As you may have read in this thread I, only with 2 other people that we know of so far, got scammed pretty hard by one known as Michael Plasse / PHPConnection.com / DotComs.biz
This made me realize that there are so many issues and things that you should do before you hire a freelancer, a lot of things that I didn't do.
Don't get sucked in!
One of the reasons I chose Michael Plasse was because of his low rates, his apparent confidence - but the main key was that he actually phoned me and we discussed the project.
This was mistake one. I stupidly accepted his offer without actually checking his credentials. I noticed that his sites were ill-designed, and that what he was posting on the forums differed from what he was saying. Apparently he was the designer/coder, yet on his website and postings he mentions "we" as if they were a group/team of coders and designers, etc.
Never go with your gut feeling to just jump in and pay a person. Take a break and wait a few days - if they keep pressuring you to pay up now, that's probably a sign to get out of there. A good businessman can wait a few days.
Do a search...had I researched who this person was I probably wouldn't have hired him. I found some postings on another board of him looking for other programmers to do relatively simple things, and also some postings about one of his sites being hacked (And very easily too) also comments about how sloppy and bad his coding was.
Unfortunately when you hire freelance there isn't a rating system nor a resume or anything that really gives you a sign of how good a person is.
Just that person himself...and how many people have you met that are completely honest with their skills, abilities and past doings when they could potentially make some money?
Do they just want money?. When I hired Michael Plasse he wanted the money upfront, which in hindsight was a very stupid thing to do. I chatted him down to giving him half, a deposit for the work to be done. However this is too much as well!
If it's a small project, and costs only $0-$50 dollars - It's understandable that the programmer may want to be paid right away...however if it's that cheap the coder should be able to do it in a day, a week tops - which really isn't that much time to wait.
For larger projects you may wish to go with a 3rd party or even an escrow service. This provides protection to you as the employer.
DO NOT USE PAYPAL. Do not under any circumstances use Paypal. Yes the service is "good", fast, and widely used, but they over 0 protection to you as a buy. Try disputing a payment with Paypal, digital goods are not part of their protection plan. You will not get the money back. Especially if the programmer you hired was a scammer.
Paypal also only allows you to dispute a case 45 days after the initial transaction, I believe this is how Michael Plasse scammed me...he kept coming up with stories (His house caught fire, then it flooded, etc, etc) and eventually I had gone past 45 days and any hope of me being proactive with the refund was lost.
So by now you have to realize that money in a freelancing situation is power. Do not hand over your power to another party without getting what you want in return.
3rd Party Services
RentaCoder and ScriptLance are some bigger freelancing services - they provide escrow as well as put some more responsibility on the coder.
I'm not sure how ScriptLance works 100% as their design is a bit annoying to use, however RentaCoder forces programmers to give you a status update every Friday. If they miss one of these the project can be ended and your money will be returned to you. You can also dispute the quality as well, and I believe a 3rd party from RentaCoder will take a look. Do not accept shitty code. Do not accept code that needs extra libraries and "special tweaks" to function properly.
RentaCoder and ScriptLance also have rating systems, so the only actual way to build up a reputation is to do good work. Make sure you look at their reputation comments carefully though, they may have 50 transactions that were basically tweaking an .htaccess file or something very simple. Look at big projects ($$$) and if they delivered on time, if the customer is satisfied, and if you're able to - see if the customer is still using the program/code created.
Set a Schedule and Deadlines
If the coder says that this should take 70 hours, ask them what a reasonable time frame they can get it done in. Allow them to pad it (Remember, you're still holding the money at this point).
If they don't reach the deadline, you can give them another chance, or just find another coder. If they're irresponsible enough to have the oppurtunity to lay out their own deadline and not meet them, they probably aren't very organized.
Try to find previous work
Try to talk to some past customers, or current customers. If they're new to the forum - don't be the first customer. Also take a look at some of their work...is it ugly aesthetically? Any good coder worth their salt should be able to hammer out some CSS code (CSS is ridiciliously easy) and at the least make it look organized.
Protect Yourself
The key is to always have control of the situation, and in this situation the control is the money. Always put yourself first.
