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Show HN: Get Paid on Time - Simplified Payments for Freelance Developers

21 points by timjahn 13y ago

marban 13y ago
The dubious stock image alone makes me hit the back button after .5 sec.
twanlass 13y ago
As a fiduciary you'll need to add a lot more content to your landing page to build trust. While the idea sounds great you're asking someone to put a lot of faith (and there paycheck) in your hands. I'm also curious - what's to stop a client from never releasing payment? Who resolves disputes?
- startupstella 13y ago
  Great question! We currently offer this payment system on matchist and many of our developers have requested to use it with clients outside of matchist. Online dispute resolution processes tend to be standard (check out Modria). The cool thing about having a 3rd party hold payment is that they (or an arbitrator) can rule in your favor if you are in the right and a client is withholding payment as long as the contract is followed.
  - robmclarty 13y ago
    The cool thing is that I have to go through a legal process? If someone doesn't pay me, production stops, servers go offline, and IP is definitely not transferred.
kintamanimatt 13y ago
The design of your website heavily impacts your business' perceived credibility. That stock image of the guy grabbing money instantly erodes any chance of appearing credible. Also, photos of people looking straight at the camera cause the viewer's eyes to look at their eyes, stealing all attention from everything else on the page. Look at the results of this famous eye tracking study that show that eyes go where eyes go: http://i.imgur.com/Vr1xOi8.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Vr1xOi8.jpg It took me a second to work out why I'm turned off by this site but in large part it's the color scheme. You're rocking a color palette inspired by a wasp and it screams "danger danger"! In spite of the fact you're appealing to tech savvy people, if you're handling money you have to appear as credible as a bank. There's absolutely no way a bank would appear like this and I don't trust you because of it. This is something you need to work on as a priority IMHO. I strongly doubt a one page site with a call to action that only requests an email address is sufficient. What happens next? I have no idea. How do I get paid? No idea. Can I use this if I'm outside the US? -shrug- How do I pay you? I have absolutely no idea and I wouldn't dream of using this service if I had to use PayPal. Also, you might consider offering a free trial, or if this isn't possible, do what Stripe does and offer a way to kick the tires with a dummy account. Give people the option to convert that into a live account. There are other barriers to trust, including lack of contact information. The details here matter because I'm trusting you with money. Also, why aren't you running all connections over HTTPS when you're asking for contact details? In short, you're an escrow service that needs a lot of polish, attention to detail, and hints that people should trust you. (Side note: I don't understand why your main site looks so incredibly different and polished, but this page looks like a rough first draft.)
- timjahn 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback!
  - kintamanimatt 13y ago
    Sorry it's harsh, but I tried to be as honest and constructive as possible.
    - timjahn 13y ago
      Which is exactly why we posted this to this community. Appreciate it.
  - avalaunch 13y ago
    I agree entirely with the OP. For a good color scheme, I suggest blue and white, with perhaps a touch of green. I imagine it's not a coincidence that these are also the colors used by escrow.com For a little more information regarding color usage in web design: http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/color-meaning/ http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/color-meaning/
    - kintamanimatt 13y ago
      OP can use orange, it's just the juxtaposed orange and black that the problem. After all orange is one of the primary brand colors for ING, but that's probably because they're originally a Dutch brand and orange is a Dutch color.[-3] Rabobank also has orange as one of their primary colors, presumably for the same reason.[-2] HSBC has a primary brand color of red, but note they separate all their red from the black on their page with a decent amount of whitespace.[-1] Santander do the same.[0] [-3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Orange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Orange [-2] http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/ http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/ [-1] http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/ http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/ [0] http://www.santander.co.uk/ http://www.santander.co.uk/
      - yogo 13y ago
ccarpenterg 13y ago
Is the fiduciary model a common thing for freelancers? I'm not sure of that. I was wondering how hard is for a non US contractors/freelancers to open a US bank account and then use something like stripe to collect payments. Or maybe collect the money through the bank. That's a real need: a way to easily get paid without using Western Union or the like.
Blahah 13y ago
What's the deal with international payments? I often work for clients on other continents, and I need to get paid in the UK. Amazingly, Paypal are working out to be the cheapest option for me so far. Are you cheaper than them, including exchange rate?
codegeek 13y ago
It seems like you changed/pivoted your business model ? Have seen quite a few posts from matchist earlier about matching freelancers and clients. You don't do that anymore ?
- timjahn 13y ago
  This is a new product offering we're testing. Our original business model of helping freelance developers and dev shops find great clients is still here going full steam.
robmclarty 13y ago
Why would I pay money for someone to withhold my money from me? I ask for 50% up front from clients (and get it) without paying $100/m + 1.5%. If I want easy payment processing, Stripe is pretty simple to setup on my own site (and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for other developers, your target audience, to figure out). Does this service perform some sort of automatic notifications/reminders to clients to pay up? I could see that maybe being useful. Often times the problem I have is after submitting an invoice and needing to follow up to receive a payment. Often those emails are stock messages that could easily be automated at set intervals so I don't have to think about it myself. Not sure I'd pay $100/m for it though. For this price-point I'd expect something like Basecamp in terms of features and polish, not something that holds my money for me and skims off the top.
- timjahn 13y ago
  There is no need for reminders to pay, because the client has already paid. They fund the milestone, you work on the milestone, and once the client signs off on it, we pay you the full payment for the milestone. The whole point of the service is for you to start work only when the client has shown that they have the full amount of money available to pay you. We currently use this system as part of our main matchist product and our network of developers loves it. We're testing the idea of spinning this off for any freelance developer to use with their clients sourced anywhere, besides just matchist.
  - robmclarty 13y ago
    What happens if a client cancels a milestone or otherwise simply doesn't hit "approved"? Machinist has my money, not me. I feel a lack of control, and I feel this isn't something I couldn't do with a single phone call and a cheque in the mail (or a payment on my own website). The price point is way too high for the service imho. I don't even engage someone unless I believe they have the full amount of money available to pay me. And I don't start work without cold hard cash in my bank account. 50% up front, 50% on completion balances a client's commitment with a developer's commitment. Each party takes a risk in terms of time and money (big projects can usually be broken down into smaller 50/50 payments for milestones). In terms of this service, I feel the developer is taking a bigger risk in terms of devoting time to a project that may or may not produce money, and in the meantime s/he has nothing to eat with. I just don't understand the logic of paying someone to withhold my money from me when I can ask for real money up front, directly, for free.
lgleason 13y ago
Has anybody freelanced using these guys? Did you land a good project or a so so one?
begriffs 13y ago
This site follows a pattern that I've seen before in programmer-driven startups: take a task that might intimidate someone, build some forms around it, and charge for it. In this case the task is to ask a client to prepay. Maybe it's playing into programmers' belief that if some website asks the client for payment then it's more legit somehow and less scary. "Look at the website, client. See, prepayment is part of a normal, well-established workflow." And maybe programmers will pay for this confidence booster. I guess that's what matters.
vgrichina 13y ago
Taking both monthly fee and % of payments is IMO totally crazy.

