Contracts

It appears that I will need to start using contracts for jobs; I have been burned way more times than I have gotten paid for custom work.  Is this just me or has others seen the same?  I don't understand people coming in and begging for work to be done; always stating you are wanting to charge too much and asking for lower rates, and then don't pay when the job is finished.

Yup. Been there.

It's the reason i rarely do custom work anymore. Only for a select few people.

 It won't do any good, unless you and the customer live in the same jurisdiction.  Even then, if it's less than $500 or so, they know you'd be faced with a lot of effort trying to collect.  If it were me, I'd probably use an escrow service where the customer funds the entire agreed upon price up front, and money is disbursed at agreed upon milestones, rather than something like a down payment then the rest on completion.  If there are 5 milestones, you get paid as you reach each one, and if you don't, work comes to a halt.  At least that way, you minimize the amount of labor you can get screwed out of.

I i have the opposite problem. I always pay before work commences and people either dont get back or take days. Ive even had on guy on here whos very big not even do the work and fart ass around in the end i had to leave it and cut my loss.  Good help is very hard to find so when i find someone to help i stick with them as they know my site and the reliability is there.

I would say always do it based on contract and demand 50% up front, and 50% after you show them a working finished product. After they pay you in full then send them the work. 

It's upon the customer satisfaction as well ! No one want to pay big money upfront  for shit work ! This is one of the reason i feel i may disappear forever from boonex . A lot of people here are demanding $$$$. While if i jump to socialengine or joomla or even wordpress . Theres so many free plugins .modules and so on . Also the custom work there doesnt cost big dollars .

it depends on the client but most of the time i have a 40, 30, 30 agreement.
national clients: 40% before start, 30% halfway and 30% when job is finished.
Other countries: 50% before start and then with every milestone they have to pay.
The whole amount upfront most clients won't do...

One of the guys said free mobile app rebranding. He took the code and never replied back -_- 

 Lol

Eli you are not wrong in what you say regarding wordpress but let me point out several things:

Wordpress is GPL, wordpress was founded by 2 people with help from nearly a dozen programmers. Hundreds of programmers add to the core code of wordpress and wordpress in fact holds wordpress conferences to improve wordpress and get new ideas. They are a full nonprofit foundation organization. Automattic the web programming corporation had a huge influence in the core code and foundation of wordpress. 

As if its not enough based on that alone to stop comparing wordpress development to dolphin there is more.

Wordpress, whereas it is the largest CMS and most used web app on the internet today, is also used by COUNTLESS people for free. They just use it to host personal sites and blogs.

I have never ONCE heard of ANY site that started off on a dolphin platform that had ZERO plans to make money with their site.

That being the case LOGICALLY there are going to be more people willing to give code away and make free crap, because they are not in it for profit.

Everyone involved with dolphin is in it for profit. The developers of dolphin, the people who write mods for dolphin, and the people who download and use dolphin as platforms.

Not everyone, or even most people involved with wordpress are in it for profit. Thats one of the major differences between GPL opensource software and Creative Common - People who release things Creative Common tend to want to make at least SOME money - GPL people just give it away like it water flowing in a stream.

To make my point simple in case its TLDR;

Boonex and wordpress nor the modules and plugins can be remotely compared as they are created in entirely different ways with entirely difference licenses.  

^{I would say that I've honoured my commitments, and have given extra money in cases where I felt people have gone above & beyond.}

Also, if Dolphin_Jay is about, halfway through a job and would love to finish it and give him money.

Once that job is completed, need to ask Dean for a job to give him money.

I am around.. sent you a PM.

GG.  

if....scratch that.  when I reach out to you for some custom work in the near future for some custom work, please know that you are dealing with a good guy.  others will let you know that I pay promptly and the jobs are usually small and tedious.

speaking of, deano....got a PM coming your way within a day or three.