mthomasb

Reddit live feed: https://www.reddit.com/live/vwwmdb26t78v

Quick run down: a few months ago we launched a tool for freelance designers + devs to create free work contracts (hellobonsai.com).

With that we've gathered data on how much they charge for different types of work in different geos.

We noticed there's very little consistent market rate data out there for freelancers to (1) calibrate their rates, and (2) justify rates to clients. We hope this helps!

Indeed, escrow is highly regulated in some states, including CA. There are a few third party services that provide an API for escrow among other things: http://www.armorpayments.com/ and http://promisepay.com/.

Stripe and Braintree can also support some versions of escrow, depending on how long you want to hold the money for and the amount.

Indeed, still exploring carrot and stick options here to get clients to pay on time.

One nice idea we've come across is a trivial discount for early / on time payment (~1-3%). We've heard anecdotally that it helps!

One of the makers of Bonsai here. Thanks for checking us out!

- Agree re email. Reason we did that is we realized most people don't have the need to create a contract immediately, and unless they bookmark us, they may not remember "that cool website that does my contracts for me..." Providing the sample contract + other relevant educational material in the meantime to stay top of mind was the best short term way to do that.

- Regarding transaction fee, right now we're really only looking at escrow, which depending on the transaction size and deal we're able to get from the third party escrow provider, it should be somewhere around 2-5%.