Regarding a new ecommerce site

[lazy_guy]

The site I'm starting has probably 60+ different brands with probably 5 subsections per brand and a couple of pages per subsection.

Truth is I don't know how big this site is! I'm waiting on all the companies to send me their product cds that have images, descriptions...etc. and then I'm going to plug everything into a yahoo store and make an interface for it.

How would you go about billing someone for something that you don't know the size of and are kinda new at the ecommerce game? What if I quote the guy $2K and the job is much larger than that?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[solly]

Charge an hourly rate that you think is fair. Get a retainer of $1500. And then let the client know how much he owes at the end of a month.

[vincevincevince]

Can you quote him for:

Consultation $500
Store $1000
Product Implementation:
- $50/ supplier
- $5/ product
- $1 for text or photo updates per product

You'd probably be wise to outsource the implementation part to someone on a similar basis.

[lazy_guy]

Thanks for the responses.

Vince, what do you mean by outsourcing the implementation? Am I wrong to think that there's very little back-end coding with a yahoo store? Just plug in the products and make a front-end for it with some db connection code?

Thanks again.

[vincevincevince]

lazy_guy... I've never used a yahoo store so am not sure quite what is involved.

What I meant by outsourcing the implementation was finding someone to do the labourious parts, data entry, cropping photos, etc. The stuff which has to be done once per product and doesn't take much skill, not the design or coding parts.

[lazy_guy]

Ahh, thanks for clearing that up for me Vince. Fortunatley, all the surf companies have product cds with images and text that I can plug in. I still don't know if I've bitten off more than I can chew with this project.

Thanks for the replies.

[vincevincevince]

Fortunatley, all the surf companies have product cds with images and text that I can plug in.

The question is whether, with your skills, you should be spending so much time getting intimate with copy, paste, and upload? I was thinking more that your fee should be divided between a flat cost for making the system, and then a per product cost for adding the products.

[lazy_guy]

I think you're on to something. That does make sense and that way I'm not killing myself. I just want the guy to know that I'm trying to give him a good deal and also set myself up for a job with him afterwards to be the webmaster. He really is a solid guy.

I was doing some reserch into maybe using zen cart instead of yahoo stores... and then found clickcart pro. I really like the system and plan on doing more research today on it. Anyone have an opinion one way or another on these systems?

Fortunately, the shop owner is very patient with this project. He knows it isn't going up overnight.

Thanks.