Good afternoon,
I have close on thirty years’ experience, whilst much of that is overkill for this project, it does mean that I can recognise the real needs behind a specification and have probably done the job before.
I recently finished a system for an insurance company which was based on Access and SQL Server, this has over 224,000 lines of VBA and 2.5 million policies,
This appears to be a simple job, open recordset, open text file, read all rows writing to text file with some tags wrapped around.
However on Freelancing sites there is so much competition that it is very easy to be tempted to bid very low in order to win the job. The trouble with doing this, especially on short jobs is that there is no contingency time to cover the bits that the Buyer expected but the Provider didn’t realise was required.
Either the Provider works for nothing on these bits or the Buyer is charged extra, either way one side feels hard done by. I always bid knowing that some changes will be needed and the time for these changes is included in the bid, rather than hoping the first draft will be accepted.
Clearly cost is relative, as a British provider I have higher costs than many other providers and on big projects this can be crucial. On smaller projects the absolute amount can be quite small; it might be the cost of one business lunch.
I’ve been a freelancer since 1998 so I will probably be around if you need changes although I am based in England (on GMT) Skype means that we can afford to talk despite the distance so please feel free to ask any questions.
Bye
Ian Smith