Unfortunately, Amanda's story is a common one. It is often very tempting to take a job for a family member, after all, you see them all the time, they're family! The problem is that they are thinking the exact same thing as they ask you to make "just one more simple change" without having paid you a dime. After all, they're doing you a favor, they're telling themselves.
The second mistake Amanda made was to not invoice for the second October job. You can't very well expect a client to pay you if you don't tell them how much they owe.
I have a recurring web design horror story. 2 years ago in October, I accepted a "job" to do a website for my step-sister. The site was highly stylized loaded with fantastic custom graphics, framed in with dual menus on the nav and content sides, an opening java water applet over a beautiful entry picture and simple e-commerce accepting PayPal or checks/money orders. Step-sis' business was a brand new concept for her and she really did not know what she was selling (service) and how much or what way to charge so this lead to drastic changes regularly. Like any customer fitting this profile, she wanted her site done yesterday and started to become demanding - although she had not paid me a penny - not even paid for the domain name! She actually called the registrar and convinced them to put the domain into HER NAME! She effectively STOLE the domain along with the content until I could redirect it, even so, Google caches it and it is available forever. She then hired a "real" ! designer who took my design and her now more congealed ideas and put them on the domain name I paid for! About 50 pages...
Last year in October, I did a beautiful quote for a church that included custom Flash design and was done in fantastic 3 column CSS that I learned here. I added some dynamic menus, both top and side, and it was truly beautiful. They went with someone else. I was to be paid for the quote, but could not bring myself to invoice for it and did not know really how to charge for that since I had done all of the actual work. About 25 pages and very long and involved CSS dhtml javascript dynamic menus, plus the custom Flash design.
I have never been paid for either October job.
This year, I think I will avoid accepting jobs in October! I am unhappy in my day job and need to be in something more technical or say...web design!
