Hey, freelancer programmers, web developers, etc. I need your help. I’m writing a “Mother of All Blogs” post about why clients should a) pay you for your work and b) expect to pay you your asking rate. I’m trying to make the argument more forcefully that you get what you pay for with this work and that when you cheap out you only hurt your business bottom line. So, what are your experiences (positive and negative) or points that you would make to a potential client, who wants you to work super cheap or even for free, that you find are irrefutable about this topic? I want to include as many as I can! Thanks.

first of all: dear motherfucker customer if you manipulate code and ruin the program, it's not my job to fix it(you should pay more if i fix it).
second: if i build a program once, i doesn't mean i should sell it once, i have this right to sell it to lot of people,
third: dear relative, keep your million dollar idea for yourself,
and last but not least: you customer, all parts of program is relative to each other, when you call me and ask me for a new feature in middle of development, i have to change lot of parts, so tell me all your needs at the beginning

its simple. If you pay me more, I can spend more time on your thing, I may write slower and thinking more about it. You cant see it in effects just yet. But next time you want to fucking change one thing, and you dont want me to do it, feel free, but code that is properly done, not "cheaped out" thus rushed is better to maintain. And I mean it. I fucking mean it.

If You are going to pay me a little bit, I will rush through your project and will want extra cash for changes, I will want extra cash for addotional testing. Only thing you can get for free is warranty of some sorts that my code works at all and I can fix some bugs. But you are warned that this approach will have minors and I wont care since its rushed project. Pay me for 2 months of work and I can do much more for same price, and if you want some minor change its usually few minutes change so I will just do it for free bc you was good client. if you was rude cheap-out guy, I will give amount of fucks you deserve. simple.

part2
we are people too, and we want to be appriciated one way or another. good mean of appriciation is money and how hard it was to cooperate with you.

but thats my past, my most recent expirience is that sometimes people will just try to cheat on you, especially those agile pay per hour "ye ye we will do anything you want" software houses where company I work for right now is client of such software house...

they want cash for bugfixing, for testing and they do anything in their power to incerase amount of hours. And my bosses apparently are idiots enough to not see it. but they will complain about paying them, but they are blinded by promisses of XYZ while I could do it myself but no cause I declared in january i can do it on march. well, its may and they are still sucking cash and not deliverying working product. still they are making silly as fuck bugs and they charge for repairing it.

so paying more does not mean getting better service. It may also mean getting scammed.

"expect to pay you your asking rate"
Dude. You can't just shout out a random number and expect everyone to give it to you.
Capitalism dawg... supply and demand... price discovery...

@Froot by asking rate, I’m referring to when you get to your “walk away” rate in negotiations and they’re still trying to lowball you and treating you like you’re not all that essential because they can do it themselves with Wix or Squarespace. Of course, nobody wants to do business with people like that but this article is meant to convey the message that just because you have a project dangling in front of us doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk about paying us a living wage.

I usually just make the point that there are people who value my time and, if you can't derive equivalent value from our potential relationship, there's no future to it.

Value is mutually created. If their ambition is that low, then I'm unlikely to be able to provide the value I can provide to a client with loftier goals.

Hence, I only work with clients who value what I can bring to the relationship. If they start questioning rates---as opposed to clarifying---then I politely decline the work.

Sometimes they come back to you after a bad experience with a cheaper supplier. I don't judge---we all have to learn. But, clearly, in those cases, rates are rarely refused.

It's hard to price labor in our business. So, you *can* often choose your number---as long as it's not stupid.

Also, if you restrict your work to major banks and such like, you are unlikely to give them sticker shock. I have a client who runs freight ships around the global. My invoice is always loose change.

@stackodev well, as I understand it, you should measure the work, give your price, do some negotiation and if it doesn't work out, walk away.

Unless of course that means you walking away from all your gigs. In that case you've got a pricing problem

@platypus ye I once did freelance for a large insurance Corp and had a similar experience