burned on etsy

[seadog852]

Learned my lesson. Good thing it will only happen once.

Had a request for a portrait to be done. They sent me the picture, I worked it up to show them and bam. Haven't heard a peep from them. Work wasted. Guess I'll have to charge for mock ups that go towards the final product finish.  Anybody else experience this before?

[DWSudekum]

I have been on ETSY since 2009 and have had little problems.  I understand that sometimes this happens.  Sometimes the customer takes a while to respond.  I have had several customers that I designed banks for that have taken a fair amount of time to get back with me.  Had one that went in to the hospital another went on vacation and forgot that they had started a conversation about a bank.  In your case I think I would  in the future charge a small deposit non refundable of course for the workup of the pattern then if they decide to go ahead with the portrait then yo can charge them the rest.

DW

[scrollgirl]

I don't think it is just because of  the venue. It does happen all the time unfortunately. Both Keith and I have experienced this time and time again. People want custom work done. You try to work up what they want. They either change it several times or adding things in. Some of the requests are impossible.

I had a customer have me work up a design that took over half a day to do (several hours) and then in the end he said "I showed it to my client and he changed his mind" and felt he didn't have to pay me. What about MY time and MY day lost? I think that was the straw that broke my back.

Now we tell people up front - we charge $25 an hour for custom work. That includes the consultation time and the 'tweaking' time. We have been doing this long enough to know an approximate amount of time it will take us to complete the design. We don't do anything until we get half down, unless we know the customer well. Usually the time involved is anywhere from 2-4 hours. That price tag is usually enough to deter people from wasting our time. If they agree to move ahead, we do. But most of the time we ask for half up front.

It may seem like a lot, but we are "Graphic Designers". It took us YEARS to learn our craft and we need to have that respected. Hiring a graphic designer usually begins at about $80 an hour and up, so they are getting us at a bargain.

The most difficult thing as a business is to respect yourself as a professional so others do as well. Loose and casual relationships with customers only come after much experience with them. New customers should be treated professionally and also with respect - be on time. Be honest. Do your best work.

While everyone will conduct their own business differently, as it suits them, this is what works well for us.

I wish you all the best.

Sheila

[seadog852]

Thanks Sheila and DW for the response. I don't sell a lot and do a lot of freebies. Just hit hard when I don't design much and when I spend a lot of time on a project creating the scroll picture, which takes this noob a long time, and the customer takes the picture and runs. I appreciate all the designers do and all the hard work put into their work. But if I do sell custom work I'll be in the same boat and have to charge ahead of time to weed out the lookers who don't really want anything.