[sdiy] making 2 or 3 dollars an hour on synth building?

[Jim Patchell]

Welcome to the wonderful world of being an independent contractor.

General rule of thumb...The cost of a custom piece of electronics should 
be at a minimum, six times the cost of materials.

This box:

http://www.noniandjim.com/Jim/synthmodulesII/frontpanel.jpg

Cost me ~$3500 in materials.  Anybody out there willing to pay $21000 
for a fairly basic modular synthesizer?  I didn't think so.

Trying to get people to pay what your time is really worth is extremely 
difficult.  Partly because they can go to the store and purchase an item 
for $19.99, they don't seem to understand that something that may take 
up about 500 hours of work just isn't going to be inexpensive.  A 500 
hour job, by the way, I generally quote at $50,000.  That is generally 
where things come to a halt.  Many people seem truly disappointed that I 
don't work for free.

Software jobs are the most difficult to get people to pay for.  I even 
had someone tell me once they won't pay that much for somebody just to 
type stuff into a computer....

-Jim

Dan Snazelle wrote:
> 
> well i installed the audio ark this weekend at a beautiful estate in northern new york. i was terrified the person paying for the box was going to hate it but luckily that was not the case. it sounded great and looked good in his rack sitting above two eventide boxes and an MPRESSOR.
> 
> HOWEVER
> 
>  i am quickly starting to see that making a living, or supplementing my income from audio electronics may be a bit of a 
> ridiculous idea. for the amount of hours i put into the audio ark, i probably ended up making about 61 dollars a week (for
> 36 weeks)
> 
> this is NOT practical. especially when many of those weeks, i was working so much on the ark that i had no time for my REAL job of being a recording guy in nyc. If i was working 40 or more hours a week on the ark (which was often the case) i was making around 2 or 3 dollars an hour. (or even less) 
> 
> (AND I STILL HAVE TO WRITE THE MANUAL)
> 
> maybe due to the size or the amount of work that went into figuring out a good method of tracking, or due to the time of soldering and wiring..i dont know...but if this is the most one can make building a box of that size...well i dont think i would ever do it again! and this isnt meant as an angry statement. far from it. But it was a TON of work. late nights...early mornings...technical hurdles...hand burns....and I think for that amount of work, there has to be a payoff. (which there always is when you are building it for YOURSELF)
> 
> at least the parts were paid for as i was building it. but lets stop and think about if they were NOT...then i would have had to put about 2000 dollars of my OWN money into the box, which would not have been recouped till the very end. which seems very risky (if you arent even sure there are buyers)
> 
> wow.
> 
> 
> 
> so i am interested in knowing
> 
> 1. is it really THAT hard to do better than breaking even when  building synth related stuff for people (even just one offs)
> 2. how does anyone make a real living doing it?
> 3. is it any better with small boxes? (fx,etc)
> 4. what are some good ways of estimating a cost at the start? (i estimated waaaay too low and hurt myself because of it. an agreed upon price is an agreed upon price no matter how wrong i might have been.)
> 
> 
> granted...i will be doing synth diy for myself no matter what. and i am proud of the 
> monster that i built.
> 
> but maybe stompbox style synth creations are a bit more realistic than giant machines?
> 
> i would love to hear of your experiences with this.
> 
> thanks so much
> 
> 
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> 

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