How much do you charge for digital product development?

I bill Digital Product Development at a weekly rate of $1,750 US, for the number of development weeks required to develop and deliver the product. This does not include the cost of software development (actually writing the code), creating the graphics, developing the content, mitigating risks throughout the organization, providing train the trainers materials and training, addressing business impacts, etc.

What about how much your organization will be billed? For any given week, you could receive an invoice for a lower amount than my weekly rate. There are even some weeks, where I don’t bill you at all. Some weeks I may decide I’ll bill less than my weekly rate based on factors like:

  • The amount of time I’ve spent on your project. For example you will never see a bill from me for the week between Christmas and New Years because I never work that week.
  • Your current financial resources. I understand that a bootstrapped startup can’t pay my weekly rate over an extended engagement, so I may bill less for a given week of work for a verified bootstrap startup.
  • Your making legally binding arrangements to financially include me in the long-term value the project is creating. I do on very rare occasions discount my rate in exchange for equity.
  • My love of your organization and it’s mission compel me to work in a pro-bono capacity

In short we can probably come to some mutually beneficial financial arrangement. You can consider the figure of $1,750 per week the ‘market value’ that you can use for budgeting what a Product Developer will, on average cost in a fully loaded digital product based project plan.