I wish the customers at this part of the world (Malaysia) are sophisticated enough to accept the concept of "time & material". Most of them will refuse to pay if they are not satisfied with the work (in regardless of the completeness); and a partially completed work is of no value to a typical customer (especially non-IT customers).

Trust is a key issue, if we don't trust each other we are already in trouble. Trust goes both ways, so that is why I charge at the end of an iteration with no money advance at all.

Precisely. The biggest mistake newbie freelancers do is go for fixed prices projects and then allow feature creep.

If you are charging per iteration, feature creep is great! (joke,joke) The truth is that I do a lot of guiding for the customer to protect them from bad choices.

When requested to do something I think is wrong, a favorite response of mine is:

What you are asking me to do is like saying: "please hit my finger with a hammer". that said, it is your finger and your hammer , so I'll do what you decide.

So one week iterations with a showcase at the end?

Yes, and lots of communication with the customer so he/she knows exactly what they will be getting. (

Deliverables are usually a web based demo they can play with (and send feedback on) or a run of unit tests.

*setting up servers (git,jenkings,fitnesse,apache,mysql,etc are common deliverables too)

You would still have a scope, right? And I assume you would give the client a quote or approximate duration of the project, right?

What I usually do is say: Projects similar to what you are asking for, have taken me about xxx hours of work.. but our mileage may vary. If you don't like my progress the first week, you can always fire me.

Or.. for xx hours I can go as far as I can, then you can judge if it is worth it.

My rate is high, but I usually over deliver per hour worked, so it is a good deal for someone who has already wasted money with "cheap" developers.

The key is trust and communication, I do spend a lot of time talking with customers to make sure that we understand each other (I charge for talk time, texts are mostly free)

So are you collecting money up front?

Nope, I am asking customers to trust me on technical decisions, so I trust them to pay me on time.

The above said, I never start the next iteration till paypal says the money is there.