Cost of developing 1 hour of elearning

That applies across the planet to developers and IDs then?

Well said, Bruce. As stated before, when you are free lancing, you are running a business. But this isn't a business where you just sell "products" out a catalog with a list of set prices. You are selling solutions and solutions can be simple or complex... and the effort to execute the solution may be minimal or take a lot of effort... and the future implications of doing it well and building a relationship may be great or small... and... and... and....

So we end up back at 'It depends....'

Yes, unfortunately it depends.

My usual answer is to share a range. Really I think clients/prospective clients are looking for orders of magnitude. "Are we talking $10,000 or $100,000?" But, some people don't want to talk price too early, so would counsel you to not state a price. 

I think it's more important that you are serving a market and individual customers who value products and services that you offer. If you are worth what you charge, then there's no problem. I don't compete on price and if a prospective client feels I'm too expensive, then that's what's important to them. I'll encourage them to seek out someone that falls within their budget. Pricing is not just about matching competitors' prices, but involves many other factors. 

I would also say that you might COST your project on an hourly effort, it doesn't mean you have to BILL on an hourly rate. 

Hope that adds something to the conversation.

PS - Owen, really nice spreadsheet and set of screenrs. 

@Nicholas - Yes, of course, it always depends. Life is not simple and every client's needs are different. That being said, using some standard tools, or rates, or having a set approach to pricing is almost always a great place to start. But the place you start is not always where you end - it really does depend on your knowledge of the client and their needs balanced by your own long & short term business goals.

@ Holly - Thanks. Hope someone can find it useful as they start their journey. 

Thanks for the really great info. It looks like this is all for original development though.  I wonder about the cost for RE development of e-learning.  With the everything else changing: user/org needs, technology (on both user and Org side), e-learning isn't static.  I understand there are variables, esp in re the availability of original materials, SMEs, etc.  If nothing is available, then a redevelopment can be priced as original work.  But there are a lot of parameters out there that can render previously working e-learning not suitable.  E.g.  an org wanting e-learning previously designed for a workstation to work on a mobile platform like a tablet or smart phone.  Or the constantly changing security parameters e-learning has to contend with to reach to end user.

In my experience sometimes rework in another program takes at least as long as the original development time.

Good point Steve; I agree with Phil here - while lengthy revision cycles are rare, they exist, and this may be one thing you want to stipulate in your contract (the amount of revision cycles you'll allow before the price goes up).

I wanted just to continue and add to this discussion, I been discussing this  issue for a while that comes with pricing 1 hour of e-Learning.

In some cases 1 hour e-Learning is counted by the amount of screens, but that is not sufficient enough because some screens can be more complicated vs others.

We developed a tool which looks at 3 components:

Multimedia Complexity (how complex is the interactive media/content in your e-Learning course)

Level of Interactivity (interactivity level, how much does the user interact with the content/media)

Multimedia and Interactivity Percentage (if you have an entire course how much of it is plain text and images and how much of it is interactive)

The second set of questions, is how well is the content structured and documented, is it in the SME's head only etc.

Another question we ask is how complex is the subject and if assessments are prepared. Lastly we have to look at things like is this course independent learning is it instructor led, does it need to be compatible with mobile phones, is it rapid, is it blended etc.

When it comes to revisions, I think any developer has to set the amount of revisions allowed or have a revision policy when starting development, anything outside of the revision policy set should cost extra:

Example outside of a revision policy might be: Developer, spends hours to develop and interactive media piece. Client decided to change the storyboard and go with a different concept in which nothing can be re-used from the previous interactive media piece. (should be specified in your revision policy that major changes like this may cost more)

I would invite you to try to the tool and let me know your thoughts, the tool has tool tips that explains lots of things in detail and it tries to give a close approximation for developing online courses.

Tool can be found at:

www.scholarixsolution.com/pricing

I'm going to stick with the ''It depends...' answer but thanks for offering the tool.