how hard is it to find good reasonably priced c5 developer?
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Someone who can do my initial updates for no more than £250.
I have update information. Moving some pages around. Adding book now buttons etc.
Anybody care to chime in on what the "average" rate is for a qualified C5 developer? Personally I think if I can find a freelancer at $35-40 that's pretty good.
As a small firm my company charges $60 as our standard posted rate and we give discount of up to 25% to new customers.
The best way to get good quality developers is to spec out what you are looking to do, when you would like it done and anything else you think might cover any questions. Then post it on a website like this and ask people to quote. You'll soon get a feel for how much it us going to cost you. Then once you have decided to use someone, post back on to say "thank you for all your quotes, we have now gone with somebody".
On a real living breathing site it's not a project with requirements, it's more often a to do list with a lot of "option a, b or c" or "if this works we'll do that" or "depending on the results of marketing campaign well need this or that". In other words it's fluid, ever-changing, with priorities and timelines and it doesn't live in a bubble. So that's why existing site owners usually need to find a contractor (freelancer or firm) that they can hire with an agreed hourly rate.
Another problem with suggesting site owners should write project plans and be specific about what they need is that this actually take developers like you out of the planning process. So don't be surprised if the plans you get from most site owners are unrealistic or not formatted properly or describe things in a way that doesn't make sense. Where were you when the plans were being drawn up? I think developers can help a lot in helping site owners plan changes to their sites. But if the prices cannot be determined until after the plans are made, then a site owner cannot get your expertise until it's too late.
Looking for a cheap fix is never going to work out,so quality and elance/people per hour aren't going to go hand go hand.
Say it's 4 hours of work...
That equates to 1/2 hour quoting, 1/2 hour emailing, 1/2 hour syncing up files / database... By the time I get down to actually working, often it means that I spend half as much time just trying to find out where I am before getting any work done.
If someone were willing to do something like pay for a guaranteed 25 hours of work a month or something, and I could take time to know the site / environment instead of spending all my time mucking around trying to get ready to work. That's something I, and a lot of other developers could go for.
When I estimate, I take the requirements and give people an estimate based on the hours, broken down by the different parts of the project. And I bill hourly. Bidding on a project only and saying "I'll do this for 5K" or whatever is a dangerous place to be in. Especially if you have a client that doesn't know what they need and is going to keep changing their mind.
The client doesn't need to know everything from the start, but they have to have enough of an idea so that I know my time won't be wasted redoing things. Maybe not every block / page wire framed, but they have to know what data they want to manage in that block. If you need an advertisement system, I need to know how you want the export of clicks and other data to go. If you say CSV, and then it changes to PDFs, that can be a lot of time that isn't accounted for and creates scope creep.
Another thing that worries me when dealing with someone that is going for a budget / low price is that they often don't appreciate the value of the developer. I'm a PHP guy, I'm not going to be able to tune your mySQL server or set up your email system. When you want a jack of all trades like that, you'll end up with someone that doesn't charge much because they're not good at any of it. And then you'll end up paying someone else to redo it.
There's a reason I don't typically go after end clients / site owners. The amount of hand-holding that's usually required makes it a pretty unattractive proposition.
I'm a quality dev, but even if the original poster could pay me, I'd probably turn the project down. My skills and time are both pretty precious to me, so I try to work as a sub-contractor to agencies and design firms. That way I know I'm not going to be spinning my wheels, and they're not going to balk when I tell them my rate or say that the project is going to be 30 hours instead of the 10 they thought.
As far as what's reasonable, I'm not 100% sure. 40-50 seems about right for a lot of the code that people write for c5. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to make things work using the CMS. If you want something more complicated and also want to know that the code is really REALLY solid, it will be more.
I charge $75/hr now, and that will probably be going up. The shop I worked for before going freelance charged $100/hr. It wasn't a big place, only three developers, one of whom was the owner. But our quality was much better than what you'd get paying 30.