You aren't hiring a person to become your "friend", you don't need to hear their pity stories.
You're giving them money to program something for you and that's what they should do. Period.
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well, my 2 php (coding style in general) cents: // avoid nested elseif switch (true) { case ($a=1): //code break; case ($a=2): //code break; case
However, I believe that the O'Reilly book is no slouch, and I will probably come to appreciate it more once I gain more experience in PHP and MySQL development
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You should always go through an escrow who will hold the money until the job is complete. And if it's not complete or not done well then he decides how much money will be given to the programmer. We're in the same boat now, we've been scammed by 5, yes 5, different programmers, who completed their assigned tasks to a different degree and then bailed.
My adivce, if you can help it, find someone local. At least avoid the abroad developers.
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I think a lot of people don't use escrow services because they're afraid of the attached cost. But it's basically buying insurance, and the fact is...it's so easy to scam a person on the internet, especially if they're not local - you have no jurisdiction or means to get your money back.
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You have put up some nice points there but being a php programmer, I would like to contribute to this topic. I know many of the php programmers who charge less, are all set to earn as much money as possible while delivering poor quality work, and do not want any kind of good client biz relationship. Quite a many PHP programmers out there 'never' even care for the most basic security and since PHP's a language with no standards, that makes it vulnerable by having many new programmers with no idea of security, optimizations or readable n scalable code. It's a sad trut that most of my clients (not that I have had too many) were a victim of some cheap n very poor quality PHP work before coming to me.
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Do they just want money?. When I hired Michael Plasse he wanted the money upfront, which in hindsight was a very stupid thing to do.
That's not very fair, and an upfront should be dependant on the project. If it's a project of $300, a $50 upfront is fair enough. I usually ask for an upfront to know if the client will really pay. Believe me, I was left 'unpaid' 3 times in the past -- yeah, I know it's very disappointing!
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3rd Party Services
RentaCoder and ScriptLance are some bigger freelancing services - they provide escrow as well as put some more responsibility on the coder.
I don't really want to say but most of the 'victim' clients of poor work, had got programmers from scriptlance. I am not saying they aren't good, but they probably didn't choose the right programmers and learning to choose a fine programmer at scriptlance is an art in itself. If you look just at feedback, I have found some real crap programmers with very good feedback.
I don't prefer to live at scriptlance because I don't like the idea of bidding for work and then loosing out because you offered a reasonable price for quality work.
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Set a Schedule and Deadlines
If the coder says that this should take 70 hours, ask them what a reasonable time frame they can get it done in. Allow them to pad it (Remember, you're still holding the money at this point).
If they don't reach the deadline, you can give them another chance, or just find another coder.
I would say, rather allow the programmer to give his reasons for the delay. I had got a project delayed once because I had to rush out of the country for some important work, but the client was understanding enough and gave me another chance. I delivered the project prior to the next deadline and offered few tweaks for free.
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Try to find previous work
Try to talk to some past customers, or current customers. If they're new to the forum - don't be the first customer. Also take a look at some of their work...is it ugly aesthetically? Any good coder worth their salt should be able to hammer out some CSS code (CSS is ridiciliously easy) and at the least make it look organized.
You can't really judge a PHP programmer with his/her CSS skills because many still rely on very basic CSS. But you should rather check the code for readibility. (well, even a non-programmer should be able to make a guess)
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You aren't hiring a person to become your "friend", you don't need to hear their pity stories.
You're giving them money to program something for you and that's what they should do. Period.
hehe.... I have had a very bad experience with few clients but I kept calm. They were the victims just like you and it was like they were taking out all of their previous anger on me. Maybe because of few bad experiences I felt the urge to move out of this programming world where you're nothing more than a 'paid slave'. I would rather say, keep a balance between instincts and logics so that it's a happy ending.
Btw, I wasn't trying to promote myself since I have already stopped taking on anymore PHP projects for months at least.
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Sorry to hear about you're unfortuante circumstance. Thanks for the good tips tho. I have never personally hired a coder as I havent had the need. In the future I most likely will and will definatly stay true to what you suggest. From selling websites, I understand why Escrow is a MUST.
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