Client Ghosting: My Journey Through Unpaid Projects
The freelance version of the dine and dash
Hi Friend,
Sit down, because I need to share a hard truth with you: you will come across clients who either don’t pay you or are slow to pay you. Very slow. Glaciers have moved down mountains in less time than it takes these companies to pay you. Cats are faster at deciding whether they want to go through an open door than these clients are at paying you.
You need to accept this as an inevitability. This is not to discourage you from freelancing but to prepare you, so you don’t blame yourself. It happens to all of us.
Some people are very good at making you believe they have only the best intentions.
“We totally meant to pay you but—and I don’t want to blame everything on this—but Y2K really messed with our computer systems and 20 years later, here we are. Don’t worry. We’ll pay you as soon as our computer systems are functional again,” is the sort of thing you might hear.
Or, “Your payment is on our list of priorities, but our CFO’s hamster just got sick and he’s like, really upset about it, and also his dad just declared bankruptcy and Mercury is in retrograde, so, you know, things are messed up. Definitely we’ll get that payment to you just as soon as his dog—I mean hamster—has recovered.”
To be clear, some clients might genuinely and through no fault of their own find themselves in a tough position financially.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, this is not your fault, it’s not your burden to bear, and it’s not your responsibility to go without financially because of their issues.
Let me repeat that, for the people in the back: You shouldn’t have to go without because a client hasn’t made arrangements to ensure you’re paid. If they want to hire you for something, it’s on them to make sure they can afford you.
It’s like eating out: It’s up to you to make sure you can afford that restaurant and have the funds to cover the drink and meal choices you make. If you can’t afford the restaurant you want, you go to a different one or you don’t eat out. Or you make a cheaper meal out of appetizers (which used to be a thing, but has anyone noticed the price of appetizers these days?!?). You don’t expect the restaurant to go without payment or cover you until you can pay them.
With that in mind, sit back, grab a coffee, tea or a martini—whatever your go-to drink is—and I’ll share with you stories of times I didn’t get paid (or I aged significantly before getting paid).
The magazine that published three issues
Early in my career I—along with a few freelancers—was hired to write regular articles for a local monthly magazine. We were listed in the masthead as staff writers. I won’t name the magazine because I don’t want a lawsuit, but it was a new magazine and the publisher was enthusiastic. She had a great idea, office space, and paid on time. At least she did at first.
She was supposed to pay around two weeks after publication, which she did for the first issue. We did our work for the second issue and received assignments for the third issue. But then we didn’t get paid for the second issue. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I did my work for the third issue, received my assignment for the fourth, and started working.
But I noticed she was getting slower to answer phone calls or respond to emails about payment for the second issue. She always had an excuse for why we hadn’t been paid—issues with the advertisers or the bank accounts or she had health problems.
So I emailed her and told her I wouldn’t be doing any work for the fourth issue until I was paid for the second. I was in contact with other staff writers at the time and I think (though I’m not 100% sure) we all agreed to do the same thing.
The magazine never published another issue—at least to my knowledge. She got slower and slower to answer follow-up emails about payment, and always had an excuse. Then the phone was disconnected. We never received payment for the second and third issues, but it also wasn’t enough money to go after in small claims court.
I don’t think she set out to get free labour from people. I suspect she just wasn’t great with managing a magazine’s budget and got in over her head. While I’m frustrated that we didn’t get paid for work that was done, I’m proud that early in my career I recognized the warning signs and stopped doing work when something felt off. Otherwise, I could have done a lot more unpaid labour.
The magazine that took a year to pay
More recently (but still a decade or so ago), I wrote some profiles for an oil magazine. I had been warned they were somewhat slow to pay, but were usually paying within 2-3 months, so I took a chance and did work for two or three issues. But 3 months turned into 4, and then 5. And then it was a year.
