This story is contributed by Lior Frenkel, founder of nuSchool. He partnered with Webydo, a code-free web design platform to write a book about helping freelance web designers deal with difficult clients.
Two years ago I made myself a promise: Never again would I pour my blood, sweat and tears into a project only to come up shortchanged in the end. I would never allow a client to screw me over again.
You see, I’m a freelancer building websites, and for six months I busted my ass for my client, Mr. Sinister, AKA the man who was so excited about my work, and who got me so thrilled about building him a website, only to completely disappear once the work was done and the invoice submitted. Instead of hiring a hitman I decided to learn and try everything possible in order to get paid on time by my clients.
I started looking around for ways to avoid this situation. I asked experienced creatives for advice, I read every 101 freelance book. I even came up with a few ideas myself—and then I tried everything I had learned: it worked like magic and it still does for every new project I take.
As a result, I took all of it and put it into a