21 points by timjahn 13y ago

The dubious stock image alone makes me hit the back button after .5 sec.

As a fiduciary you'll need to add a lot more content to your landing page to build trust. While the idea sounds great you're asking someone to put a lot of faith (and there paycheck) in your hands. I'm also curious - what's to stop a client from never releasing payment? Who resolves disputes?

startupstella 13y ago
Great question! We currently offer this payment system on matchist and many of our developers have requested to use it with clients outside of matchist. Online dispute resolution processes tend to be standard (check out Modria). The cool thing about having a 3rd party hold payment is that they (or an arbitrator) can rule in your favor if you are in the right and a client is withholding payment as long as the contract is followed.
- robmclarty 13y ago
  The cool thing is that I have to go through a legal process? If someone doesn't pay me, production stops, servers go offline, and IP is definitely not transferred.

kintamanimatt 13y ago

The design of your website heavily impacts your business' perceived credibility. That stock image of the guy grabbing money instantly erodes any chance of appearing credible. Also, photos of people looking straight at the camera cause the viewer's eyes to look at their eyes, stealing all attention from everything else on the page. Look at the results of this famous eye tracking study that show that eyes go where eyes go: http://i.imgur.com/Vr1xOi8.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Vr1xOi8.jpg It took me a second to work out why I'm turned off by this site but in large part it's the color scheme. You're rocking a color palette inspired by a wasp and it screams "danger danger"! In spite of the fact you're appealing to tech savvy people, if you're handling money you have to appear as credible as a bank. There's absolutely no way a bank would appear like this and I don't trust you because of it. This is something you need to work on as a priority IMHO. I strongly doubt a one page site with a call to action that only requests an email address is sufficient. What happens next? I have no idea. How do I get paid? No idea. Can I use this if I'm outside the US? -shrug- How do I pay you? I have absolutely no idea and I wouldn't dream of using this service if I had to use PayPal. Also, you might consider offering a free trial, or if this isn't possible, do what Stripe does and offer a way to kick the tires with a dummy account. Give people the option to convert that into a live account. There are other barriers to trust, including lack of contact information. The details here matter because I'm trusting you with money. Also, why aren't you running all connections over HTTPS when you're asking for contact details? In short, you're an escrow service that needs a lot of polish, attention to detail, and hints that people should trust you. (Side note: I don't understand why your main site looks so incredibly different and polished, but this page looks like a rough first draft.)

