Over the past couple of years I've bought quite a number of services from people in the vB community. Most of the experiences have been good but some not so well. Since most of the people here at TF are offering services here are some pointers on how to NOT get my business and, most likely, from others as well who often use freelancers.
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Send me unsolicited PMs, eMails, or use the Contact Us option on one of my sites. I enjoy doing nothing more than a deluge of unsolicited offers in my inbox from people that I've never had contact with before.
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Forget what you've already sold me. It's fun finding out that the design you sold me full rights to in the past is now being offered to somebody else because you forgot that you already sold that particular design.
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Over hype your offering. When I'm browsing the various For Sale forums you can be sure that I'll click first on those descriptions that describe your design as "Amazing!" or "Incredible!" or some other non-descriptive term. Afterall, if I'm in the market for picking up a vBulletin style why would I click on a thread titled "[For Sale] Christmas vBulletin Style (Coded)" when instead I could waste my time with a thread titled "Amazing vBulletin skin!!!!" instead, right? Guess which thread usually has the better design.
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Offer an incomplete design. Using vBulletin styles again, it's always fun to spend time checking out designs that aren't complete. A square box with no status icons, no buttons, and no postbit doesn't exactly count as a vB design. But, hey, it's got a nifty header!
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Try to start a fake bidding war. The vB style community is pretty small and through one form or another most of us end up communicating with each other. So when you're negotiating with me on the price of a design I enjoy your attempts at trying to raise the price by saying John/Jane Doe at SomeSite.com is offering more for it when, in fact, I know that they are not.
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Break your own deadlines. After we negotiate the terms of the agreement and if you need to do additional work then I don't mind at all when the deadline that you specified comes and goes without you mentioning anything. Really, I don't mind at all. Who cares if I may have had other resources, perhaps a coder, allocated for a certain date based upon the deadline you told me and now that schedule is completely blown.
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Don't communicate with me after the work is started. Life's a challenge, right? So it's a fun little game to try to get you to respond to my emails, PMs, or IMs after you've accepted a down payment on a project but don't provide me with any status information or get my input.
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Sub-contract your work without telling me. Wow, so we just agreed on a several hundred dollar project based upon
your portfolio and the agreement was made with you but I find out that because you didn't have time you thought it was no big deal to outsource the project to somebody else. Somebody whose work pales in comparison to yours. Somebody whose work I'm not happy with. Neato!
(Sorry for this rant today. After clearing out my inbox again today I had to vent.
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