Posts by Ivor

hey ipad, I think you should do what @sunschild57 said. Apply for the paypal debit crad. It’s really useful, my brother has one to use for where ever he can’t use paypal.

Just go here and get started:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_dc-intro

I think it approx. takes about 4-6 weeks.

Also give them a call to make sure your address is correct because my brother had encountered a problem where the address he was correct in a way but not fully for paypal, therefore he got his card like after 3 months.

Also there is another method I forgot to mention. Paypal has this plugin to generate a one-time master card number for a one time use.

read more about it here:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=xpt/Marketing/general/NewPayPalPlugin-outside

sorry I forgot to mention about that, slipped my mind.

Thank you, Ill review that, the Paypal plugin is just available in USA

Thank you all guys and gals if I decide to get into a new project I’m pretty sure that I’ve been searching for this thread. One more thing, with all this topic I was researching on the web, you know to read another experiences and I’ve found this amazing PHP Script that allows you to take down the site if the client don’t pay you!

http://www.vargatron.com/blogatron/2009/04/23/awful-client-insurance-via-php/

Just read the description:

Having done a fair amount of freelance work, I have a lot of experience with different types of clients. Some are easy to work with, some difficult. Some pay you on time, some argue over money but pay you in a timely manner, some take a bit to pay you but just cause they’re lazy and you get the money eventually. Then there are the deadbeats. You do a site for them, you put it up in good will, and they don’t pay you. You send them an email asking for payment, they side step you and still don’t pay. What do you do to protect yourself against this?

You could say “I’m gonna take the site down within 10 days if I don’t receive payment.” This is all well and good, but what if the client decides that they’re gonna change their FTP password and lock you out? You’re screwed.

Since I am currently dealing with a deadbeat client, I thought of how I could negotiate this. Then I realized….PHP!

PHP can change (and delete!) directories on a server. So by hiding a simple PHP script on the clients site, one which only you would know how to get to, you can put a little insurance in there that will let you delete the entire site by simply going to a URL .

Here’s a link to the code that I am using (thanks to Kunal Patel for the link

Hahaha funny stuff!

Happy to say it never happened to me and I’ve been doing this for almost 7 years now, but I think I’m pretty good at weeding out ‘trouble’ customers.

If I would’ve been in your situation, I would’ve smelled trouble from the beginning.

Not sure if this was the same person, but there was someone who kept leaving messages on several theme pages here stating he needed some web design work done and such.

Looked very spammy and written in poor English. Whenever you see un-targeted messages like these, don’t bite.

Yes, you’re right! This kind of people are newbies looking for cheap work, I’ll focus on ThemeForest, that’s it.

Contract, contract, contract. I don’t even start any work without a signed contract and 25-50% up front (depending on the client). Did you get anything in writing? Edit- Also, don’t be too hard on yourself. Every freelancer gets burned at least once. Just make sure to learn from this

He live in Orange County USA and I’m in Venezuela, I can’t make a contract he paid 100$ to start the project but never get a response after I sent the files.

Now I have other project with XMPie a Xerox company but I was contacted by a .NET developer I’m just the designer he paid 200$ to start hopefully this will finish well.

I’ve never lost with this key: Do not ever get started on anything (literally anything) before an upfront advance payment, at least %30 of the total budget (if trouble, higher advance payment rates may cause you refund high values).

And well if things go really wrong because of you, you can still refund that advance to them but do not do it more than 50% if you already did some work.

Other than that; remember, every client is a possible stealer even they have a good manner or not – this includes yourself if you become a client one day-.

+1 got it

We’ve all made this mistake.. You can bust out the legal bumbo jumbo and that sometimes scares them into responding…

Yes I think I’ll do that, the site is up now.

They don’t have the iMac that I want 24’’ 640GB 4GB RAM , but I think I’ll get this http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=TS-23W8H-R&cat=MON&cpc=MONbsc is cheap man! very cheap. Thank you!

this happens in all areas of freelancer. I once created a 4 minute track which was supposed to get me $400. Sent him the finished product foolishly (at 320 kbs, nearly uncompressed quality too mind you) and never heard from him again.

All final work should be watermarked before you send them the real final product. Just like how Envato displays it would be ideal as well if you can do that.

Thanks, Just jpg or png (in our case) and no PSD ’s, HTML uploaded in my server, and watermarks for their files. I’ve spend two weeks, is shame! Damn!

I just had a really annoying and bad experience with a client, he requested for web design (homepage, innerpage) he budget was 25$/h. I’m a freelancer newbie I need to accept that.

The fact is that he paid 100$ to start the project, Ok that was good, I’ve started but the project took a little bit longer than we thought (2 weeks), anyways my mistake was to send him the files before the payment (400-450$), now he doesn’t reply my messages. I know, I deserve a punch in the face but this is the kind of things that make us stronger as freelancers.

I want to know how you deal with this kind of things? We need to trust in the client and send the files? We need to make an example to show him the site then he paid?

What I’ve learned? Do not trust in someone who post in ThemeForest “I’m looking for a webdesigner”. What a bad experience!!!

Have you applied for a PayPal credit card? You can buy your iMac using the credit card and then pay the bill with your PayPal funds.

How can I apply to this CC? Thanks for that info.

ku-da-zi!