I'm Looking For Some Help Knowing How Much I Should Be Being Charged.

[llandrew]

Hey everyone - I came here just looking for some simple help. I'm really curious to know how much I should be being charged for a program a friend developed. Earlier in the year I was doing "social media management" for Facebook and Twitter for clients. All I was doing though was just setting clients up with a blog on their Facebook and then linking it to their Twitter and posting a new blog every Mon. Well, I have a friend who said he can create a program to automatically post content to my clients Facebook and Twitter pages daily but I would have to gather the content. So I did and I created 365+ separate status updates + photos with each daily post and he created a simple program to post to their Facebook and Twitter pages daily and to also randomize the content + add custom dynamic hashtags. Well, now I have begun to sign on companies for an enterprise solution and he was saying he wanted like 30% - 50% of the business for this. He created the program and just recently created apps for Facebook and Twitter to further simplify the enrollment too. So onboarding a client now (or multiple clients) is very simple (basically almost no work for him now).

So if I'm signing on clients that will be paying me $1,000/mo. minimum per client and he's making 30% off of that, is it just me or does that seem outrageous for what this social media management does?!? When I'm at $10,000/mo. in billing and he's generating $3,000/mo. for his 30% for creating this, at some point doesn't it make send to just hire someone else and have them create the same program and just stop paying him all together??? I'm asking this question here because I don't know what something like this would typically cost to have created and I don't want to be getting taken advantage of because I don't know. But this % I pay him seems like it should be much, much lower. Please reply back with some good advice friends because I will be using some of your advice when I have a talk with him about reducing the % I pay him. This is my company, I pay for the marketing, I'm the one trying to generate business and I'm basically doing everything. After this program was created his role is really very, very minimal. Thanks guys I appreciate you reading this and any insight you can assist me with!

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Heck of a business model he has there... getting a piece of the action forever for a one time project build with some maintenance.

It is as if he is licensing the software to you as opposed to you paying for it to be created and you owning it outright. For simple Social Media applications like that I think he is doing very well and you not so much.

Me, I'd be hiring a guy to code it and I own it 100% outright. I would have no problem paying for updates, changes etc as time went on but I'd be hard pressed to say it was good business on my part to pay a % of all I generate ad infinitum.

 

[uncommonbg]

Me, I'd be hiring a guy to code it and I own it 100% outright. I would have no problem paying for updates, changes etc as time went on but I'd be hard pressed to say it was good business on my part to pay a % of all I generate ad infinitum.

I absolutely agree. Why would you give away 30% of your earnings for something simple? I would just hire somebody to code the same thing.

 

[prab1996]

Show that app to a coder and ask him to make a exact copy, is it very hard ?

 

[llandrew]

Yea I know guys :-/ I'm kind of in a bind with it. That's why I was wanting to see if anyone could give me a quote on what they would charge for creating such a program. I'm not at $10,000/mo in billing yet, but once I am there I will not be happy giving someone $3,000/mo for not doing much work.

I would show it to a coder outright or have someone look at it and give me a quote but the only problem is that I don't know any. My friend who made it is the only one I know and trust not to screw me over. I don't have access to the database etc. for anyone to look at it, so what would I need to show to someone in order for them to give me a quote? I was talking with my friend today about it and he mentioned that 30% is actually a good amount and that if I paid someone to code it that it would cost me $25/K to build/implement and $350/mo. to maintain. Thoughts?

 

[lightning37]

Maybe I missed something, but how does this program differ from Hootsuite? That may be a good short term option to eliminate the program your friend wrote.

 

[Conor]

You should have done some research before you got him to code something from scratch. Hootsuite would do exactly what you're doing, if I understand your post correctly.

Alternatively, what you could have done is simply set up a Wordpress blog with these plugins
https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-networks-auto-poster-facebook-twitter-g/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/drafts-scheduler/

 

[kichowolf17]

Can you show app code?

 

[AdGate]

What was the agreement you had with your friend when he made this for you? Did he do it for free? In that case, you probably should just pay someone else to recreate the software if you want to keep all the profits.

From what you described, it doesn't sound like too difficult of a program to create. Like others already mentioned, services exist online that already do something similar.

 

[llandrew]

I can show someone the app if you'd like so that you could give me an estimate on what something like that would cost to be created. Just send me a PM and I'll be glad to

He built the app for free at the time and gradually it's just become more detailed as to what the app does. He mentioned that to get the app functional and all working on the backend etc, that it would typically cost about $25K etc. I don't know. I'm not a programmer, but I also wouldn't pay $25K for the app that I currently have. Maybe $1,500 at most.