Question for programmers/developers
 

Hi,

I have a friend who has an idea for a site he wants to develop. The site would be similar to YouTube or other tube/video sites. He would like to build the site from scratch instead of using a pre-existing piece of software like Mechbunny or some other tube script. My question is, does anyone have a ballpark figure what it would cost to hire a programmer/company to build a YouTube style clone with a custom backend from scratch?

Mostly just looking for some general ideas of what he could expect something like this to cost and how long it might take to develop.

Thanks

I would think that something like that would be pretty pricey to develop from scratch. There is quite a lot to it.

But talk to K0nrad. I think he is in a better position then most to give an accurate estimate in that regard since he did mechbunny.

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Thanks for the tip.

I assumed it would be pretty expensive, but wasn't sure just how expensive.

I will contact him.

you should come up with a description that is a bit more detailed, "similar to youtube" is quite vague, too vague to even give you a ballpark figure...

There is absolutely no need to do such thing. Wasted money. Have your friend buy MechBunny so we have the base in there and contact me and i can modify MB for whatever you need to change, a to z, sky is the limit. Konrad can do it too of course.

Last year I spent about $30k building something similar. Ended up throwing it in the trash.

Share that with your friend.

If a multi-iteration tested off the shelf product can't get him started, a custom product will be a complete waste of money.

That is not a bad amount for building something similar. What was wrong with it?

I have it running on one site. Very bare-bones. What exists is nice, but it's nowhere near complete and features are minimal. Would have taken a significant investment to have the features match a product like AVS or MB.

No need to reinvent the wheel until you know that you need a stronger wheel.

Right, but why do it custom when you have MB 99% unencoded? You can just modify it to suit your needs, i am working with MB and Konrad for ages now and i know the script in and out, is very straight forward and rather easy to add functions, modify, etc...

Save your money and do something either disruptive or original.

Thanks for the other posts in this thread, they are informative.

The reason my buddy thinks he wants the software custom built is because he wants to own it 100% outright and not have licensing to worry about.

If he were to buy Mechbunny and hire someone like yourself to modify it to his needs would he own the final product outright or would there still be licensing issues with Mechbunny?

Thanks for the reply.

At the point, he is very early in the process.

Essentially, what he wants is a site that runs like a basic tube/video site for users/visitors and has a backend that allows people to upload their videos and gives them tools to modify them etc. He also wants people to be able to control which ads are shown before or alongside their videos. He also wants a robust advertising system built into it so he can add ads before or after videos and on the site and control what ads are shown where.

In essence, it is basically YouTube, but he wants to own the software 100% and not have any licensing issues he might run into buying something that exists and modifying it.

They hold copyright on their script, of course, while you, as long as agreed with the coder, you hold copyright on the changes made. I have clients who ask for such thing and the coding price goes a bit up as i hold no copyright on the work i do.

Hit me up if you want to further discuss this, but i really do not think it is worthed to spend money on doing this custom, well, if your friend wants to build "the next thing" and has the knowledge and cash to do so, yes, that's something else.

Either way, i can help with both scenarios, so please do hit me up if you decide on this project. Best of luck!

Isn't that exactly what I said he should do? ;-)

Learn from my mistake.

I had one custom built, tried various developers and some bigger teams but most of them failed to deliver. Like even if they build a script that works, building a script that can handle a lot of traffic is something completely different. If you expect a lot of traffic you will need people that know about optimizing databases, varnish, memcached, etc.

Coding part is the easiest, building for scale is a lot harder.

This. Very well put. With all the versions we've done of our software + all the custom development + all the years of experience with the tube concept, your friend is better off building on our product or another similar product then trying to do this from scratch. If his team is good, It will take him a year to get to where we are today - not just to code but to "figure stuff out" so to speak - and we'll still be another year ahead when he finishes.

youtube is not a site its a business.

your friend needs a plan and business model. and lots of cash flow to keep up with the hosting costs.

he can obviously contact konrad and try to get non-restricted license of course for special price, so that he doesnt have to re-invent wheel.

good luck.

guess depends who you hire, could be 5k could be 25k

Exactly. I have a client that runs MB on a very large tube via 4 servers and no problems whatsoever. Another advantage of MB is that it is very straight forward to modify based on any requirements.

Why don't i or any other coder builds a tube script and sell it for bank? It's not only the coding knowledge, but time as well. It takes time. Lots if it.