How do I tell this guy he needs to pay more?

notjustjay said:
This is called "scope creep", and happens all too often. This is why in my line of work (software development for government clients) there's an awful lot of paperwork that happens long before a single line of code gets written, as people write down and review hundreds of pages of requirements documents. As a programmer I find this tedious, but it gives me the power to tell a customer or tester "no, I'm not going to do that, it's not in the requirements". If it's something the customer decides he really does want, then contracts get renegotiated, requirements documents get amended, and the cycle begins anew.

I read maclover001's first post and alarm bells ring in my head when I see terms like "now he wants" and "next he's asking for". The way to handle this in the future is to define up-front what the client wants, estimate how many hours it will take you to do the job, make sure it's reasonable for the price being quoted, then deliver the work. You might agree that the price quoted includes, say, up to 2 hours of extra work doing tweaks and adjustments.

If the client then says "great, but now I want", then you can stop him and say "I can do that, but that's beyond the scope of the original requirements, so let's agree on a price to do this additional work."
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Ye olde SRS. :D The basic logic is applicable in many fields as well. ;)

Nice explaination, BTW. :)
 
Hrmm... been about a week, and I never got a reply...

Time for the ol' account suspension, I guess.
I'll give him another week, or else the suspension page gets a new tone....

EDIT: Pointed it to the wrong error page by mistake :eek:

The red text says "Please contact me for info", not "Payment overdue"
 

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I'm afraid that's a lesson everyone who works in the creative industries has to learn at some point. Yes I have, and when I read through all the excellent posts here, many many others have too. :(

In my opinion it's best to stop doing anything for this guy, even if it means you will never see your 100 bucks. He will continue to ask for more and more and more and if it's finished someday will ask if 80 $ is ok because it took so long.
 
Forget about getting money from the guy. It's better not to have some people as customers. This person obviously doesn't understand the value of time or is trying to take advantage of you. Either way, the person is unlikely to give you your fair share. BTW, usually these things with low payments would get you say 50, 50 stake in the business.

You can still use it in your portfolio, or actually start the site yourself (with different logo, etc.).

Since he did not paid you, he did not own any of your work. =)

If he really wanted something, you can give him the first version of the site. That is completely reasonable. BTW, some people charge more for logo design itself.
 
Just out of curiousity, who paid for the coffees at Starbucks? If you were paying, then with enough Starbucks time you might have already gone in a "negative profit" situation before even starting the work. :D

Seriously..... Whatever you do, don't do anything you will regret later (I'm thinking about the notice page on his site). You made a bad deal, move on. Don't give him anything that he can use to bully you or threaten you with. Give him the completed php stuff, the logo, etc. and tell him that you consider your business relationship closed. Then, since it sounds like you are in Vancouver, head down to the Small Business Centre in Waterfront Station. Link Here. Do some research on pricing, contracts, etc. If you spend $100 on coffee while you do your research there, you will be miles further ahead than that actual "job" you got.

Good Luck.

You have a couple of things going for you. You seem to be a hard worker, and you aren't afraid to ask for advice. The rest you can learn.
 
Consultant said:
BTW, some people charge more for logo design itself.
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That could be a good idea. The op advertised "I'll build you a website for $100". That does not include a logo design.

Ok, website $100, international logo design with unlimited use $5000. :D
 
Haha so you posted that you would build a site for $100, and then even after the guy told you what he wanted (a huge social networking site) you STILL agreed?

You got yourself into this mess man, swallow your pride, email the guy and say "I'm in way over my head, I'm sorry to have wasted your time"

I'd have some sympathy for you except that this is well beyond standard "scope creep", you did this to yourself.
 
TenPoundMonkey said:
@ Ttownbeast: I'm glad it's worked out for you so far and that you are seemingly happy in what you do, but you could not operate the same way if you were running a full-time business.
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Should it become a full time business again at some point for me there would be changes of course, but I would still continue to undercut my competition on principle and manage to profit. Like I said before too many artists take this for granted and expect to sell that million dollar work and gain instant fame (the same can be said for anyone starting a business. Anyone starting a new business understands that once invested they no longer live an 8 hour work day--every dollar they make is spent on the development of the business nothing is left for luxury. I tried that for the first year I was in business. I held a regular job paid my bills and anything left over after bills went into my business covering start up material costs (art supplies for the various media I am skilled in), Advertising (business cards, magnetic door decals, tee shirts, flyers for the college bulletin boards, and displays for storefronts willing to feature my work), transportation (fuel costs, parts, etc), online fees (paypal, ebay, site hosting services), shipping costs, space rental at swap meets every couple of weekends--there was a lot of overhead. That first year was a learning experience I manged to break even and for now I put it on the back burner, I may start it up again once I have the funds and the time to invest.
 
