Hiring good help
Recently someone posted on a popular work at home message board that they wanted to hire a website designer but they did not want to pay anything up front, they only wanted to pay when the work was done to their satisfaction. The person felt this way because apparently they had given money to more than one person up front and not received any services.
This disturbed me for a couple of reasons.
The first reason is that I personally will not provide any sort of services for anyone without being paid up front. I do not think it is fair that I should be punished for some other dishonest and unscrupulous person’s actions.
As a Virtual Assistant I am still relying on hourly work to earn a living, and there are only so many hours in the day. I need to be sure that I will earn the amount of money that I need to feed my family. This means for me I must book a minimum of 20 billable hours per week. The only way to be sure that I have booked enough hours is to have been paid, up front.
I am an honest person so it disturbed me that this person had bad experiences giving money to people in advance and not getting work done. Problems like this could ruin my ability to work from home, or cause me to drastically up my hourly fee to make up for people who don’t pay.
The second reason this really bothered me is because I wondered if this person had a contract with the Web Designer. I always have at least 50% in hand plus a signed contract before I do anything. Even with first time long term retainer clients in my VA business I require a contract. Sure, people break contracts too, but it is less likely when you have a written contract. In addition you have a way to take someone to small claims court to have some justice administered when you have a contract.
In my other life I also own a Blog Design Company with my husband.
We always charge 50 percent up front for all design services and many times we do not end up receiving the last 50 percent even though the person claims to be very happy with the design. Due this issue, we have taken to only creating designs on our own hosting provider and never transferring ownership of the blog until we receive final payment. This way we can just turn it off if they do not pay. I hate doing that, and we give them many chances, but eventually, I have to buy milk.
I hope that it is not as hard as that blog poster stated to “hire good help”, maybe he wasn’t looking in the right places, or was expecting to much for the amount he was willing to pay, but I do know this: If you hire me you will get what you pay for, or you’ll get your money back.
