Web design: How much work upfront?

50% upfront before you do any work is standard. Working on Spec. as a designer is really killing the industry. Make sure you get 50% upfront before you do any work or else you will find yourself in a bad position with no leverage. A lot of times it will seem like that client is really really interested and then you do half of the work expecting to get paid when you show them mock-ups and they start asking for revisions and changes and before you know it you did way more work than you originally anticipated and you still haven't been paid. Or even worse you do the work and they just say no we don't like it we're going to go somewhere else. Don't feel intimidated just because you are freelance. Agencys would be charging 50% upfront and charging you out at 5X the hourly rate.

Money upfront always........... in my opinion........

If you were in a design firm and the client was a client of the firm that did business all the time, I could see doing what they are asking for, but as a freelancer, your portfolio should be enough........

Again that's my opinion, and what I would do, because if you do not take money upfront non-refundable money, then you have a high chance of getting stuck doing work for nothing or getting lots of extra work than what was agreed upon, because from my experiece, people who order websites, or sales pages, or even minisites many times do not know what they want, and change their minds lots..........

For me personally if a job is under $500 I always ask for payment up front. As Steve said, the trouble with doing things any other way is you can't ever get your time back once you have outlaid it, so you need to have that security as an absolute rule.

As a professional who is selling their time for money, you also need the most efficient billing processes, and that is without doubt handling everything up front. As long as you have a very clear and agreed scope, you'll find that serious clients never have an issue with this approach.

The other option I take occasionally if a job is over $500 is offering the client the option to split the job into parts, but each part is still paid for up front. So for example, the client might order the design for 50% of the overall quote. Then when that is complete they can order the coding for the other 50% of the amount.

With this approach both the client and yourself are protected and can feel safe to proceed with the job. So if your client does agree to pay 50% it should be based on a milestone that signifies you have completed half of the project. Then, when they are happy with that portion of the work, they can green light you to complete the project and pay you for the remaining work.

Just as a side note regarding wireframes, mockups and so on, I have personally found over the years that it is actually more efficient to get as much done as possible before showing anything to a client. The reason is that it can be difficult for a client (who is typically not design minded hence hiring you) to look at a wireframe or mockup and imagine the finished project.

Whereas if you show them something more complete they find it easier to give specific feedback, and you can handle any revisions in a clean sweep from there. Even though more work has already done, I find that the overall time taken ends up being less because it's so much easier for the client when they can actually see what they're dealing with.

More often than not will actually be happy with your design as is. Of course this depends on having a refined and thorough scoping process on which to base your designs, to make sure you are aware of everything your client is looking for.

You really need to give a lot of effort in creating web designs, because web designing is not that easy, you need concentration for you to able to use creativity in a mild way and simplest way.

Web designing done through HTML is old now, we can do it through using software like dream weaver etc which is just drag and drop, no need of writing codes

Well, I totally agree on the comments. You can use dreamweaver now. But then if you don't have dreamweaver, memorize the html or download it.

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Mike @ Utah SEO

Thank you all for your help. It's great to know that I am doing things the correct way.

Have have already completed work while splitting up the fees between design/ development stages etc as well as the down payment. On this occasion however, having been asked to 'pitch', threw me a little as I had never encountered that before. I fully intend to have a fully transparent and honest service with anyone of my clients, therefore I will always be in a position to call the shots.

I intend to do a very 'brief' but professional proposal for them while supplying a full estimate with my T&C for them to chew over. I will then leave it there and wait for them to pay up before I do anything more.

Yes, upfront is all the time a Good approach.You can even suggest Milestones - like 30% upfront, 30% in the middle etc...

Get the money first whether it is 50% or whatever..if only you get the money both of them will get into commitment and complete the work successfully and perfectly.