One of the depressing things in life is doing freelance work and not getting paid for it. A couple of years ago, this happened to me. I worked with a client who paid every two weeks for work I had already done. Then, after more than a year, this client had some sort of issue. I never really knew what the issue was. All I know is that I didn’t get paid. I tried to contact the client, and couldn’t, so a week into the second half of the month, I stopped writing. He contacted me and assured me that the missing payment was glitch, and that he would pay me for the entire month at once. Like an idiot, I believe him and started writing again.

Well, I ended up losing out on $2,000 all said and done when I stopped listening to the talk and started paying attention to the walk. I thought that, because he had been a good client for more than a year, there wouldn’t be any problems. (And this was before the financial crisis and recession.) So I changed my freelance work payment policy. For large clients, I require payment at the beginning of the month for ongoing work, and for one-time projects, I ask for half up front. This way, I get something for my efforts. I only make exceptions for a couple of well-known companies that are reputable and pay quite well.

Christina Lemmey from Sparkplugging offers 4 tips that can help you avoid payment problems when engaging in freelance work:

1. Develop and stick with a payment policy

2. Discuss your payment policy with each client

3. Consider instituting a late payment fee

4. Develop a collections plan for when clients don’t pay

I find that PayPal works well, since you can get payment faster. After all, sometimes the check really isn’t in the mail.