Charging for hosting

[jamesmartin33]

I often do jobs for clients that involve some post-support once contract is closed. An example might be a simple webscraper than automatically runs say twice a day and consumes maybe 60 seconds of computer time.

Now a client is provided with the source code (he paid for it) and I often find them wanting to rent a $5 VPS just to run this code. It's a waste of money for them, and it's a waste of resourcses and something else for them to worry about. For me it's easy to manage and a nice profit whilst I sleep if I can run 100 such servies at $3 each on one $5 VPS machine I pay for.

Nowadays I often offer free hosting for 3 months of such code on my own VPS so client doesn't need to worry about anything, at least for 3 months and it is great to help win contract.

I am well aware that payments cannot be made off of Upwork so my question is:-

What do I do after 3 months? I don't want to charge them say $3 a month and have a load of $3 contracts appearing on my profile.

I could charge them year-in-advance ($36) but then I'd probably be stuck with contracts open for 12 months before feedback.

I could do hourly I guess with one hour a month, but $3 and hour again looks bad on my profile.

So what is the right way to do this without breaching Upwork T&C?

Thanks

[petra_r]

Contracts that run as a weekly salary of $ 1.00 per week or whatever maybe? (Hourly contract, weekly limit set to 0 hours, weekly salary set as appropriate) Sure, you'll then have loads of open contracts, but does it matter? Clients having to proactively make monthly payments sounds tiresome. It also gives them a monthly excuse to cancel.

[jamesmartin33]

Nice idea, still involves lots of pollution either with my jobs interface or wherever, or on clients side.

Upwork could for sure create some sort of recurring payments section, specifically for this type of thing so they can still get their cut of the pie.... with a API I can access to see who has paid and automatically turn off servide those who don't. No feedback either side. Say it could limit the amounts to something like $10/month. If client doesn't like service he turns it off. It somethig big comes along (e.g. service stops working as website being scraped changes - then that's a new contract). Also helps determined when contract work has ended, as for instance I could end a contract, get great feedback and give customer 3 months of free "rental" using this interface.

The basic idea is I want to do as little work as possible managing this, so does client. And I really wouldn't want any of it polluting my profile (except for those nice earnings reports of course!).

[NikolaS · Accepted solution]

Hi James,

Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback. I will share your report with our team. 

Thank you,

[jamesmartin33]

Now this is the sort of reply I wanted to see. Human beings are going to look into it, as I do think somewhere in there that there is quite a smart/useful idea 😄 Thanks.

3 things I think are important:-

1) No feedback given/rewarded, no effect to JSS score. Association of this monthly option to a job that has been closed - i.e. whilst job still open you are charging such costs to the job directly.

2) Clients satisfaction of the service is his continued payment. Client can cancel at any time.

3) No price changes and no cancellation by freelancer during term of contract (expected 3/6/9/12 months).

Remember if my idea gets implemented I am expecting for free 1,337 job application credits 😛

[prestonhunter]

James:
I can assure you that this is not part of Upwork's thinking, and you will receive no useful information from Upwork itself. Upwork is not going to implement specifc user interface elements or changes to its standard contract models so that freelancers can bill for hosting services.

You may bill for hosting services any way you want to using Upwork's current user interface and contract models, as long as you do not violate any Upwork rules.

[jamesmartin33]

!RemindMe 12 months

[7c80a8fc]

Guessing this never happened then...? I have the same issue for hosting client's websites for them.

[prestonhunter]

re: "Guessing this never happened then...? I have the same issue for hosting client's websites for them."

Of course not.

It has not happened, and it never will happen.

Nor is it necessary.

As an Upwork freelancer, I provide hosting for most of my clients.

I do NOT need Upwork to make any changes in order to facilitate this.

[14165d8d]

Hey I'm shabir Ahmad from Pakistan. I'm freelancer I can content writing copy paste data entry jobs copy write .

[rmeske]

I am interested in what the outcome was for this.  If part of the contract is to recommend a hosting provider how does that fit in?  If a freelancer recommends a client setup their website on say GoDaddy, are they suppose to tell the client they will have to pay a fee to Upwork in addition to GoDaddy for that hosting?

[prestonhunter]

Ronald:
Just eat the cost.

Or help the client set himself and his own credit card as the payer for the hosting account.

[rmeske]

Helping the client setup the service and pay for it themselves, is the approach I have been using.  However, when it first came up with a client and I reached out to Upwork because their policy was not clear on it, their response was all payments need to go through the platform and will be charged the fee.  My take on the response was, if the client is paying directly for a service directly that Upwork does not offer and I am not receiving any compensation directly from the client, then it does not violate any Upwork policy.

However, I think it would be best if Upwork would address this type of situation clearly in their policies.

Best,

Ron