I continually followed up with the publisher and kept being told that my payment was coming, it was just taking a while. Other freelancers also got the same runaround and put the publisher on a list of organizations to not work for (which is a big deal—there’s a very real threat of litigation for doing this, which is why most freelancers don’t name clients they won’t work with. At least, not publically.)
I did finally get paid, a year later. Perhaps coincidentally (or maybe it was because of this), I had just sent an email to the publisher, again demanding payment. Two weeks later, the publisher wrote to apologize for the delay because she had “been on vacation.” I responded that I would love to go on vacation, but “as long as my clients aren’t paying me, I can’t afford to.”
I was paid shortly thereafter. It was nice to get paid, but it was a hollow victory.
The woman who kept giving opportunities instead of payment
A few years ago, I came into the sphere of a woman who ran a few businesses and said she needed help with writing for those businesses. At first, she paid me quickly for my work, but over time she started asking me to reduce my fees because she would give me opportunities, which is totally as good as being paid actual money for work. She’d introduce me to her friends who needed writing and get me published in magazines that would increase my profile.
She had tons of ideas for ways we could work together to mutually earn money, but none of them resulted in payment for me (I’m not saying she profitted off them, I don’t think she did either, but these ideas were meant to compensate me for my work and they never panned out). She constantly talked about how much she did to support other women, but then often badmouthed women who left her sphere as being ungrateful for her support.
Finally, she asked me again to not charge her for my monthly writing (after sharing with me that she’d recently bought and furnished a second home for her family—as in, they have two homes at the same time) I told her I was too busy and cut ties. I didn’t bother going after my last invoice as it was only a few hundred dollars and I preferred to not deal with her again.
They walk among us
You won’t see every bad client coming from a mile away because aren’t all truly evil. Sometimes they’re opportunistic—they’re in a tough spot and it’s easier to appeal to the freelancer than to the bank that holds their mortgage. They can put you off just a few days longer, so they do. And each time they do, it gets easier to extend the payment length a little more.
Sometimes they truly want to get free work out of you. With some practice you’ll see the red flags.
What can you do to lessen the risks of this?
Charge a deposit. For all work get money up front, either all of it or a significant portion. If you don’t get full payment upfront, set up milestone deadlines so them receiving the work depends on paying you first. Don’t give them a final version before they’ve made their final payment.
Keep your copyright (for writers). If you use a contract or letter of agreement that states the client owns the copyright to your work, include a clause that the copyright only switches to the client when they have paid you in full for the work you’ve done.
If you work on retainer, get paid at the start of the month before the work is done, rather than after. Get paid on May 1 for all work to be done in May.
Set reminders to yourself to follow up on unpaid invoices. Follow up with clients. You can be firm and polite at the same time. This won’t work on everyone, but for those who are just pushing you off until they can free up some money, your persistence will encourage action. If you send the first notice quickly enough, it can be a very friendly reminder, as there’s still a chance it’s slipped their mind.
“Hi Casey, Wanted to remind you that the final payment was due yesterday. I’m sure it slipped your mind. Let me know if you need me to re-send the invoice or if any important information was missing from it. Thanks!” works well on honest people who just got busy. And that legitimately does happen, to all of us.
If you’re doing retainer or monthly work, stop work when they miss a payment. You can always pick it back up once they’ve paid you. If you use milestone payments, stop work until they make up the missed payment. If they’ve been reliable payers for a while, you can give them a little leeway, but don’t let it go on too long. And don’t get in a position where they’re consistently paying you for work at the end of the month.
Above all, don’t blame yourself. It’s them, it’s not you. We’ve all been there, despite our best efforts. You can’t avoid it entirely throughout your career, but you can take steps to minimize the damage.
Have you been in a position where clients didn’t pay you? Without sharing specific details (so we don’t get sued), what happened? What did you do? What did you learn from the experience? Comment below.
Here’s to your ongoing freelance success!
Heidi
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Have you been in a position where clients didn’t pay you? Without sharing specific details (so we don’t get sued), what happened? What did you do? What did you learn from the experience?