If you're paying 30, there's a good chance that
1) The developer won't even be knowledgeable enough to quote accurately
2) The code they write is going to be buggy and require a lot of back and forth to get things fixed
3) They might even just disappear on you without finishing the job
My two cents...
pgee simply asked for a developer to help with a website. He did not ask us to provide a lengthy discussion regarding the pros and cons of freelance work. If I call a plumber for a quote, I don't care to hear about why it sucks to be a plumber. I just want the leak fixed.
This discussion is very valuable but belongs in the Community Leader's forum, NOT the Jobs forum. I remind everyone that many clients who have posted jobs here in the past are still subscribed to this forum and they don't care about our problems.
A lot of site owners learn about how to hire developers by wasting away thousands of dollars on bad decisions. I don't think it's a disservice for members of this community to share the developer perspective and showcase different options to a potential buyer.
I think we are just trying to help him figure out why he is finding it hard to find someone
I appreciate it.
I'll contact a few of you who PM'd me and let me know how I get on.
fyi : elance and pph had a lot of foreign guys who don't know concrete5, and have poor sites/ no sites as references, even tho I asked for none of these. This is a key issues for me. So as I've had to do some pieces of work twice - money and talent becomes even more important to manage.
Philip
I often find myself having to write and re-write aspects of this thread when asked to quote for work and end up spending time to 'educate the customer' for free before I can give a rate or price. Over a number of responses, both won and lost, it all contributes to overhead which in the long run customers end up paying for.
A service to the community would be for one of you to take the lead in editing this into a howto (involve the others in reviewing before submission, because reviewing becomes difficult after it is submitted). That way, when asked to quote we can collectively point customers to the howto and hopefully many potential customers will read the howto before starting on the whole process.
basically the guys explains now he writes evaluations. He charges the client for an evaluation of the work including solutions to problems. Once he has that in hand the client is free to go with the developer or take the evaluation and hire someone else to put the plan in action. At least he doesn't spend time writing quotes for nothing.
I am pretty sure we've all spent time writing quotes which sole purpose was to be used as leverage to get another dev to lower their price.
The main purpose is, to make the customer think the goal through by making him answering questions and also showing me examples of what is "similar to" or "no way like this". My sheet is mostly about logo design and CI development but some things are asked about site functionality too.
Usually, customer return the sheet, realizing that there are many decisions to make that they havent thought about in the first place. Afterwards, we meet up and go through the sheet step by step. I've got some experience in coaching, so my main goal is to help the customer specify what is really needed, which helps me understand if I can do that, how much effort it would take and so on...
After all the steps are defined clearly enough, we agree on a contract of what will be done and whats the budget for it.
I realize that this is by far not the best approach to go, but having everything documented, every decision made, allows to recalculate without the customer feeling overwhelmed.
Normally, someone who hires a contractor to build a website/design something, does not have the necessary imagination or experience to even pinpoint what he/she _really_ wants.
Maybe this thread could be used to create not only a how-to on searching for jobs but maybe a basic questionnaire for clients to help them think about some things that need to be thought through bevor touching code and maybe help specify the request.
Like for example, how do you need to write your request with future development in mind (i.e. - want to go multilingual? do you really need to support IE6?) Some things that would be later explained by the contractor, consuming valuable time. There are so many good developers and builders on this forum, it should certainly be possible to find a consensus of "what would be best for most of us" and also putting the customer into the role of understanding requirements or impossibilities better without the need to talk to 10 different people.
And maybe this thread should be moved to somewhere else :)
I find your job post is a good match with my skills.
And I am interested and potentially available.
I am Italian, living in Paris France.
I am fluent with: English, Italian
This is my latest work with c5 (April 2014)
http://dreamscene.fr
Have a look at my website for more.
- -
Kind Regards
Matteo Montanari
http://italinux.com
I could add anything it would be to consider supply and demand.
If the supply of Quality dev's is great and the demand is low, then you can expect dirt cheep development cost.
If the demand for Quality developers is high and the supply of quality dev's is really low, then you can expect really high development cost.
Then you have the variable of what defines a "quality dev"
That means different things to different people.
What I would do is contact community members you see obvious evidence of quality from, and see if they might recommend someone if not able to do work for you themselves.
Always look at code. If you're not sure in that case, ask around.
m2cw
ChadStrat
PM me if the details are confidential.