What would be a fair price?
 

To charge someone if they offer to pay you for running their VB forum?

A guy at my car club is trying to start his own web site and he is going to run VB on it. He knew of my experience with VB and offered to pay me to run his board for him.

I am sort of at a loss here. I don't know how much I should charge him. I have no frame of reference here. Can you guys give me some ideas please...

hmm hard to say that in general.
it depends on how much you want to do on this board.
just running it without any hacks after install isn't hard.
with good moderators you haven't to be online more than once a week, so 50$/month could be enough.

if you plan to work on that board more, for example hacking it, helping with moderating and so on, it depends on how much time you spent on that...

It is going to include installing hacks and writing custom ones. It is a dedicated linux server and I will have shell access as well.

If it's a custom one then hit them with a big bill, probably hourly for the time you take coding the hacks in addition to a flat fee of maintaining the site.

I've done this in the past and charged $50 per hour. This includes complete maintenance and ANY coding they may wish (which a friend did)... Although that may seem steep in some people's minds that's the price you have to pay for quality work...

- miSt

Hey in on second thoughts - as from what you said this guy seems like your average person - i would tend to say $30 per hour :)...

- miSt

Well, he is a technical guy, but he doesn't know php, MySQL or VB. From what I gathered by talking to him, he is not the stingy type.

The $50/hour sounds good. But what if he wants to pay me a flat rate on month to month basis? what should I ask for in that case?

Well how many hours a day and how many days a week would you work?

I would estimate 8-10 hours a week, scattered randomly. I assume in the beginning when the board is being installed I would spend more hours.

Well assuming four days a week (well 17 days a month) at 8 hours a day, that's $4080 a month at $30/hour, or $6800 per month at $50/hour.