Cost of developing 1 hour of elearning

There are a lot of answers here from a lot of different viewpoints, and it's fun to see how this can be approached from so many different angles. 

The only thing I want to add, is that "It depends" is probably a good place to START with a client, until you can get a real initial meeting to be able to suss out needs and expectations. Pre-qualification of your client's needs and expectations will probably be the greatest determining factor to being able to answer the question of rates.  You have to find out not just what they need, but also what they are imagining in their head to get any kind of good idea of where pricing should be. this is why a qualifying  meetings should take longer but, will probably save you headache later on from expectations not being realistic. 

The only other point I would bring up, which I saw once on here but I felt needed reiteration is this: Pre-qualify their budget. Dont be afraid to ask what they are budgeting for a project. This line of questioning can be the best determining factor for you to be able to price according to their expectations. If you can find this information out early, then you can save yourself a lot of time even in the pre-qualification stage, and lead your client down the path that will get them to a realistic goal. 

Agree with Rob about asking the budget.  saves a lot of wasted time.

This has been a helpful thread. I started freelancing as an instructional and graphic designer after 15 years in the corporate world... but I started as a copyeditor, so over the years it's been expected of me that I'll "do it all," from project management to instructional design to storyboarding to editing to programming to deployment to you-name-it... good in some ways, not so good in others. There are reasons why we have more than one head on any given project! So as I struggle to price my jobs as a freelancer, it's been challenging for me to separate one role to the next, and price for what I'm actually doing without shorting myself when I think, "Oh, I can find or create the images on top of ID, it's no big deal." Well it IS a big deal!

Part of me wishes this thread was open to the people who hire us...  they're often the people who need to know what this kind of work entails, why we charge what we do, and how we decide what should cost what.

Enough ranting. Thanks to all who've posted above with the pricing calculators and info... it sure helps validate the thought process I go through when pricing new projects.

Chuck DuSablon

@Bruce,

I'll agree that understanding business (finance and accounting) helps.

This helped allot guys. Thanks for the estimator post.

I'm I S.A, what would you say the average hourly rate L1 would charge

I've looked at design, content, assessment as my main criteria.

Waiting for a reply

Fantastic post. Thanks Owen. Really nice way of estimating what you want to quote at the right rate and for the appropriate level. With you CourseDevTimeEstimator, should this open an Excel? When I open the xml through Excel, it imports the strings. Can you advise? Thanks.

This was created in excel 2010. I just saved it in .xls format to work with prior versions and attached it here. Hopefully this resolves the issue for you.

I just wanted to add in another resource that I've used (or really, a collection of resources): https://christytucker.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/instructional-design-hourly-rates-and-salary/

I also wanted to point out that there hasn't been much mention of agency vs. individual which may be why the prices seem to be so high for some of the calculators. An agency is likely going to have a separate ID, dev, graphic designer, project manager, etc, plus have more overhead in general.

Very few individuals are an expert at all of those items, so you're paying for the expertise in each little piece of your elearning development when hiring an agency.

Some people don't need a full agency though, and that's where we come in as freelancers.

I think Owen's example is fantastic - there's a lot that goes into pricing. 

I've also seen a couple people post the Slideshare on How Long Does it Take to Create Learning. Here it is broken down: http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/ - I have used this formula once so far, and it has worked out (it actually seems to be giving me more time than it actually took, but it was a much more casual project than usual as well). 

This is a really great posting.  I need to tweak it and would love some help.  I am the content expert who will write the content, any dialogue for video & audio and will design any interactive activities.  I looked at the costing and pulled out Graphic, Video & Audio production.  Is it reasonable to leave the other categories?  THANKS

Hi all,

I have read over the conversations regarding what to charge for developing a 1 hour session and wanted to know if there is a current rate per hour for a standard session?

I'm from Australia developing under a contract and need to quote.

Thanks.