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Dealing with Deadbeat Clients

From Tom Richmond’s MAD Blog comes an article on dealing with deadbeat clients:

Making a living as a freelancer is hard enough when you are only worrying about marketing yourself, finding new clients and pursuing and securing new jobs and projects… let alone when you may run across the occasional problem of doing jobs for clients that take a long time to pay, or never pay.

  • http://www.easydaylabs.com/ Adida Fallen Angel

    I couldn’t agree with you more my dear artistic friend. Since I started my little business I find myself dealing with the struggle of so called ‘making it’ and barley able to pay my bills. It’s true that the experience we get from making great artworks for little or no money improves our skills and abilities to work faster and sharper but god knows I would love to let go of all those worries that comes on a daily basis…Imaging how much more work we could accomplish and the peace of mind we will have then…

  • http://www.easydaylabs.com Adida Fallen Angel

    I couldn’t agree with you more my dear artistic friend. Since I started my little business I find myself dealing with the struggle of so called ‘making it’ and barley able to pay my bills. It’s true that the experience we get from making great artworks for little or no money improves our skills and abilities to work faster and sharper but god knows I would love to let go of all those worries that comes on a daily basis…Imaging how much more work we could accomplish and the peace of mind we will have then…

  • http://www.storytellersworkshop.com/ Ted Slampyak

    I have to admit, I’ve been very, very lucky on this front. In 20 years as a freelancer, most of that full-time, I’ve seldom had clients that wouldn’t pay on time, and I can’t remember a client that didn’t eventually pay up. Mind you, that sometimes took quite a bit of coaxing on my part, but I did get paid, and without burning bridges — in most cases.

    I had one new client recently who wanted to hire me for a rather large storyboard job — a job that would take up a weeks’ worth of my time. As the article mentions, working with new clients can be risky — especially with larger jobs. I asked for an advance, and that afternoon he’d paid me 1/4 upfront through PayPal. We got on splendidly after that!

  • http://www.storytellersworkshop.com Ted Slampyak

    I have to admit, I’ve been very, very lucky on this front. In 20 years as a freelancer, most of that full-time, I’ve seldom had clients that wouldn’t pay on time, and I can’t remember a client that didn’t eventually pay up. Mind you, that sometimes took quite a bit of coaxing on my part, but I did get paid, and without burning bridges — in most cases.

    I had one new client recently who wanted to hire me for a rather large storyboard job — a job that would take up a weeks’ worth of my time. As the article mentions, working with new clients can be risky — especially with larger jobs. I asked for an advance, and that afternoon he’d paid me 1/4 upfront through PayPal. We got on splendidly after that!