Advice for setting up first web development contract

Hello digitalpoint community.

Thanks for having me here.

As a new web developer I am looking for advice on how to best set up a contract to build a website and the best policy on payment.

I would like to ask other freelance web developers for the benefit of their experience and how they prefer to handle contracts. In particular:

1. How do you prefer to request your payments?
   
   E.g. Do you ask for (a) all money up-front, (b) a deposit up-front and remainder on delivery, (c) all payment on delivery, or (d) some other arrangements.
   
   
2. How do you handle the contract process?
   
   What form of contract do you use? Did you create it yourself? Did you use a standard legal form, or create one and get it legally approved? Did you buy one or obtain one free from somewhere (can you tell me where I can get some (paid or free)?)

I welcome any advice you can give me or recommendations on what pitfalls I should look out for.

Thank for very much for your advice.

Mark

 

I am a huge fan of the Killer Contract from Andy Clarke. I use it for all major projects. You can view an article about it here.

I love it because it is in plain english, no fancy words, just straight to the point. It's a great contract template for web/graphic design.

About your payment question. Generally I ask for 1/2 up front and 1/2 on delivery of the final product. This changes based on the clients needs... sometimes it's a 3 or 4 phase project and then I would break up the payment accordingly. If they are repeat customers and they have paid on time in the past, I might ask for like 1/4 up front and the rest on delivery. I also like to offer a discount if they pay on time, refer someone to me, or are repeat customers. This seems to keep them coming back

 

As a new web developer, your clients will be uneasy to pay you upfront.
You can set up a 3 or 4 stages of the project and to agree for the partial payment of this stages.
For example 1 stage - design 25% of payment, 2 stage - programing another 25%, 3 stage - functionality testing or whatever another 25% and the last 25% after delivery.
With this payment policy you can be on a safe side and take at least 75% of the payment before the project is finished.

 

I like your nice idea about contract.


Pure cosmetics | Urgent health Care

 

Thanks for all your replies. I'd like to follow-up with you with where I am at the moment on this.

For payment, I am as yet undecided on whether to follow a 50% upfront, 50% before live approach, or divide into four stages of 25%. The former is preferable to me, and the total cost of the project is not large, but the latter may be felt to be less risky by the client, and I would like them to be reassured (being my first major project web project).

I will decide either way and leaning toward the latter.

For my contract, I found the following example contracts on-line and used them as a starting point, taking parts of each and amending them to be specific to my situation and personal preferences and language.

http://24ways.org/2008/contract-killer
http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/services/contract/
http://www.talkfreelance.com/showthread.php?t=2745

Other helpful articles:

http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02...rstclient4.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/contr...tecontract.htm

There were other sites and some I've yet to look at but these were the ones that impacted me the most so far.

I hope others in my position find this useful too.

Thanks for your help.
Mark

 

Those last two links are:

http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/business/firstclient4.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/contracts/ht/writecontract.htm

Sorry there are restrictions on new members posting live links and it's stopping me from editing the above post.

Anyway, the links are not my own.