Starting an internet station-how much would you charge ?

[technojosh]

A town here in Vermont is going wi-fi and is looking for me to develop an internet radio station.

I gotta say, through my passion for radio, I'm one the the country's foremost experts on the nuts and bolts of internet radio (just from noodling around for a few years).

How much would you charge and how should I break down the bid ?

Should I charge a flat fee for set up, and what would that be ?

Should I charge an hourly consulting fee and what would that be ?

Should I get them to sign a contract and then submit a bid based on a 12, 24 or 36 month contract ?

Can someone help an old radio guy who's about to make a little bit o' money for the first time in his career ?

Thanks,
Techno Josh

 

[RadioEnginerd]

I can see that no one has responded to your post so I'll take a stab at this one...

> A town here in Vermont is going wi-fi and is looking for me
> to develop an internet radio station.
>
> I gotta say, through my passion for radio, I'm one the the
> country's foremost experts on the nuts and bolts of internet
> radio (just from noodling around for a few years).

I work in this industry so it sounds like we may have something in common.

> How much would you charge and how should I break down the
> bid ?

You'll want to find out what kind of software you're going to use to encode the stream. Windows Media Encoder is good and free and will work well if you're going to run a non-commerical station.

> Should I charge a flat fee for set up, and what would that
> be ?

Yes, I would charge a flat fee for initial development of the player and whatnot. I'd base your number on pages developed and how complex they want there player to be.

> Should I charge an hourly consulting fee and what would that
> be ?

Yes, I would, but as far as how much that would be is kind of up to you. Depends on your relationship w/ the client. I charge up to $80 an hour for consulting work in this realm but no other web guys that charge more.

> Should I get them to sign a contract and then submit a bid
> based on a 12, 24 or 36 month contract ?

You'll need to. You'll probably need to use a CDN (content data network) to provide the necessary bandwidth needed to sustain the load. Expect a PER GIG charge MONTHLY by the CDN. So you'll need to put together that structure as well for reoccuring charges.

> Can someone help an old radio guy who's about to make a
> little bit o' money for the first time in his career ?

Hope that helps. Feel free to reply to the post or email me at [email protected] if you have more questions.
<P ID="signature">______________
If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything...</P>

 

[jesseg]

Absolutely contract per hour, that's the best advice overall. Also consider the number for the cost of the initial buildout of the specs that are decided upon to be an estimate. It's thier station, thier baby, so why should you eat the cost for any bad planning or decisions on either of your parts? They are the ones who want to do it.

Contracts are essential, get EVERYTHING in writing whenever you can. If you can get them to sign a service agreement for you to contract out for them, then more power to ya. You might include a minimum ammount per month in there somewhere if you can get away with it... and define the borders of what you're going to do for them as well as english allows for, to close off another street headaches like to travel on. You could certainly add more jobs to the whole project, but make it known in the contract that those won't be included with the original service charges.

As far as how much to charge, it depends on so many variables that it's hard to say my friend. I'de say lean slightly to the lower end of an estimate for the gear & setup fees you'll need, and add a bit more monthly service charges than you think you'll need to keep you happy.


hope that helps a bit too. :-\