t accu­rate­ly pre­dict how much to charge for it”

“If your bud­get is less than 5k and you’re not used to using the term ​“Ongo­ing costs”, con­sid­er Wix”

“One of the biggest things for esti­mat­ing, is if you have a large project, try to chop it up in to small­er chunks and esti­mate them indi­vid­u­al­ly. Fig­ure out the hourly after that, then add padding.”

“Pric­ing an odd amount like £10,125 is 10% more like­ly to get accept­ed than £10,000”

“A large part of being able to ​‘seduce’ clients is con­fi­dence. Not only hav­ing good esti­mates, but you need to be con­fi­dent in your quote and be able to explain why it’s worth that”

“We’ve found a lot more suc­cess in sell­ing a process and deliv­er­ables than pure hourly rates”

“We break esti­mates in to two num­bers – the first is a wild guess, the sec­ond is some­thing we’re will­ing to com­mit to, which is usu­al­ly a dis­cov­ery phase and gives more knowl­edge about how to esti­mate the first number”

“Almost every project above 5k requires a more in depth dis­cov­ery phase”

“Always be open to chang­ing the scope, but make sure you have laid down the pric­ing to go with those changes”

“You can’t price based on the client, you need to price based on how much you’re hap­py doing the work for”

“To get bet­ter at esti­mat­ing, you need to be track­ing every­thing you do”

If you have relat­ed links or resources that you’d like to share or ideas for the next hang­out, drop me on note on Slack or Twit­ter