Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

Is it rude to ask a client to sign a contract and pay you some money before you do any work for him or her?
Hmm. Some freelancers seem to think so. They rush headlong into client relationships without even the promise of a kiss, then sometimes end up being jilted and cheated of what we all work for: money.

To those timid freelance graphic designers or writers, I ask, is it rude for Time Warner Cable to ask you to sign a contract? Or a remodeling contractor to have you sign off on an estimate before he gets to work? Of course not! That’s bidness, y’all.

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."—Yogi Berra

If you’re a freelancer who is scared stupid to ask a client to sign on the line with you for fear you’ll lose him or her, I have three words of advice: Get Over It. Someone who won’t agree to sign onto normal terms of payment is someone who doesn’t see paying you as an absolute necessity. You don’t want a shaky or shady client anyhow, do you?

We freelancers constantly have to remind ourselves that we are a business. And any business requires a contract that cements a legal bond between them and their clients. It should help both parties feel safe, because you’ve agreed on the rules in writing. And freelancers should feel particularly safe, because in most jurisdictions, a written contract is considered binding, even if it isn’t too fancy.

In 10 years of freelancing, I never had a contract. Or let’s say, I never had one I could get clients to sign. I think there are two reasons why.

1. I didn’t project confidence in asking them to sign it.
I felt embarrassed to ask for them to agree to pay me money, a common freelancer disorder. The vaccine against it is a hard look at your income and outgo every month. If the first is smaller than the second, then screw your courage to the sticking point and ask for the signature and some upfront money. Because your time and effort are worthy of recompense.

2. They were not financially stable, so they weren’t sure they could honor it.
They were the wrong clients. You have to kiss some froggy, financially strapped clients before you find the princes and princesses… but heck, you don’t have to go steady with them. Why waste time you could be spending on clients who will sign a contract with you?

Now I have an Engagement Agreement, a one-page document that sets out my terms. It deals with how I will bill the client, how much per hour, what constitutes billable activity, what happens if they don’t pay within 30 days (a 1.5% daily add-on or being strapped down and forced to listen to indie hip-hop 24/7 until they pay–just kidding!), and so on. My last two new clients have signed it and paid me the deposit I requested, too. Will wonders never cease.

Please, no more! I'll pay you double!

If you decide to work a tightrope without a net, okay and good luck. It worked for me nearly all the time (except for the solid year I dunned a client for a measly $400). But there will be times when you’ll wish you’d had one.

And if you’re a client who’s on the up-and-up, you absolutely should expect to sign a contract with your freelancer. It prevents misunderstandings that can ruin a nice relationship.

To contract or not to contract? I say, “Contract.”

Here’s a great article about how to keep them awake, involved and interested.

Of course, the Internets (that series of tubes) have made blogging ridiculously easy for millions of bloggers around the globe. That’s what’s new about communicating your thoughts to a large audience, sometimes with the intention of selling them on an idea, a product or a service. What’s old about it is the tradition of communicating with purpose.

Blogging began unauspiciously, with a few isolated souls pouring out their hearts and/or minds in what could loosely be termed “columns” for the enjoyment of themselves and their friends. Suddenly, you didn’t have to get into a newspaper or magazine to have your thoughts blasted out to the world. Wow! The power!

Then, via Blogger, WordPress and TypePad, blogging exploded into a major enterprise. I say enterprise because people began to realize that instead of blogging about “What My Cat Told Me Today,” they could blog about ideas, products or services they could sell. Conservative, progressive, retail, wholesale, IT-oriented and other blogs abound today. Conversations with strangers take place via comments on blogs. Amazing.

Is it all so new, or was there a long tradition of blogging, before the word was invented? Hm.

Take a look at the cave pictures at Lescaux. Why would people 17,000 years ago draw pictures of bison on cave walls? Daniel Quinn, in The Story of B, hypothesizes that the paintings were instructional in nature, created in order to communicate successful hunting strategies. That sounds kinda modern, doesn’t it? Like a blog or a PowerPoint.

