This message is for T Novak, I hope you find this,

I while back I read a post to which you wrote a reply. In this reply you gave some factors involved when pricing a proposal. I am currently trying to create a custom questionnaire for my clients to guide me in creating proposals. I ran into trouble coming up with the appropriate questions.

In your reply you wrote the following:

There are SO many factors that influence and dictate pricing:

-Is it a Fixed bid job or Time and Materials?
-When do you need delivery by?
-New Project, Facelift Project, or Major Overhaul?
-How many pages of content are we talking about?
-Any dynamic content feeds? Database? XML Streams?
-Do you need our staff onsite at your facilities?
-Hybrid of Flash and HTML, only HTML, or only Flash?
-Flash Navigation, or the ability to switch between both?
-Administrative tools for performing updates?
-How many graphics?
-Do you have your own graphics?
-Do you want to license Stone images or Comstock images?
-Who is responsible for integration?
-Is your content written, or do you need a copywriter?
-Is this site going to be in English only, or do we need International translations?
-Who's building the back-end?
-Is our company producing the solution, or will we be working in concert with your team?
...
(etc, etc, etc.)

Every single question above and over 100+ others must be answered in order to effectively determine "price". Skill of the firm, customer demand, production efficencies, and related will help you determine an hourly rate. But at the end of the day you don't ask the right questions you may determine that you can do the project in 20 hours and it will end up taking 100 hours. By my calculations that $50 per hour just worked out to be $10 per hour (much less after taxes).

Could you recommend other variables that play a vital role in pricing web/multimedia projects, or perhaps some literature on this subject.

Everyone's advise is greatly appriciated.