reynoldswriting.com Blog

Money is a favorite topic among freelancers — partly because we don’t always receive it when we’re supposed to.

I’ve been pretty lucky. In 12-plus years as a freelance copywriter, I’ve only been jilted a handful of times. But those few times gnawed away at me like you wouldn’t believe, far more so than the dollar amounts should have merited. They not only put me in a financial pinch, they assaulted my self-confidence, not just as a writer but as a business owner. “What, you can’t even get paid for work performed? How do you expect to keep this business going? Oh, and by the way, the rent’s due next week, Captain Successful.” Et cetera.

About three years ago, this problem went away. I willed it away, by making one very simple but powerful change to my freelancing business.

I began insisting on full payment in advance.

I liken my writing business to a vending machine. Money goes in, writing comes out. Or I use the retail store example. Try saying to a supermarket cashier, “I know this candy bar costs a dollar, but I’ll give you 50 cents now, and if I enjoy the candy I’ll come back and give you the other 50 cents after I’m done eating.”

Many freelancers still follow the traditional process of requesting an initial deposit upfront with the remainder due “on completion.” And many of them are sorely tried by the clients’ definition of “completion,” especially if weeks or even months elapse between draft submittal and response — and this does happen, especially when dealing with bigger companies. Of course, if you’re writing for a humongous Fortune 500 client, you’re at the mercy of a massive accounting department with its own rules for paying contractors, so you may have to play the game in those instances. But even small business owners can get too bogged down in their own work to give a timely response. In a few rare cases, they may decide to pull a powder once they have a usable first draft. Where’s your “completion” money then?

I even made the mistake once — ONCE — of writing “on spec” for a client who agreed to pay for several small jobs in one lump sum at the end of the project. I sent all the drafts. I asked for feedback. None came. Finally I had no choice but to ask for payment — and then, of course, I heard back from him right away, protesting that I still had second drafts to write and so forth. I agreed to meet with him and discuss the changes he wanted. He no-showed the meeting. Guess whether or not I ever saw a dime for my many hours of work.

I complained about this to my friend and colleague Tweed Scott, a noted author and motivational speaker, who gave me the best advice I could have received under the circumstances: “Go home and write down all the things you’d do differently now, based on what you’ve learned, and consider the lost money an education fee.”

Well, that’s exactly what I did; no more spec assignments. But I still found some frustration with the payment-installment model. The initial payment would always make its appearance on schedule, but then waiting for the final payment felt about as effective as fishing in an empty lake. Sometimes when the money finally arrived I would scowl at it and say “Where were you when I needed you?”

That’s one of the problems with allowing multiple payments — you can’t budget effectively if you don’t know how much money is due in any given month. Accounting becomes a nightmare. Also, you don’t have time to play bill collector. If you’re like me, your billable time is hugely valuable to you, and you must spend it on income-generating activities. Chasing down money you’ve already earned does not, and cannot, bring you any new clients, jobs, or money, so don’t waste precious time on it.

But what about really large jobs that have to be multi-staged? Well, that’s fine — batch the job out. Accept the portion of the total fee that covers a particular chunk of work, get paid, and then do that chunk of work. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the entire project is finished. If at any point the project gets scrapped, you’ve still gotten paid for work performed, and the client hasn’t paid for any writing not done. Everybody wins.

But for small to mid-sized jobs, I feel that any client sane enough to budget for marketing should be ready to spend the full amount when it’s time to start the project, even if that means delaying the start date in question. If the client doesn’t have the funding firmly in place, how good an idea is it for you to start writing — or, for that matter, for the client to start spending? Both parties are better served by waiting until the timing is right.

Just a little advice to help you ensure that your writing business isn’t all writing and no business.