How do you know when to charge people for your assistance and when to do it for free? This is something I struggle with every day. A lot of people email me or tweet at me asking for help and I LOVE helping them. They want to know how to do x on their blog, or how to fix y, or how to change this colour, or HELP I’M LOCKED OUT OF MY BLOG WHAT DO I DO?!?!
Most of the time, the things people ask me for are super quick, so I just do them for free. But even simple, quick things can add up. If 20 people start asking me for something that takes 5 minutes each, suddenly there’s over 1.5 hours of my time. I know that after a certain point I need to start charging for help, but sometimes I feel really bad about it, particularly when it’s not just an aesthetic/design thing and is actually a huge deal. Like if someone can’t access their blog at all and doesn’t know what the problem is and comes running to me for help. I’d love to help them, but unless I immediately know the answer, I’d have to spend my time digging around their blog to find the problem. What if it takes me an hour? Can I really keep doing stuff like this for free?
I guess I just hate the idea of someone coming crying to me because they can’t get into their site and me saying, “I’ll help you but you have to pay me! MUAHAHHA! Obviously it wouldn’t quite go down like that, but that’s how it sounds in my head.
It’s hard to know where to draw the line
As I said, I do love helping people. I just struggle with where to draw the line. I don’t want to charge everyone for every little thing, but at the same time, I do have to be mindful of my time. For some reason I just hate the thought of telling someone they have to pay me in order to get help.. that’s kind of silly of me though, isn’t it? I mean, surely it’s not that big of a deal, right? Would those people think I’m being greedy or unfair, or would they understand?
If I was asking someone who did not work for my web host, help to figure out how I’d gotten locked out and how to fix that? I would totally expect to have to pay for their time. It isn’t their job to help me fix a mistake that is most likely my fault somehow.
After working in retail for 17 years, I unfortunately understand that there are a great many people who would expect that help for free. Doesn’t make them right, but I can see it happening.
As for tiny bits of code help, if it’s a quick answer that you don’t have to go looking for. That’s one thing. But then you have to watch out in case that person decides that ‘hey, she helped me before, I’ll just keep asking for more and more things!’
I would think that if it’s more than a quick ‘hey how do I do this?’, or something that would take you actual time to write out the code and explain, that it would cost something. How much? I have no idea. *laughs* But I wouldn’t expect to get more than one or two really easy questions done for free, from someone who does coding and design for a living. A good friend or family member might be talked into freebies, but a random stranger? Not likely.
Yeah I’ve had a few people just continuously email me with questions and I finally had to put my foot down and say I had to start charging.
One thing that does actually annoy me is this scenario:
A person approaches me about something (let’s say moving from Blogger to WordPress). I tell them they can hire me to do it for $x, or if they want to do it themselves I have a tutorial they can follow (and I provide a link). Then they proceed to ask me about 50 questions about the process, to the point where I’m practically doing it for them anyway but they don’t want to pay for it.
Either they pay me to do it for them, or they do it on their own. They shouldn’t try to weasel into some kind of middle ground, it’s not really fair to me. 🙁
I’m always grateful for your help, Ashley! I tend to ask idiotic questions :p But yeah, I understand from your POV. For me, I’d totally understand. You’re not greedy or unfair, so don’t overthink it!