The ever-present risk for freelance writers, whether online or not. After you complete your assigned project, what do you do when no payment appears? I am lucky that this has never happened to me personally, but the chance is always out there that it may. So what do you do?

First of all, set the stage to get paid in the first place. Handle every job professionally and request a contract or agreement. It will show your potential employer that you are a serious writer, and it may give them second thoughts about trying to intentionally screw you over. It also gives you more ammunition later on should they still default on payment. The other half of this tip is that you send an invoice when the work is completed. Your payment may genuinely fall through the cracks if they don’t have the proper documents at their end.

Keep following up. Don’t jump down their throats after just a day or two, but don’t let the matter slide after just one follow-up email either. Some places can be legitimately disorganized or just plain slow. Keep on them about it. And keep copies of your emails and/or faxes for future reference. If you try to get someone to mediate for you (see my next point), its important that be able to show what you have done so far to get your payment issued.

There are plenty of places where you can enlist a little help getting payment made, and my personal favorite is over at the Writer’s Weekly site. They have a section called Whispers and Warnings where you can post a complaint and possibly get them to act on your behalf. Unfortunately, some places will only react when there is a chance of these issues going public.  if you’ve joined a freelancers or writers union, they may also be able to assist you in getting the matter resolved.

If you have some kind of contract, you may be able to pursue a legal course of action. Keep in mind that it may not be worth it, depending on how much money is owed. Though getting some kind of personal satisfaction may make the whole thing worthwhile no matter how much money is at stake.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Online Writing 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.