CompuServe Thread

Lee, Depending on what you are doing .. it can be between $75-$2000 per second. As you can see, that range is pretty useless <g> .. so what I have done and what I recommend other to do is the following. #1) Figure out what your time is worth and add what you need to make back equipment investments (probably $75-$200 hr based on equipment and expertise). #2) Try to do a real quick estimate of what the customer wants and how long it will take you #3) Multiply that number by 1.5 and 2.0 and say: .."Based on our initial discussions, this animation should cost between $$$ and $$$ and would take me ### after order and 'receipt of deposit'. Of course, this is just a rough estimate based on our initial discussions. A detailed storyboard would be required before I could provide you a fixed price bid. You can develop the storyboard or we can do this with your input. If you would like us to do it, this will be billed at an hourly rate of $$$/hr and I estimate that it would take approximately ### hours to complete." I have found that this approach works pretty effectively. It gives the customer budgeting #'s, it starts to educate the customer in the process (.. script, storyboard requirments), it also starts you down the road of working with the customer in an interactive mode (the proverbial "foot in the door"). Hope that helps, Ang