

Is it common to pay designers up front? - sontek

I've contracted many times as a python programmer for companies but I have never considered charging a 'deposit'.<p>I recently started my own company and I have been asked a few times now to pay 30-50% up front and to me this seems like a horrible practice but it is also my first time hiring a designer.
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michaelpinto
From the point of view of an established designer most startups are seen as
having a high flake factor: Some startups go south overnight without paying
their vendors, many startup owners have no clue on how to work with creatives
and the worst offenders ask you to work for free.

So for a designer to work with a startup is high risk. Now of course if you're
Steve Jobs after Apple and you're starting NeXT then yes Paul Rand will work
with you. But that said I don't think Paul Rand would have even spoken to
Steve Jobs when Apple was in the garage in the 70s.

PS This isn't just for tech startups, but for any sort of startup.

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dylanhassinger
Us freelancers oftentimes live paycheck to paycheck. Getting a delayed payment
is more than an inconvenience, it starts a trainwreck of financial
consequences. In my experience, if a client can't pay up front then they were
going to have trouble paying on time later.

Not to mention that the transfer time can take longer than it takes to get the
work done, especially if the payment is via echeck.

Getting partial - or full - payment up front takes a major headache off the
programmer/designer, allowing them to concentrate on getting the job done.

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patio11
_Us freelancers oftentimes live paycheck to paycheck. Getting a delayed
payment is more than an inconvenience, it starts a trainwreck of financial
consequences._

Sincere advice said with love: charge more. Not being paid on time is a
_predictable and natural state for a business_. The risk of that should be
priced into your offering.

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damoncali
If I find myself pricing a deal to make up for the would-be client's flake
factor, I usually wind up regretting taking the client in the first place. But
if it's all you have and you need to eat, by all means, add the dentist tax up
front.

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tptacek
Building in the business cost of unpredictable receivables isn't just a smart
idea; it's part of the whole business model of consulting. This is just one of
the 25+ business issues that make a consulting bill rate multiples higher than
a full-time salary for the same work.

~~~
damoncali
I just haven't found people's price tolerance to be correlated to their
riskiness, so I like to try to keep the client risk low. Good clients pay just
as much as bad ones.

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jameswyse
Yes it is very common, though not always 100%.

I tend to estimate the total price, and charge as follows:

10% of the estimate when the proposal and contract is agreed and signed. This
secures the project in to my schedule.

40% of the estimate when work begins.

And the remaining fee when work is complete. Only when paid in full are
copyrights and files transferred to the client.

~~~
jameswyse
Saying that, I'm usually pretty flexible with pricing - If the client wants a
different payment schedule then I'm open to discussion.

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brandoncordell
I charge 20% up front. Doesn't matter if it's a $40,000 contract or a $4,000
contract. Freelancers are easy to screw over because most of us can't afford
to take people to court. It would usually cost me way more money in legal fees
than the contract is even worth.

There are people out there that, I think, love screwing over freelancers. They
get joy out of it.

~~~
sontek
Do you think there are more people who like screwing over freelancers or more
freelancers that are screwing over companies?

I've heard horror stories on both sides.

~~~
thoughtpalette
I believe it's more freelancers screwing over companies from my own personal
experience. (6 years). I've had stories from colleagues of them flaking out
from personal reasons, disinterest, etc. More of those stories than them
talking about being taken to court.

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kvnn
In my experience it is common, and the percentage / structure depends on the
total estimated price.

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jharding
This doesn't really answer your question, but you should take a look at
99designs. Depending on your needs, it could help make finding and working
with designers pretty painless. I used it because I needed a logo for a side
project and I had a great experience.

~~~
sontek
I _love_ 99designs for logos but we are building a web application, so a lot
of interface design, and I haven't seen many success stories for that type of
thing out of crowd sourced design sites.

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sontek
Thanks guys, I didn't want to pay up front and become a sucker. This just
makes me a little more careful with who we are, its hard to trust some random
person with this much cash up front with no work done.

But you guys raise good points.

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damoncali
Yes. For both development and design, I've yet to work with someone (or be
someone) who did not get a significant portion of the total bill up front. If
you work with good professionals, it's not an issue.

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anigbrowl
Designers get stiffed all the time; programmers have more job security because
of maintenance. Also, software is something you can show working; people will
reject a design for wholly arbitrary reasons.

~~~
sontek
This is exactly why I think its weird that designers are charging upfront, I
don't think there is a legitimate way to estimate how much time a project is
going to take upfront since there will be a lot of iterations and changes and
we may not agree on how it should be done.

It would be much easier to pay for hours worked than to have to request a
refund on the extra left over if we decided to part ways or anything like
that.

~~~
anigbrowl
Having worked in the arts, my experience is that many people - especially
first-time buyers and even with the arts industry - don't really appreciate
the economics of creative work and tend to undervalue it. If you don't assert
a fairly stiff price tag up front people will try and beat your fee down
later. The deposit is a way of getting people to put their money where their
mouth is. I would be a richer man if I had figured out this trick earlier in
my film career :-)

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nodata
How long is the project? Do you have a bad reptutation for paying on time?

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sontek
Its a couple month long project. I have seed funding and am fairly well known
in the programming community so I have good 'credit'. I'm not against paying
upfront I just thought it was weird because I always bill for my time, how can
someone charge up front if they haven't done any work?

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onlyup
Deposits just make sense.

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sontek
I would rather pay hourly because the amount of changes / iterations that are
going to happen. I'm a programmer and I know hard estimating is and it seems
weird to charge '30%' up front... What is 30%? What if our iterations go
longer the designer though? Do I get billed more even though I paid up front?

~~~
onlyup
Actually you're right, that makes even more sense.

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Detrus
Yes it is very common.

