Although freelancing can allow you the flexibility to earn a full-time income and be home for your family, it is not without challenges. One of the major challenges is when clients do not pay for services, which can result in numerous hours of lost income. There are strategies to help reduce the number of clients who do not pay.

Set Respectable Rates

Spending time setting rates and displaying these rates on your website can circumvent some problems with non-payment. A common frustration of freelancers is clients who reach out to them only to feel their prices are too high or try to bargain for lower rates. When you set rates for your services, you are more likely to enforce your rates with prospective clients. With a little research, you can usually develop your rates based on what other people are charging for similar content, without selling yourself short. In some cases, having established rates may be a deterrence to a person who is either looking for cheap labor or had the intention of not paying at all.

Narrow The Scope

You need to narrow the scope of your work to minimize issues with non-payment or underpayment for your services. Many new freelancers underestimate the time it takes to complete a project or do not think about ways they lose money for their work. For example, the rates you set should include any revisions to the work. Unfortunately, you cannot anticipate a client who might be more picky or one that requests multiple revisions of your work as a justification to avoid payment. Narrowing the scope of your work to include one or two reasonable revision or no more than a specified amount of time doing research can prevent some of these issues.

Use Contracts

Contracts are important, even when you never meet clients face-to-face. Formulating a contract gives you the opportunity to have all the important information about the project and payment in written form. Fortunately, there are better ways to create a contract than to simply use word-processing software and email the contract to your client for review. There are electronic signature form creation apps which allow you to use your mobile device to develop documents and send them to the client for their virtual signature. This means you can create a contract from any device, even if you are away from home. If there are elements of the contract you need to change, you can simply make the changes before the client signs the document, with less time wasted sending a file back and forth.

Being a freelancer can be challenging, but the possibility of client non-payment can make the work even more erratic. Having a system in place to minimize issues may help you avoid lost income.