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Is it common to pay designers up front?

6 points by sontek ↗ HN
I've contracted many times as a python programmer for companies but I have never considered charging a 'deposit'.

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.

26 comments

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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 :-)
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.

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.

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.
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.
kvnn
In my experience it is common, and the percentage / structure depends on the total estimated price.
nodata
How long is the project? Do you have a bad reptutation for paying on time?
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?
[dead] 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?
Detrus
Yes it is very common.
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.
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.

onlyup
Deposits just make sense.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.