How much for a app.

I need some advice, I made a database program in Blitz+ and I spend about 8 months(not full time) coding it.
Now a quite big company want to buy it, to my question.
How much money and what type of licens should I use.
I don't know anything about this, so it should be nice to get some advice about it.

I'd lay out how many hours you spent doing it, and think up a charge per hour.

somewhere between $25-$50 per hour? It's totally dependent on what it is, what it's used for and how useful it is for the client. What sort of thing does this DB program do?

Ask them to make an offer, get them to start the negotiations. If they won't make an offer then tell them you want $500K, if they say it's too much say "OK how much would you pay?"

$500K? LOL! :D It's worth a shot :p

You have to decide if this deal will be strategic to you business, ie. can you afford to sell it a rock bottom prices just to get the stuff installed. You may find that selling at a low price and using this company as a reference actually brings you lots more business.

Always ask the customer open questions when you are negotiating, ie. never give them a chance to answer a question with a simple yes or no. Something like "OKay, so If I agree to price the license at $125K how soon can you have the contracts signed and back on my desk?"

does anything exist that is similar to it? maybe check around to see what else is out there and work from there.

I think maybe I ask them to make an offer, and then I sell the update double price :) Microsoft style.

Cygnus: This company sell car paint to paintshops all over the world, all there customers use this old program to keep track of all the different variants of colour mixes.
My program is a upgrade of this system and make it faster and easy for customers to build there own database.

I think you're in for a lot of trouble! You should have written it in VB or Access or something similar, then if you get bored of supporting it you can just sell them the source! As it happens if they start running their business from it after you get bored of supporting it you've got a lot of trouble on your hands unless you've got a decent get-out clause in your contract! Be careful!

@Rob Farley, you are right. I really need to be careful about this.
I made this program for my own use from the beginning, but this company like it so they want to buy it.
Maybe I give it for free, :) And don't care about supporting.

Don't give it free is you can earn something from it. Use the money to fund re-development in C++ or something else, then sell it for big bucks.

The value of the product is worth what the customer will pay for it, plus the support that customer will require.

Back when I sold "solutions" i'd charge £20,000 (~$45,000) for my basic solution which comprised of a computer that cost me about £1,000 and off the shelf software (albiet with development overhead) that cost me next to nothing. It was the support and specialist expertise in their industry that they where buying. That and the fact I had no competition in those days... :)

I previously sold something I had formerly released as freeware for £10,000 because the customer wanted a [very easy to implement] customisation and where willing to pay for it.

Business operates using very different financial scales to us humble employee's. If a business is turning over £5m per year, and your software improves their operating efficienty by 10%, it has a direct tangeable benefit of £500k per year, on my pricing that'd make it worth £250k + support contract. No MD would sniff at saving quarter of a million quid in 1 year, even if the program only took me 2 days to write...

If your program lets to reduce unproductive time, it's value/price depends on how much cost/value for your costumer the time gained...As I understand you work in the company you want to sell the product, so you can check the quantity of your time you have gained with it in a day, and then multiply for the costumers. Every day of the year of course...
In this way you should have an average idea of how much 'valuable' your program is.
Of course for this 'vital' information I want to be paid :P

Could make a subscription based license at a yearly fee for the entire life-cycle of the program. Depends on how much longer you expect the program to be useful in it's current state, and wether you're planning any immediate feature upgrades.

Becky's point about how much is it worth to the company is totally valid. If they can use the software to increase profits by say £100,000 then they won't pay more than £50,000 for the software, maybe not more than £20,000. If you have any idea how much money a) they can save by using your software and/or b) how much extra profit they can make, then use this to help decide on your price. Obvisouly also you want to cover 8 months at a good rate per hour, but if it's not worth than much to them, try to sell them support/upgrades and sell a NON-Exclusive licence so you can sell it to more similar companies, esp now that you have a reference company. Alternatively, (bank software is like this) you sell an Exclusive licence to them for twice or more the value and promise not to sell it to their competitors, I know someone that did this with some bank software, he doubled his million, no sh*t. Also it was less lines of code and work than the thing I've been making for 9 years that people only pay £3000 to £30000 for. At the end of the day it's "what's it worth" to the client, not what's it worth to you. The other advice about how much are your competitors selling it for is valid if the software is NOT unique, but if it's unique, you can set the price high unless you think they'll just get a contract programmer to make it for much less. Good luck anyway.

Thanks everybody, I must think about this and see what i'm going to do. I tell you all later.

Thanks again..

yeah keep us informed!