How do freelance technical writers deal with the thorny issue of payment?

[Chris Borokowski]

For all types of contracting, I recommend:

- Quote a fixed price for a clearly-defined job, with a per-hour rate
for any additions or fixes.

- It is reasonable to ask for 50% of that job cost up front.

- It is reasonable to ask for quarterly or monthly payments for that
job.

The situation you DO NOT want to get into is one where you do a job,
then fix the job, and then hope to get paid at the end. At this point,
the client sees the true cost of the job and gets neurotic and may fail
to pay or delay payment to the point where it does little more than
mess up your tax accounting.

--- Pippa Cohen <cohenpippa at googlemail.com> wrote:

>    - How do you decide whether to quote a fixed price, or a daily
> rate
>    for projects?
> 
>    - For a large project that could span two or three months, is it
>    reasonable to ask for a percentage of the final payment 'up front'
> 
>    - Again, for long projects, is it the norm to stagger payments
> across
>    agreed milestones?


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technical writing | consulting | development


       
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