How do you handle non payment ?

Please share the approach you follow when you take orders from clients for article writing and getting paid. Few cases :

* customer asks you to write a sample for free and uses it. If he needs just one or two articles, he may use this approach to get free stuff.

* non payment. Customer asks you to write 5 articles and he gets the article and does not pay.

* disappearance. Customer asks you to write 5 articles and then disappears.

Will appreciate if you discuss the procedure you follow to avoid such cases.

Cheers

 

I usually hire this guy to collect and do what needs to be done....

For real? theres not alot you can do except take a screenshot of your articles and blur some parts randomly - with image files, use a watermark and collect 50% upfront - If it's a big job, get say 3 payments - Other than that just be careful of who you are dealing with -

On the otherhand, I've been tipped as much as $50 for some jobs and even paid like $10 for something I was expecting to just do for nothing - I guess it evens out but I would suggest get some kind of payment upfront - or judge by the time they have been a DP member as a light guideline.

 

It's a good idea for the larger orders to take a deposit. Other than that you could just take a screenshot of the articles and send the real things once they've paid. I'd guess that you'd only need to do this once before you build up a good relationship with the buyer.

Until the buyer pays for the articles in full, they are still your copyright so if they publish the articles without paying then you could probably launch a lawsuit against them. I'm not a law expert though so it would be good to hear from someone with a bit of experience in this field.

 

For paid forum posting my clients always pay up front, so I suppose it is they that are taking a risk, not me.

For non-payers, you could try naming and shaming on the boards. Some forums also do feedback, like eBay - so you could leave negative feedback, so other peeps don't get caught the same way.

 

Hello

The best idea is to send random parts of the article like the beginning, some portions in middle and the end to protect yourself.

Sam

 

Well 100% protection against unpayed projects it's not possible but i use escrow type of work.

 

How can you do that on shorter articles and still get paid?
I have had clients laugh at this method. Say a 1-200 word article, shopping a bit of the beginning, middle and end made the article unreadable, it didnt flow, and was hard to get feedback on the article (obviously).
Any more info you can shed would be great.