Is it normal, when taking up someone’s offer of help (in this case with some custom CSS that was done over email) to send that person money? Or, more precisely, for them to say, having helped you, “can you send me some money”?
I actually have no problem with this, in principle, but it does somewhat limit my ability to ask for help if it’s going to cost money all the time, as my shop is not really up & running & is not generating any money yet.
Are there any official guidelines for this?
There is no policy on this.
They can ask, you can refuse.
However, you may not know what they’ve done in your store, or may do after you refuse (if they have access, looks like not your case).
So, generally, always ask for conditions first, do not assume.
I, personally, feel that it’s wrong to ask for money afterwards if it was not agreed upon from the very beginning.
If I am going to do a paid work, I provide a quote first.
But that’s me.
Thanks. Like I say, it’s not really a problem in principal, apart from the fact that I currently have no money to give them right now & am also left wondering what’s a fair amount.
I’m sure it will all get sorted out in the fuullness of time.
Well, yes, that’s a #1 question 
And that’s a clue and trap most merchants ignore: If there is a value in doing it then there should be a dollar amount to go with that, what is the ROI.
"It takes money to make money"is a strong saying for a reason.
If no ROI why burn time your time or others on it.
If somethings so outside a merchants wheelhouse they can’t do it and also can’t compensate someone for their expertise then what’s the value of even doing it.
Why spend time on things that cost money to do properly.
This is also why the forums are becoming more of an AI slop fest.
It’s free to tell people what they want to hear as a sales pitch, rather than be clear honest and upfront in the first place.
“If somethings so outside a merchants wheelhouse they can’t do it and also can’t compensate someone for their expertise then what’s the value of even doing it.”
Well, you’re an expert & a long way removed from being in my position but that’s what this place is meant for, isn’t it? It’s free, It’s designed to help us & the reason for doing it is because most of us who are doing this for the first time don’t have a clue about the inner workings of an online store.
So what’s the value of doing it? To get a working on line store, of course! 
I came on here & asked a question.
It required some code & three peope offered their help alongside the other replies.
I picked one. They helped me. Then they asked if I could support them via Paypal.
In fairness to me, no one who has helped me prior to that or since has taken me of site or asked for money.
I was simply asking if that was normal.
Totally agree with this opinion. This is the kind of thing that hurts both Shopify Partners and Merchants.
And I think this opinion is entirely missing the whole point of this forum, which is getting help for free from those who are kind enough to give it.
Re-read the wheelhouse quote it has NOTHING to even do with shopify as an excuse.
It’s about prioritizing not spending your finite time or others time on this earth on unnecessary things by using the utterly simple business logic that people involved should be compensated.
Any other approach is just greed pretending to be other things to use feigned umbrage to facilitate further greed.
Forums are free to access and post in it is NOT the same as feeling entitled to others time for your personal business profit.
free is not the same as help, and help is not the same as work, ad nauseum.
When someone asks to have their entire site redesigned you think others should just do that for free, absurd.
This is an entrepreneurial space, you are not a charity, set reasonable expectations.
Maybe the forums need to be paygated or hardlinked to merchant accounts with posting limits for non-contributors. That would kill off 95% of the noise by first by shutting out the growing amount of sycophantic bots that are hard at work 24/7 reinforcing bad habits and false entitlements , if not outright delusions and misinformation.
Then secondly making merchants prioritize for everyone’s time before posting by chaining respect to money.
And with shopify starting moves to go up market and drop cheap merchants it could be a possibility, but being a publicly traded company they’d probably also kick everyone and turn it into another “AI” chatbot support instead.
When the value is in personally profiting why is it abnormal for others to be compensated for their time to make those profits possible.
Why did that person getting you to your goal have to give you a sales pitch after the fact.
Why do you think it is they couldn’t say a cost upfront or even the sale pitch upfront.
These are rhetorical business questions to sit in front of the mirror with.
Seen it a thousand times merchants train themselves to be unable to afford sanity and resent realities.
They get to X point and flop because everything should be “free” as they started with small enough things most of which can be found in the manual. Then end up ignoring business realities or just plain courtesy as they move to more and more complicated business problems that take expertise and time.
Spend money to make money and all that.
Here’s a fun exercise start going through really old posts and see which businesses are still around.
You’ll start to notice behavior patterns that go with failure, don’t repeat the patterns.
And for some reason when merchants do this they can’t even be bothered to go back and put in the minimal effort to mark the solution on most of their threads as even the tiniest show of respect for others time.
Or better do a full write up for future merchants and mark that as a solution so they are literally contributing back instead of one way value extraction, etc etc etc.
But it’s “Free” right so why bother, etc etc etc.
Not the first not the last to have a false expectation of everything being free , resentments when it’s not, and double downs when it’s laid out by those that know what’s going on.
It’s the merchants that can identify the “easy and free” marketing sentiments as absurd that are the survivors us experts are looking to save from the garbage heap of failed stores and bad expectations.
As those merchants go waay further by not get tripped up on simple ideas like paying people.
Literally re-read these posts, all this prose is not for the OP, they are for those who come long after looking for reason needing real value and know it when they see it.
You are being filtered out in multiple ways.
ESH, bad communication from parties on either side not being clear and upfront about compensation, or explicit lack of it.
Meta problem is most merchants have to be told what they want to hear as a lead in sales pitch even for the stuff they need done to make money instead of just being able to tell them a price and get it done.
A lot will literally resent the idea of compensation until after they are buttered up, it’s an absurd waste of time.
You only need to look at every ~3rd post of some merchant blindly following a bot post telling them what they want to hear because it’s “free” right, it’s not like there’s some hidden cost/consequence that goes hand in hand with conditioning oneself to have that behavior.
lol
Wow, Paul.
Firstly, my OP was about someone’s legitimacy in asking for money when it was never mentioned at the beginning. I also clearly pointed out that I have no problem with paying money. I was just checking that it was allowed & not against site rules or something.
Tim answered that question quite clearly & succinctly.
Secondly, the sole point of this site is to get help. As things stand, that doesn’t cost anything. That’s a fact. I’m not asking anyone to design my site. If I did I’d expect that to be very expensive. All I’m trying to is navigate the sometimes impenetrable Shopify interface to get my site working &, thankfully, poeple are prepared to help with that. Just knowing, where to look, what to tick or getting a bit of code here & there.
I don’t think anything I said was as big & bad as you’re making it out to be. Apologies if I missed a point along the way but if I did, it wasn’t a point I was making.
It’s interesting what you say about “blindly following a bot” as I’ve found that the AI helpers have enabled me to get a lot further without having to bother people on here!
Sad but true.