>Hi Einar,
>
>>I would probably charge 20 hours when I originally built it and then 10 hours every time I used it thereafter (after selling it 10 times I would drop the price down but would still keep some 'markup'). Anywho that is just me<
>
>There is also one additional way to handle this, and that would be to quote a "flat" fee instead of by the hours. I have done this sucessfully on more than one occasion... :)
>
>Mel Cummings

Yeah that is probably the most common way to do business for developers. If you create widgets quick you get more per hour, if it takes you longer then you get less per hour.
The issue is still the same. You are asked to bid on an app that contains 100 widgets. You know that you have already built 25 of those widgets before. Now do you bid in a way that you account for building all 100 widgets from scratch, or do you make a bid for building 75 widgets and giving away 25 widgets for free (and there is also the in-between approach).

Now here is an interesting question: Let say you are working on a project where you can bill them by the hour. You wake up in the middle of the night and lay awake for 1.5 hours solving a very difficult widget implementation. When you get to your computer the next morning it takes you 30 minutes to build the widget. Now do you bill for 2 hours or do you bill for 30 minutes?