In order for my project to be fulfilled, I will need to plan my finances effectively – or we will end up running out of money, and the project will be binned, or will be rushed and so the final product will be less effective.
I will divide my project’s budget into 3 different sections; direct costs, indirect costs and other costs.
Direct costs will include things like equipment, software, materials and travel. Indirect costs are the costs of personnel and any services that we use. Finally other costs is anything else, mainly promotional materials.
I will first calculate how much each individual section will cost, then add this altogether to create my overall budget for the project.
Direct Costs:
In order for us to create our product we will need access to web design software. The web design software that I believe would be good to use is Adobe Dreamweaver, currently priced at £329.00 at King of Software, however if I am going to need access to design software as well as video editor software for editing any video promotional material it may be smarter to go with the Adobe Creative Suite, that includes all three softwares and more – priced at £1,199.00 at King of Software, or I could get Adobe CC, which costs £359.00 for a yearly subscription this means I can adjust anything or design anything when I want, rather than having to rely on outsourcing to a freelancer. To use this software I will need at least one computer, for the designer/video editor etc to actually use the software. Currently, an iMac costs £979.00, however if I am going to need a team of people I will need more.
This raised the question of outsourcing to a freelancer, whether it be a web designer or video editor etc. According to the UK Web Design Association the average cost for a day of web design work is around £200 – meaning it would probably be cheaper long term to do the web design work myself, however as I am not confident in my web design skills I will employ a freelancer, and if I am impressed I will hire them full time. When it comes to design and video editing I can do this myself, cutting down on production costs and only needing to buy the software, or a yearly subscription to it.
The majority of the costs in terms of materials will be on promotional material (mainly posters to be put into cinemas). The standard size of movie posters is 40′ by 60′ (portrait). The cost to print one of these (on VistaPrint) is £16, but to print in bulk (25) is £169, and to print 100 is £629. With Odeon alone having over 100 cinemas (according to their website) I will need to print over 100 in order to have a poster in every Odeon cinema.
The cost of a server for the website will be around £2,500.
Indirect Costs:
The majority of the indirect costs will be spent on people’s wages, as well as maintaining our website and domain name, that the user is redirected to via QR Code. There is an opportunity to outsource the QR Codes, and website to a company called Scanlife. They allow you to create the QR codes, as well as a website that the QR Code redirects to. There is an small business option, however this limits the amount of QR Codes you can create, and the amount of websites. There is an ‘enterprise’ option allowing 10+ qr codes and websites, however it doesn’t say how much it costs, but it will definitely be more than £49 – I’m going to estimate it will be over £100 at least.
In terms of wages, I will need to pay myself at least minimum wage, and the average salary for a Creative Director, (according to Payscale) is between £28,000 and £85,000, therefore I’m going to allocate myself about £30,000 annually. Along with this I am going to need a web designer, and the average pay for a web designer is around £22,000 annually (according to Payscale). Therefore I’m going to allocate this amount for the web designer.
Other Costs:
Most of the other costs come from marketing and promotion of the service. In order to have posters in almost every Odeon Cinema in the UK, the printing alone will cost at least £600, as well as this Odeon may charge a cost for the poster to be displayed, however a partnership could be struck and this could work for Odeon as they appear to be helping parents – thus giving them good publicity.
When you add all these costs together to get a rough estimate of total costs it comes up as roughly £57,500 for the year – with various numbers being estimations (for example the costs of the QR Code service).