rocannon

I run a small web app that makes a little bit of money through ads.

People commonly give the advice that you should ask your users for payments if you want to keep your web app alive.

I do not know if people will pay for this app, but recently, I decided that I would add some for-pay features to my app.

I mentioned my decision to a friend. He said "Aren't you concerned that accepting payments may open your site up to attackers or abuse?" I pressed him, but he couldn't come up with a reason for asking. This idea had not occurred to me.

So, I'm asking you, people of HN: is my friend just paranoid? Have you heard about something bad happening to a website or app after payments were added? Do you have experience with this problem, or was it never a problem for you?

I've been doing freelance work for a client for a few years on an hourly basis. Typically I charge for time spent behind the computer coding, and testing. Usually I would not charge for time reading emails and responding, but I've begun to notice that this time really adds up. Sometimes the client's emails are somewhat garbled, which does not help.

If I were charging per day, this would be less of an issue, but this client is not going to agree to that.

So this question is for freelancers who charge per hour: do you charge for time spent communicating with clients (email, slack, etc)?

I do charge for time spent with reporting or bug-tracking tools like JIRA... I've assumed this is the norm.