Gosh, I must admit, when I saw that figure and what they were asking for, I
thought it seemed unrealistically low! For a new website, plus hardware,
plus several other digital outputs from the sounds of it ("mobile app,
games, podcasts, online exhibitions"). It is a piece of string question,
for sure, I've done websites for pennies, but OTOH seen apps in this sector
cost well over £100k (and reasonably so, given the amount of work and
expertise involved). So you could easily spend the budget on just one of
those outputs, depending on the requirements.
Having been on the commissioning side and the agency side, I know where
both are coming from, but feel a lot of the budgets I see in this sector
are really far too low, when you look at how that breaks down for an
agency. Lots of projects asking for complicated apps for £25k, brand new
games for under £5k, that sort of thing. Especially when an agency is
expected to absorb the cost of all the work they have to do on spec just to
win a tender (and the ones they don't win). Have seen too many good
talented agencies close or stop doing work for hire over the last couple of
years, but I don't blame them. Working in the cultural sector frequently
involves working on margins that are just too tight to be sustainable. I
don't think this benefits anyone.
I've been trying to get people to share their project budgets for a blog
post for absolutely ages, because I think it's good to be open about this
but also to help others understand what a reasonable cost is. Not had much
joy though. Any agencies out there want to share their budget breakdowns,
maybe blog about why things cost what they do? The expertise and training
costs that must be absorbed, along with other overheads and all?
Martha
--
Freelance digital producer and consultant
www.marthahenson.com
@marthasadie
On 1 September 2014 11:06, Tony Crockford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 1 Sep 2014, at 10:05, Ellis, Linda <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > When I see things like this it makes me want to weep - is it really
> necessary to spend £135,250 to create a website, some digital products
> (Including a project Mobile App) and associated hardware? Do we as a
> sector get conned into thinking we have to spend this sort of money or is
> it a realistic figure? I wish I knew!
>
> I could show you how to spend that kind of money, it’s not unrealistic if
> you’ve not defined the scope tightly.
>
> I could also show you how to get the same or similar deliverables for a
> lot less.
>
> A Ford Focus and a Bentley do the same job, but they don’t cost the same.
>
> I think it’s better to invest a small amount of money into a properly
> defined technical and design brief, do a pragmatic feasibility study and
> take a long hard look at the ROI.
>
> I suspect the problem is that it’s harder to get the small amounts of
> funding to do the planning stage properly, so there’s a lot of ball park
> estimating in project proposals.
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