I've often seen discussions here asking about how independant contractors price their courses.
In my stumblings around the internet today, I found this interesting link from a company named Scholarix. Its an online calculator that potential customers can use to estimate the course of their eLearning course.
I'm not an independant contractor myself, so can't tell you how good/bad the calculator is. But I thought it was an interesting link, and so decided to leave it here for you all.
The 3 main factors that determine the cost of developing your course:
It's clearly not showing "Your Budget", which is fundamental to determining my pricing policy
I would never ever get a contract if I charged these prices.
It states:
Calculations and scenarios are for demonstration purposes only
I'm not quite sure of the point here - this model, even if half-close is (IMHO) the reason why the eLearning industry is changing to co-operatives/groups of variously skilled freelancers working together - I believe these prices are out of touch with what most people are now prepared to pay, except the bigger companies with money to burn, and they are disappearing fast.
I think we have had a discussion on this before, I put in costings for my last project which I felt I got paid well for and it was about 2-3 times my final cost, working on that i would have got very well paid, in reality I don't think I would have got the job if I came in with a quote close to that.
I represent the company that made the calculator. The reason the costs seems high because there are lots of assumptions in the pricing, at times we may come in lower or higher on the contract it really depends on all the other details we get from the client. This is only an estimate and we find that sometimes a client may not answer all the questions correctly.
They may think their content is well structured, but the content is only in their head (image how many hours, one has to spend to get all the information in digital form or paper form). That would be just one example.
It's not pricing based of freelancer's coming together and putting a course together, it's a price as a firm or a company delivering a service, with various roles involved.
I do understand, that perhaps freelancer's may not agree with the cost, but this is a cost by hiring a firm, but I appreciate everyone's feedback, it's something to go back and look at.
If anyone has other constructive criticism, please do let me know and Thank you for all the comments thus far.
Just wanted to follow up on my previous post. We also found a few bugs on the higher levels between 2 and 3 the cost being generated was too high what it should of been, some different permutations of options caused the costs to spike. all this has been corrected now.
7 Replies
I would imagine the freelancers could help to verify the calculator.
I think the weblink must be broken.
I clicked on the link and saw a page that said:
The 3 main factors that determine the cost of developing your course:
It's clearly not showing "Your Budget", which is fundamental to determining my pricing policy
I would never ever get a contract if I charged these prices.
It states:
Calculations and scenarios are for demonstration purposes only
I'm not quite sure of the point here - this model, even if half-close is (IMHO) the reason why the eLearning industry is changing to co-operatives/groups of variously skilled freelancers working together - I believe these prices are out of touch with what most people are now prepared to pay, except the bigger companies with money to burn, and they are disappearing fast.
I think we have had a discussion on this before, I put in costings for my last project which I felt I got paid well for and it was about 2-3 times my final cost, working on that i would have got very well paid, in reality I don't think I would have got the job if I came in with a quote close to that.
I agree that the pricing at the Scholarix site was high - I noticed they are located in Canada. What is the conversion rate these days?
I like the calculator premise; I think I'll tinker in Excel to make something to help me with those pesky estimates. Thanks for posting, Joe.
Hi Everyone,
I represent the company that made the calculator. The reason the costs seems high because there are lots of assumptions in the pricing, at times we may come in lower or higher on the contract it really depends on all the other details we get from the client. This is only an estimate and we find that sometimes a client may not answer all the questions correctly.
They may think their content is well structured, but the content is only in their head (image how many hours, one has to spend to get all the information in digital form or paper form). That would be just one example.
It's not pricing based of freelancer's coming together and putting a course together, it's a price as a firm or a company delivering a service, with various roles involved.
I do understand, that perhaps freelancer's may not agree with the cost, but this is a cost by hiring a firm, but I appreciate everyone's feedback, it's something to go back and look at.
If anyone has other constructive criticism, please do let me know and Thank you for all the comments thus far.
Just wanted to follow up on my previous post. We also found a few bugs on the higher levels between 2 and 3 the cost being generated was too high what it should of been, some different permutations of options caused the costs to spike. all this has been corrected now.
http://www.scholarixsolution.com/pricing - with new costs.
Thanks for everyone's input.
Shame the Scholarix calculator doesn't actually give a result but the questions it asks are valid.
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