Design Fees? When to ask for money up front?

[danthedesignman 0]

I deal with ALL of my clients over email and Instant Messages. I am often times having people come to me because of my artistic background to design crazy things. In the past I have just helped them out, spent my time designing, and then tell them what it is going to cost. I had a few people that never continued threw... but last week I have 5 open jobs that I have designed for that have not taken that final step and purchased.

I now realize I am only burning myself. What do I do?

Do I charge up front? How much of a design fee do you charge? Say I spend an 30mins to an hour on a design. A lot of times my design is going to be only cut once also... So it's not like I am designing something that I am going to be making hundreds of dollars off of.

I do ask a good deal of questions, but I love to learn!

[john! 1]

I was in your boat until i started getting more serious with my business. You just need to ask that all design work is paid upfront. Simple as that, if they have a problem then you don't want to work with them anyway.

Our products are custom, Your not going to make a decal and sell it to someone on ebay if it's for a business and your not going to be able to sell a custom design for a business to someone else either (not likely)

There is no taking back wasted products or time because someone is a tire kicker.

[danthedesignman 0]

should I charge a flat design rate?

or base it on the actual time I spend designing something? Some things are custom but I can knock them out in 10 mins.... others could take an hour

Thanks again everyone!  

[bamafan2277 50]

If I have to design anything from scratch I ask for a hour's design fee up front. usually that will cover it. Then if they decide to order and spend over $300 I will throw in the 1st hour of design time free by knocking it off the total cost.

[TSQUIRTZ 0]

Bigfoot, what do you charge for design time?

[hockeygirl 30]

I charge a flat $50 up front for design. If they decide not to purchase, I keep the $50, otherwise, the $50 applies to the total cost (design + product).