

Ask HN: Freelancers, would you pay for service that ensures your clients prepay? - timjahn

Tim, CTO&#x2F;Co-Founder of matchist here.
We&#x27;re thinking of developing a separate payment product for freelancers.<p>The problem this product would solve is ensuring your clients always pay on time by having them fund milestones before work begins and release payment as milestones are completed (similar to the current matchist payment system but for any of your clients, regardless of where you found them).<p>Here&#x27;s how it would work:<p>1) When you secure a contract, you set up milestones for the project in the system.<p>2) Clients prepay for the milestone. There is no fee for them.<p>3) When you finish the milestone, you ask for payment to be released.<p>4) The client releases payment.<p>The cost would be $50&#x2F;month for holding $1k or less in the system. If there was $5k or less being held in escrow, we would charge $100, and $10k would be $200&#x2F;month.<p>What do you think? Please be honest: Would you pay for this product?
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philiphodgen
For freelance service providers, this already exists. I do it with everyone
who wants to hire me. No prepayment = no work. It took a long time to get
there. It also took multiple times of forgetting this rule (and getting burned
once again). Most recent write-off? Last month. :-(

Just ask. It is astonishing what the universe will deliver to you if you just
ask.

Also, if the answer comes back "no" too many times, that is valuable
intelligence gleaned from the marketplace. What you do with that information
is up to you. Personally, I interpret that information as "I am attempting to
compete in a commodity business; how can I reconfigure my services so I am not
a commodity service provider?"

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timjahn
That's great to hear. I think every freelancer wants to end up there.

So you never have problems with clients no paying (either on time or at all)?

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johnmurch
Rather than ask - build a landing page with a gumroad subscription button and
GET users rather than ASK users. e.g. [http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-
paying-customers-in-7-week...](http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-
customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-did-it)

I also think - $50/month is a hard sell to have clients "pre-pay" as I can do
the same thing just charge them ahead of time (e.g. 50% down to start then 50%
when complete or some % of).

I would rather see a service that charges $50/month or flat rate $25 to go
AFTER clients who haven't paid on time/etc.

my 2 cents

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timjahn
Yeah, very familiar with that story (and a big fan).

We very well might. :) Thanks!

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lingben
this already exists, check out elance or any other freelance marketplaces

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timjahn
I was under the impression you could only use their prefunding services for
clients you sourced on Elance or the marketplace, not with any clients you
sourced elsewhere.

