Earning Money with AICoreEARN-AI-006
Price work and count every cost
Calculate contribution after tools, fees, review, rework and your time.
- Difficulty
- 2 / 5
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Study time
- 0.5–1 h
- Kind of work
- Practice
Why it matters
Revenue can hide an unprofitable workflow. A quote needs a cost model and a capacity check.
Where it is used
Build a quote with price, variable costs, total hours, allocated fixed costs and an explicit scope assumption.
How you know you have learned it
Complete the scenario checks, explain the decision in your own words, and produce this artifact: Build a quote with price, variable costs, total hours, allocated fixed costs and an explicit scope assumption.
Move the time budget and inspect contribution
The diagram loads as you scroll. Its values and worked example are available below.
Worked example
Price = 200, variable cash cost = 20, total hours = 4, time value = 30/hour, fixed overhead = 100.
- Contribution per job = 200 − 20 − 4 × 30 = 60.
- Two accepted jobs produce 2 × 60 − 100 = 20 after the modelled fixed overhead.
- If time rises to 6 hours, contribution is zero; more jobs do not cover the fixed overhead.
- At the initial assumptions, break-even requires at least 2 whole jobs. Capacity and demand still need testing.
Your turn
Why is 200 minus the tool bill an incomplete profit estimate?
Reveal answer
It omits review, rework, sales and support time, fees, fixed costs and possibly taxes. Count relevant costs and distinguish cash paid from the planning value of your time.
Build the fundamentals behind the work
Start here for a practical offer. Use the other worlds when you want to understand models, check your numbers or build deeper expertise.
- Mathematics: percentages, costs, probability and the maths behind models.
- AI & ML: how models work, how to evaluate outputs and where they fail.
- Physics: measurement, units, energy and the physical systems behind technical projects.