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I was contacted by a large company last week asking for changes to be made. This prompted me to go check the DB, analytics etc and I see its being used a lot.
I've (as of today) stuck a sponsorship link on it. Any suggestions as to how else I can monetise?
Look up COSS and Open Core to get an idea of how others have monetized.
Where are you at in all this? Are you already a contractor with existing processes, relationships, and infrastructure for negotiating contracts, getting paid, and supporting large companies? Have you already paid the dumb tax beginning contractors pay for things learned the hard way?
How much money do you need to support the project long term? Does the person who asked for changes have a budget and the discretion to pay you? Good luck.
Assuming that's a go, then decide how it should be paid for. You have the option of time based (hourly/daily/weekly rates) payment, where you should charge the higher of what's normal for your area or the potential client's.
Or a project-based payment. If you're new to this, and it sounds like you are, I would stay away from this. Done right, you can make far more than time-based billing, but it takes experience to get it right.
Never forget: profitable businesses have money and expect to use it to get what they want. Despite what other comments say, it's exceptionally unlikely that they expect you to do it for free. They expect a bill that's at least a month of a developer's fully burdened salary.
After you've gone through this experience, you may have a better idea if it's something other businesses are likely to ask for. If so, make sure you indicate on the site that customizations are available.
Get an overview of the things they want changed and determine if it's something you have time for, or are willing to set aside time for. Can you deliver in a reasonable timeframe, for their definition of reasonable. Assuming that's a go, then decide how it should be paid for. You have the option of time based (hourly/daily/weekly rates) payment, where you should charge the higher of what's normal for your area or the…
That means you make the core software open, but you sell the features that businesses will pay for or that allow other people to make money. Think of it as two distinct products for two distinct userbases.
In effect, the open source software becomes lead gen; the closed software is your actual business. They're both integral, and obviously feed into each other, but most of your open source users will never, ever be customers.
Get an overview of the things they want changed and determine if it's something you have time for, or are willing to set aside time for. Can you deliver in a reasonable timeframe, for their definition of reasonable. Assuming that's a go, then decide how it should be paid for. You have the option of time based (hourly/daily/weekly rates) payment, where you should charge the higher of what's normal for your area or the…
Get an overview of the things they want changed and determine if it's something you have time for, or are willing to set aside time for. Can you deliver in a reasonable timeframe, for their definition of reasonable. Assuming that's a go, then decide how it should be paid for. You have the option of time based (hourly/daily/weekly rates) payment, where you should charge the higher of what's normal for your area or the…
Totally agree with this advice. The only caveat would be that there can be legal issues with charging money to work on a product that has specific licenses, whether or not you own it. You need to do some research (or maybe you could ask the company to do that research) to make sure you don't have to do some copyright wrangling to do this legally.
SaaS is typical, people like recurring revenue. It really depends on what the project does. Can you share a link? Look up COSS and Open Core to get an idea of how others have monetized.