timjahn 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback!
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  Sorry it's harsh, but I tried to be as honest and constructive as possible.
  - timjahn 13y ago
    Which is exactly why we posted this to this community. Appreciate it.
- avalaunch 13y ago
  I agree entirely with the OP. For a good color scheme, I suggest blue and white, with perhaps a touch of green. I imagine it's not a coincidence that these are also the colors used by escrow.com For a little more information regarding color usage in web design: http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/color-meaning/ http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/color-meaning/
  - kintamanimatt 13y ago
    OP can use orange, it's just the juxtaposed orange and black that the problem. After all orange is one of the primary brand colors for ING, but that's probably because they're originally a Dutch brand and orange is a Dutch color.[-3] Rabobank also has orange as one of their primary colors, presumably for the same reason.[-2] HSBC has a primary brand color of red, but note they separate all their red from the black on their page with a decent amount of whitespace.[-1] Santander do the same.[0] [-3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Orange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Orange [-2] http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/ http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/ [-1] http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/ http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/ [0] http://www.santander.co.uk/ http://www.santander.co.uk/
    - yogo 13y ago

ccarpenterg 13y ago

Is the fiduciary model a common thing for freelancers? I'm not sure of that. I was wondering how hard is for a non US contractors/freelancers to open a US bank account and then use something like stripe to collect payments. Or maybe collect the money through the bank. That's a real need: a way to easily get paid without using Western Union or the like.

Blahah 13y ago

What's the deal with international payments? I often work for clients on other continents, and I need to get paid in the UK. Amazingly, Paypal are working out to be the cheapest option for me so far. Are you cheaper than them, including exchange rate?

codegeek 13y ago

It seems like you changed/pivoted your business model ? Have seen quite a few posts from matchist earlier about matching freelancers and clients. You don't do that anymore ?

timjahn 13y ago
This is a new product offering we're testing. Our original business model of helping freelance developers and dev shops find great clients is still here going full steam.

robmclarty 13y ago

Why would I pay money for someone to withhold my money from me? I ask for 50% up front from clients (and get it) without paying $100/m + 1.5%. If I want easy payment processing, Stripe is pretty simple to setup on my own site (and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for other developers, your target audience, to figure out). Does this service perform some sort of automatic notifications/reminders to clients to pay up? I could see that maybe being useful. Often times the problem I have is after submitting an invoice and needing to follow up to receive a payment. Often those emails are stock messages that could easily be automated at set intervals so I don't have to think about it myself. Not sure I'd pay $100/m for it though. For this price-point I'd expect something like Basecamp in terms of features and polish, not something that holds my money for me and skims off the top.

timjahn 13y ago
There is no need for reminders to pay, because the client has already paid. They fund the milestone, you work on the milestone, and once the client signs off on it, we pay you the full payment for the milestone. The whole point of the service is for you to start work only when the client has shown that they have the full amount of money available to pay you. We currently use this system as part of our main matchist product and our network of developers loves it. We're testing the idea of spinning this off for any freelance developer to use with their clients sourced anywhere, besides just matchist.
- robmclarty 13y ago
  What happens if a client cancels a milestone or otherwise simply doesn't hit "approved"? Machinist has my money, not me. I feel a lack of control, and I feel this isn't something I couldn't do with a single phone call and a cheque in the mail (or a payment on my own website). The price point is way too high for the service imho. I don't even engage someone unless I believe they have the full amount of money available to pay me. And I don't start work without cold hard cash in my bank account. 50% up front, 50% on completion balances a client's commitment with a developer's commitment. Each party takes a risk in terms of time and money (big projects can usually be broken down into smaller 50/50 payments for milestones). In terms of this service, I feel the developer is taking a bigger risk in terms of devoting time to a project that may or may not produce money, and in the meantime s/he has nothing to eat with. I just don't understand the logic of paying someone to withhold my money from me when I can ask for real money up front, directly, for free.

lgleason 13y ago

Has anybody freelanced using these guys? Did you land a good project or a so so one?

begriffs 13y ago

This site follows a pattern that I've seen before in programmer-driven startups: take a task that might intimidate someone, build some forms around it, and charge for it. In this case the task is to ask a client to prepay. Maybe it's playing into programmers' belief that if some website asks the client for payment then it's more legit somehow and less scary. "Look at the website, client. See, prepayment is part of a normal, well-established workflow." And maybe programmers will pay for this confidence booster. I guess that's what matters.

vgrichina 13y ago

Taking both monthly fee and % of payments is IMO totally crazy.