March 28, 2002
Spreadsheets are cool. I
Spreadsheets are cool. I got an offer to write ringtones for a website that wants to sell ringtones for Nokia users. A long time ago they offered me 10c royalty, which means I would get a dime for each time one of my created ringtones would be downloaded/delivered. That sounded intriguing. Then it fell through for a while. Well, they just got back in touch with me and offered me a different package. First it was $15/hour, which didn't sound like too much fun. Then it was $15/hour plus $0.04 royalty per download, which sounds more interesting, at least as a mental exercise. Although I'd need to buy the Nokia.So, I got out my spreadsheet and looked at a year outlook. I figured that I could probably spend five hours a week on this... could probably average three or four ringtones an hour. I know they want to max out at about 500-1000 ringtones in their library. And I know what traffic level they are at, and what traffic level they want to be at and what they think they could be at.
And so far it is looking like it might not be worth it for me. There just isn't a very intriguing upside. I could possibly make around six or seven grand on this project over a 12-month period, which seems kind of silly. I mean, maybe it would help and everything. But even when I figure in the royalties on top of the hourly fee I'd be getting... it still doesn't put my overall hourly fee too much over what I calculated as my Survival Rate the other day. And my regular programming rates are 3-4 times that of my Survival Rate. The idea of getting a couple hundred bucks a month in royalty sounds nice, but it would only happen after a lot of work... and the royalties would stop as soon as these guys decided they wanted to shut down or sell the company.
So I'm leaning against it. I might make a counteroffer, though... like maybe 10c/delivery plus some combination of $10/ringtone or an hourly fee or a buyout fee of $x/ringtone if they sell out within x months. We'll see.
I have to think of other plusses though. Maybe if I got really good at making ringtones other companies would know about that. Seems like half the searches that hit my webpage are people asking how to make ringtones. And I could also make my own ringtones for the heck of it. And maybe I could convice them to let me see their code that does all their wireless SMS delivery also, which would help my skillset.
So I'm still letting it roll around in my head. I probably talk to them
tomorrow. Any advice?
Posted by Curt at March 28, 2002 12:53 AM