Show HN: Get Paid on Time - Simplified Payments for Freelance Developers | Hacker News Reader

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

matchist.com

21 pointstimjahn25 comments

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

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.)

Do you have more background info on that eye tracking study? I ask because the first thing that came to mind was that this was a more seductive photo. It seems to me most photos with a single person do in fact look at the camera. If they are not looking directly into the camera where should they be looking? Took a quick look at basecamp.com just to check since I know they did some testing with using photos with humans.

As for using stock photos I totally agree with that, it always comes off as fake.

It's been written about quite extensively. Google stuff like "eye tracking study conversion optimization" and you'll come up with a ton of hits. Lesson #6 on this[-2] blog post also has another example.

A/B test everything, and, while this isn't a hard rule, generally the model's eyes should be looking where you want to viewer to look.

The reason I think 37Signals successfully breaks this "rule" is because the headline is by far the most dominant thing on the page.[-1] Not so with OP's design.[0] On the Basecamp site, it's virtually impossible not to be able to see the headline first and read what it says before moving on to anything else on the page. 37Signals would be wrong to have the model's eyes looking in any other direction. If she were looking to the left she'd be looking away from the call to action. If she were looking to the right she'd be looking away from the social proof. This is one of those times that they understood the "rules" so well that they were able to break them for greater effect.

[-2] http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/01/7-conversion-optimizat...

[-1] http://i.imgur.com/0XWFn9v.png

[0] http://i.imgur.com/HAW2JTv.png

Thanks for the feedback!

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/

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

[-2] http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/

[-1] http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/

[0] http://www.santander.co.uk/

Exactly, orange isn't the issue (although they definitely need to use a lighter orange, #f[a-c] range to convey a more refreshing vibe). I will add that orange is very difficult to get right in any design--it comes off as being too strong for many users. Notice that over time even at&t has used less and less of it.

For inspiration the OP can also checkout http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/websites-inspiration/... As one of my favorite colors most of those sites would annoy me if I had to view them regularly.

Sorry it's harsh, but I tried to be as honest and constructive as possible.

Which is exactly why we posted this to this community. Appreciate it.

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.

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.

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.

If you don't have the problem of getting paid on time, every time (or at all) by clients, then this product probably isn't for you.

I have problems getting paid on time like everyone else. I think this problem is more of a psychological one, one of communication and setting expectations with one's clients. I think this service is overpriced, and I question why anybody, not just me, would pay to use it.

Stripe costs 2.9% + 30c per transaction (no monthly fee) and has example code you can copy and paste into your site (for free). I can type email reminders to clients myself, or setup a script to send stock messages automatically (for free). And when I get paid, I get paid directly to my bank account (where I have full control over it, which I can use to pay bills and eat food).

https://stripe.com/ca/help/pricing https://stripe.com/docs/examples

I'm not trying to rain on your parade. I'm just curious what the actual benefits are. Maybe I'm missing something. Please explain it to me. From the little information on the webpage, I currently feel it isn't worth it.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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 ?

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.

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

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

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