Waiting to release code.

[dhechler]

I am in a situation where a client has come to me asking for some code to be written. I had already had this exact code written for another client a while back. Now, current client does not know this and I am charging a flat fee instead of an hourly. I have already finished what the client wanted in about an hour and wanted to know your opinion on whether I should go ahead and release it to them, or wait.

My thoughts on both are this:
Release it now – I could release it now and have a quick turn around time. I just don’t want the client to think I either charged him too much for 1 hour of work, or expect this timeframe for all projects.

Wait to Release – The client feels like I am a less expensive option as I have waited 5 hours to release and only charged X amount for that work. They don’t feel like it was slapped together super quick just to get it back to them.

Thoughts?

[TheDoc]

You could be an honest business person and tell them that you had something similarly already prepared for another client and it just needed a couple tweaks and you can give them a discount.

Or you can be dishonest, charge them for way more hours than you should have, wait until you think you would’ve normally been completed and then give it to them.

Experience has led me to use the first option, and that’s why clients return to me.

[dhechler]

It’s not that I’m trying to charge them more. In fact, I gave them a deep discount on the price knowing that I already had this written.

Thanks for the advice. I hadn’t looked at it that way. I wasn’t trying to be dishonest, but it might come across that way if the client happened to find out that I had it pre-written. Doesn’t seem like it would matter if I wrote it from scratch or not.

[PeretzM]

Totally agree with The Doc. It’s 100% OK to resell something at the value of what is vs. the time it actually took. If your client went elsewhere to get it done, he would pay those hours to someone else. I would be upfront, and offer a discounted “reuse” price.

[TheDoc]

@dhechler – if you already discounted the price based on the fact that you already had the code written, then give it to them now! You should tell them that the price was reduced so much because you already had most of it written. That way you can give it to them right away.

@ChristopherBurton – if the client ever found at that another client has the exact same module already and you charged them full price for it, they will not be happy. It isn’t devaluing the product at all, as you’ve already (theoretically) charged somebody full price for it. Anything you charge beyond that is bonus! I’m not saying give it to them for free, it’s still your product to sell, but selling it for full price seems unethical (and dangerous).

[Brett_Santore]

You took that the wrong way

[TheDoc]

A bag of chips sells for the same price, but a custom design or module does not. You don’t pay 50 million dollars when you buy a phone to cover the cost of all of the research and development it took to produce it.

If you develop a custom CMS, you don’t charge every client you have the total cost to create that CMS, because then nobody would buy it.

You can look to these very forums for an example. Chris paid a company that specializes in Vanilla forum customizations to help out with a few things. That same company then released (with Chris’ permission) the code that they created into the public so that anyone can use it.

[Brett_Santore]

All I was saying is that I don’t think it is wrong to charge people the same price for something that you have done and continue to produce.

[Author]

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