How to correctly form the price for the performance of work?

Question

Freelance

All kind and smart, hello!

Guys, I started to work on the sly freelance, and I came across the fact that customers are mostly not technically savvy and sometimes they ask either to do something that is not real, or they pay pennies for titanic work!

I would like to learn from the guys who have been working with clients for a long time and know how to do it!
Tell me, how do you form your price for the performance of a certain work?
And how do you refuse a client?

I was offered to create a bot in a cart that parses 9 sites (perfume, etc.), gives the product name, its cost, volume and link to the cart. In this case, there must be an exact match with the request for the name of the product.
For its creation, I was offered 1000 rubles .

Thank you all for your replies, in advance!

Answer 1

To evaluate, as a minimum, you need to understand:
- how much an hour of work costs
- approximately how many hours it will take to implement the functionality
And if for the first point it is enough to accept something like "1 hour == 1000 rubles", then the second is a little more difficult.
How do we rate our hours of operation?

1. We fix the customer's wishes on paper (which is best) or something else. The main thing in this step is that both you and your customer get a complete and comprehensive understanding of what should be the result of your work. Of course, the customer will almost never write you a TOR. But you do not need to describe it here in detail. Fix the main functional requirements, for example:
   - a list of sites for parsing;
   - what exactly we parse in each of the sites;
   - a list of commands for the chat bot: exhaustive, with a description of what exactly the bot should do for each command;
   - how the chatbot works (parsing on command, or you write a service that parses on schedule, but on command it only reads from the database and spits it into the cart);
   At the same stage, you need to find out who will deploy the application. If so, where and how.
   
2. We approve the requirements from the customer (through signing the contract or otherwise). It is important that you keep his "approval" somewhere. In general, this step cannot be underestimated, because on it the customer usually understands for real what exactly he wants to receive.
   
3. When we have an approved list of wishes, we begin to decompose them: we break them into task blocks, and the blocks into separate tasks. There should not be tasks like "Write a bot", "Sparse a site". We hit the tasks with such an eye that the implementation of each of the tasks does not require spending less than 1 hour and more than 4 hours. This is very important, because it is then that you (often with horror (of the customer, of course)) will be able to understand exactly how much time you will need to spend. Don't forget to include test writing in your assessment. And manual testing, if you do it. In general, the issue of decomposition is a separate, very large and very serious issue, we will not dwell on it now.
   
4. We assess the risks. What it is? Yes, in general, everything: from sudden stupidity and the fight against windmills, without which there is no development, to the banal resistance of sites to parsing. Everyone takes risks differently, I recommend starting with 25%. Those. if you initially estimated a specific task for 4 hours, then write 5. No need to lower the estimate, it will work against you.
   
5. If the deployment of the application is for you, then it should also be evaluated. Often this is forgotten.
   
6. We remember how many hours you spent on the assessment and enter it either as a separate item or spread it over the tasks (the assessment should not be at your expense).
   
7. We summarize the estimates from all tasks and show them to the customer. Personally, I never consider it shameful to show the customer the entire layout of the decomposition results with estimates for each of the tasks.
   

Answer 2

You ask for a mower per hour, you look at how many hours you need for a task, you multiply and you get

Answer 3

you need to look at how well the work will be done, if you are just starting, it’s better not to break the chains right away

Answer 4

The price is formed for one hour of work, and you choose what price to put per hour