How do I get clients to pay for change requests?

I’d say that would depend on your original contract you had with the person. Did you have a contract or how was it originally stated on how/what work you’d do for this person? You could state that “for ”$xx.xx” price, a website will be made to suit your needs” and for each additional change ”$xx.xx” price will incure or fix it as it would fit to your busines.

It may be too late for this client. If you don’t have a clear contract, you’re probably going to have to make the choice between doing the work for free or losing the contract.

For future clients, have the scope and budget clearly nailed down, outline the process of approval for the specifications and then for the work, and include a fee for change requests after a certain point. Have this done before you do any work.

When you price a job, you need to discuss how many rounds of changes are incorporated into the estimate. You also need to evaluate if the client is just not a visual person, or are you misunderstanding his requests. Are you showing wireframes and page layouts in powerpoint first, or are you going ahead and doing the pages as if they’re a done deal?

You could tell him that you spent X hours on the original design and implementation, and you charged him Y by the hour, or if this was a flat fee or cost-plus show him what you actually earned for each hour spent on the project.

Then give him a small allowance of 5% or 10% of the original price and tell him that the after-the-fact charges are a courtesy to him but if he requests changes after that allowance is reached, the meter is ticking again. You also try to raise the hourly using the fact that the work of doing these changes is intermiitent and not part of a much larger project and consequently your rate must be higher.

If you give him a little wiggle room to make SOME changes, you are respecting the customer and accomodating him. But you must place a limit on this, otherwise you will be trying out this or that or something he saw on CNN or Fluther or Yahoo and you will be dragged into a no-profit situation.

As a matter of fact, if you do begin to charge for the overages, bill him for a block of time upfront and make sure it is paid within 10 days and before you spend any serious time on his project.

Just some thoughts.

And the posters above have given you excellent advice.

SRM

Also, bill him now if you haven’t been progress billing him.