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Q. What is a good way to be sure you get paid for your work ?
A. Every project should be done under a written contract, and every project should use a retainer structure for payment.
A good contract should spell out what is expected of both you and the client over the course of the project. This includes due dates, fees, payment terms, reference materials, reimbursable expenses, how changes will be handled, and which copyrights will be assigned to the client. As an aside, understanding copyrights is fantastically important for an illustrator - an “all rights” contract can be costly if the rendering is later used in a book, poster, or other commercial work; and a “work-for-hire” clause can prevent you from even using the work in your own portfolio! An hour or two of a lawyer’s time to draw up a standard contract for yourself is a great investment.
A retainer is a portion of the fee the client pays you before you begin work. Typically, this will amount to 30%-50% of the estimated total. That way, you have some money in hand no matter what else happens, as well as an indication that the client is serious about the project and capable of paying.
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Title: Lobby and Street Frontage Renovation, 40 West 57th St., New York
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Q. How do you ensure that a client pays your fees on time ?
A. The absolute best way is never to part with a usable image until you’ve been paid in full. If the client will pay COD, trading a check for a rendering, then there’s never a question about overdue bills. One way to watermark preview images without seeming hostile is to write the date and any comments or questions right into the preview images you send (which also helps clients focus on the right issues when giving you feedback!). A COD payment is not always possible, though, due to time constraints or the real or imagined difficulty of the client’s organization writing a check.
I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had a client who really didn’t intend to pay. Some of my colleagues have been in situations like that and had to resort to lawyers or collection agencies. The problem (besides losing the client and possibly their friends permanently) is that unless you have a clause in the contract stating otherwise, lawyer and collection fees come out of the money you’re owed, and it can still take months or years to get paid. Avoiding these sorts of clients in the first place is probably your best bet - some professional organizations have “rogues’ galleries” of nonpaying clients reported by members. insidearch.org can also be a resource for due diligence research. The source of the referral is also a good indicator – while I’ve found a few good jobs through Craigslist, for example, the vast majority of postings there are from people who want something for nothing.
Dealing with late payments, rather than nonpayment, is trickier, as you need to strike a balance between maintaining the relationship with the client and maintaining a cash flow to stay in business. Some clients, for example, take a view that they should pay you only after they themselves are paid, which essentially means that you assume their risk for free (the Graphic Artists’ Guild excellent Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines declares this practice unethical in no uncertain terms).
My solution is to put in the contract that interest charges will be assessed on late payments, and accounting software makes tracking this easy. Some other illustrators I know accept credit cards so that they get paid immediately, but clients can pay their credit card bill whenever they wish. However, the monthly and transaction costs of a credit card merchant account may make this unappealing unless you have a lot of projects per month or a lot of deadbeat clients.
With some entities, particularly large government agencies, you may simply be out of luck getting timely payment or collecting interest. The people who work there will often be able to warn you of this, however, and it’s perfectly ethical to be upfront about charging them more to cover the cost of waiting months for a check.
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INSIDE THE MODEL DATABANK
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