I wish I could impress upon clients the importance of sending your shit on time and paying on time. As a freelancer, and you probably already know this, there is a date by which a client’s money is worth $0, and that date is as soon as you realize that they’re money won’t cover X bill. I have two clients that are regularly late. I literally have these two clients listed on a calendar with the dates they must have their articles to me, and the dates by which they MUST pay. If they miss those dates, I mentally write off the money and start re-earning it. I don’t know if they think they’re being cute by creating drama or think they’re holding this money over my head because if I’m desperate I’ll do their shit faster. It’s the exact opposite.
If You Don’t Send Your Shit on Time, You Get Back-Burnered.
Here’s the deal, if I don’t have your articles or blog posts on time, meaning I can get them done before X date and get paid before X bill is due, you’re going to get back-burnered. This is because I now have to do the clients that I know will pay before X date. Even if you send me the articles between the “I MUST” have them NOW, and the I NEED TO PAY X BILL, they’re not getting done. Your money or whatever those articles are worth is $0. They’re not worth anything to me because they’re not going to pay the bill that they were meant for, and I am busy re-earning the money you’re not paying. You will get them by your due date, but I am going to re-earn that money before I even touch yours because I’m busy making damned sure that I don’t need your money.
Your Late Money Is Useless to Me
If a client is late paying, there’s a good chance that the money is now useless. Whatever the amount is, it’s useless. The dollars are now worth nothing to me. I don’t care what the amount is. A million dollars owed is jack shit if it never materializes. The money that I seem to be owed at the end of every month is crap if I can’t pay rent with it, if I can’t pay my cell phone, if I can’t pay my Internet, if I can’t buy groceries. It doesn’t do me any good to be owed money that arrives 5 days after rent is due. Let me explain that for those who don’t know. If you miss rent, the next day, you get a 3 days to quit and a pretty hefty add-on fee because you didn’t have the full amount of rent in the first place. Yeah, makes sense to me too. So now, you owe rent + the fee. If you can’t pay it within 3 days, which is 4 days after rent was due, they’ll start tacking on legal fees because that also makes sense. Tack a few more hundred dollars onto that shit that they didn’t have the money for in the first place. Landlords are gonna burn in hell, but that’s the situation I get to look at.
So, let’s say a client owes me $1,200. My rent is $800. I need to pay rent, my cell phone and buy groceries. Once I do all that, I’ll have about $75 leftover, if I don’t go nuts on the groceries. Now, you’ve paid late. You’re 6 days late. Six days after my rent. So that $800 got a $50 late fee, then it got $200 in legal fees. That $800 rent is now $1050. Well, I can pay that inflated bullshit rent and my cell phone and that’s it. No groceries. No Internet. This is why when a client is late, the money is USELESS because in this scenario, I’ve wasted $250, and I have no Internet cause they shut that off. So, if you send your shit late and you pay late, you aren’t getting your shit anytime soon because I’m not going to let scummy, scammy, greedy greedy gimme gimme companies get even MORE of my money than they’re already overcharging me for!
Do your freelancers a favor and get your shit together. Get your articles sent out on time, and for God’s sake PAY on time. I even had someone ask me what I do when a client doesn't pay on time. I said - The best thing for me to do is mentally write it off and start re-earning it. I have to have my bills paid before I can think about doing anything else, because I can't do anything if I'm living under a bridge. and I'm even more pissed about it this month because I had a monitor take a crap. A full purchase of 2 brand new monitors and the adapters is $130. That's nothing, but it's something when you're re-earning money that should have been paid weeks ago. If you're a client, don't be THAT client that makes sure that your freelancer can't purchase the equipment they need or pay their bills on time. You're going to make yourself a liability real quick.