Looks like you have learned to write a contract up front BEFORE work is started. State the price and the work to be done. Then later the customer can request changes. You then write up the change and the price.

What I'd do now is wrap up the current work, make everything you agreed to do work and then say he can have that for $100. If he does not pay, then he does not get the work you have done so far.

Make sure the demo site you are writing has a limit of (say) five users. You remove the limit after you get the $100.
 
Just got a response. Apparently I'm "incapable of fair trade". I'd like to see him find ANYONE else do what I did for $100 :rolleyes:

I guess I'll try to sell the code in the Marketplace, or try and launch the site myself.
 
maclover001 said:
Just got a response. Apparently I'm "incapable of fair trade". I'd like to see him find ANYONE else do what I did for $100 :rolleyes:

I guess I'll try to sell the code in the Marketplace, or try and launch the site myself.
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Well as you are a "fair trade employee" you should demand your $1 a hour from him :p

But in all honesty i would start looking at the processes involved to sue him for the sum of the work done.
 
Hate clients like this. Tell him he needs to pay you the originally agreed $100 for which you will give him $100 worth of the work you've done for him. Then he can try and get someone to continue where you left off whilst you see if you have a case against him.

As others said earlier - you need to stop being nice. The time seems to of passed.
 
Stop being nice dude, just say no way Im giving you my work for free, dare him to go out and find someone who does all the work you did at $100, I'm sure those people who know how to do what you did will just laugh in front of his face.

But to save you some face, just give him the original plan if you want, before all those add ons, you know the first agreement before he asked you to add stuffs. This guy certainly don't know the worth of things, how old is he again?

But seriously, stop being nice, its nothing wrong being nice until people start taking advantage of you which I really hate! :mad:
 
maclover001 said:
I think I just popped a blood vessel.
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Don't be frustrated. Just think of what this will look like in your portfolio, and all the experience you got from this project. You could easy change a few things on the site and use it for something completely different, I'm sure. :)
 
I'm in the UK but I'm sure minimum wage laws are the same in the US.

When I was in my early 20s, I did a 3 day introduction to business course and learned that the Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme wouldn't back anyone who couldn't prove in their business plan that they could turn over enough to pay themselves minimum wage after all the other overheads. In fact it's against the law to pay yourself less than minimum wage, even if the intentions are to build up the business with the extra money.

This guy paid for $100 worth on web design, the assumption would obviously be at both ends of the deal that the hours of work required would be enough to earn a living based on the average time it takes to complete a basic website design.

This guy has broken the law by demanding more of your time that necessary to complete a job that's clearly more complex than a standard website. He's the one employing you to create the site and by taking so much of your time, he's paying you less than minimum wage.

He should be liable for this surely?
 
I'm afraid you might never get any $$ for the work you've done here.

Whoever thinks he can start this kind of business with a $100 webdesign (that's roughly two hours of work in your business, right?) is either out of his mind or just another kid who thinks he's going to be the next Zuckerberg. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even have the $100 to pay you.
 
He looks early-30s.
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Wow, if you never met this person, I will think he is a 12 year old :rolleyes:

Seriously, like other says, who the heck starts a business at $100, a person offered to make my dad a full flash website and its at ~$750 :eek:
 
maclover001 said:
He looks early-30s.

I'll reply to his email asking for the agreed upon price.
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...and explain you've actually done about $xxxx worth of work for him, which is very much 'fair trade'.

Personally I wouldn't sell it. Assuming you have done more than $100 of work, which I don't doubt for a second, you should keep it for a future project. A descent client may want some similar aspects and you can just extract and pull them across instead of starting again from scratch. Your client will be delighted at the speed you complete and you'll be pleased you've laid the hard ground work. Everyone wins (except that tosser, but it's a valuable lesson for him so he also kinda wins).

That guys new name is 'tosser', by the way.

AppleMatt
 
excellent advice AppleMatt, I bet the amount of work you actually did actually worth about $xxxx, I do wonder though, if you are good at doing all these, why did you promote your service at $100 anyway?

Just wondering :)
 
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