How about P. T. Barnum’s postings of the progress of Jumbo the Elephant toward the next town where he’d be appearing? Isn’t that pre-Internet blogging? Of course, meant to whip up excitement about seeing this exotic animal from afar when he finally arrived. Don’t blogs sometimes do that? “Be sure to sign up for our (whatever) Webinar next week! Secrets of successful blogging will be revealed — From the King of Blogs himself!”

Seems to me the new wrinkle is the ability to communicate via Web. But blogs, tweets and other messages are just a newer version of cave painting. Or any other messages distributed widely for a purpose. Hey, even Paul Revere had a message, and he wouldn’t have had to race from place to place on a horse to deliver it if he’d had the Web!

Well, I hope all two of you who read my blog posts have a very happy Thanksgiving and that you take time to express gratitude for all the people, things and events of your life. I surely intend to.

I know I said to blog as often as humanly possible. That’s true. If you want higher Google rankings, you gotta blog your little heart out. And I haven’t been doing it. My bad.

But I can explain…

I’m getting my house ready to sell. There are painters, stainers, decorators, handymen and all manner of tradesmen running around my house, and I’m running to Home Depot, Lowe’s or Wal-Mart every day to get paint, blue tape and other redecorating essentials. So I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, as far as the blog world is concerned.

With any luck, this chaos will end within 10 days or so. So I’ll be able to return to regular blogging and living like a normal person.

Oh, wait. Living in a staged house is nothing like living normally. No wastebaskets or clocks, no free surfaces on which to place anything.

Well, as Arnold once said, I’ll be back. I just don’t know exactly when. For now, adios.

It always makes me feel warm and safe when I send out invoices at the end of the month or at the end of a project. But I get a cold chill when I realize that most clients don’t pay me for another month.

Is there a way around this time-lag between billing and receiving the money?

Some smaller clients who have control of their checkbooks will write a check sooner. But big companies with Accounts Payable people seem to drag their big corporate feet. Either that, or it takes that long to go through the maze of corporate bookkeeping.

The bills I get are due within a week or two. Like for utilities, insurance, mortgage payments and other things. At the Quik-Trip, it’s pay right then or go home hungry. So why do big companies get the big breaks?

If anybody has devised a system for being paid sooner than 30 days later, please share.

Y’see, I have an interest-bearing checking account. And for every day my receivables are delayed, I’m forfeiting interest! Actually losing money! So what should I do, charge clients my unearned interest for 30 days?

What do you do? I’d really love to know.

Weird unrelenting Arctic weather, weird and disquieting disconnect between the ever-rising Dow and the still-stagnant economy, and personally, weird since I’m not working in my home office as usual, but working on-site on some client projects.

I hate being away from the animals, but I enjoy the toasty warmth of the company cubicle, versus the drafty cold of my office.

I’m still open for new projects… so if you need writing help, be sure to call.

Brrrr.

Someone once asked local jazz great Bobby Watson why he was playing a gig for so little money. Watson replied, “Because you’re either appearing or disappearing.”

Sax man Bobby Watson

That’s a sobering thought. And it’s a great reason for doing pro bono projects between the paying ones. So last week, I wrote and disseminated news releases for two organizations I belong to (which also involved updating my media list because of all the newspaper staff layoffs). And recently, I submitted the winning entry in the informal “rename the Freebe Awards” (former name of the Freelance Exchange of Kansas City’s annual awards) contest and wrote copy for the call for entries and the event invitation. My designer friend, Laurie Chipman, did a literally cool design for both ICE Awards show pieces featuring a penguin illustration that just makes me smile. Especially because it’s a neat piece for my portfolio. You can take a look at the invite here.

Doing pro bono projects can be fun and can keep you from going nuts while waiting for paying jobs. It also helps out good causes, gets you together with people you like (usually), and makes you feel useful. Finally, when you do any kind of project, you’re out there “appearing,” not disappearing.

Today, I did some paying work, and that’s a good thing, too. So I don’t see my bank balance disappearing…