For those of you who, like me, are riding the range as independents/freelancers/business owners, I urge you to stick by your guns financially speaking. Case in point: I have (or maybe by now it’s had) a small client in late ’03 for whom I wrote a monthly HTML newsletter.
Good project, good profitability, etc. I got a signed contract and a down payment before beginning the first issue — really did all the right things.
The problem came later when I loosened up my contractual terms and began releasing finished issues without being paid first as my own contract stipulated. By the time of only the second issue it was becoming obvious that this client would be a slow payer. I continued nonetheless. By the third issue it was already too late to stand on principle. Bottom line: I’m out almost $5,000 right now and even after a recent heart to heart with the President of the company, don’t feel particularly confident that I will EVER see that money. Worse yet, I can never get back the time that I spent doing work for free. If that happens, I have nobody but myself to blame. Contracts and agreements exist for a reason. It isn’t
mean to enforce them. Just fair.
Dan Regan, Vice President, The Lightbulb Lab Inc., danregan@comcast.net
Good project, good profitability, etc. I got a signed contract and a down payment before beginning the first issue — really did all the right things.
The problem came later when I loosened up my contractual terms and began releasing finished issues without being paid first as my own contract stipulated. By the time of only the second issue it was becoming obvious that this client would be a slow payer. I continued nonetheless. By the third issue it was already too late to stand on principle. Bottom line: I’m out almost $5,000 right now and even after a recent heart to heart with the President of the company, don’t feel particularly confident that I will EVER see that money. Worse yet, I can never get back the time that I spent doing work for free. If that happens, I have nobody but myself to blame. Contracts and agreements exist for a reason. It isn’t
mean to enforce them. Just fair.
Dan Regan, Vice President, The Lightbulb Lab Inc., danregan@comcast.net
