Freelance Guidelines for Getting Paid on Time

The lifestyle of a freelancer can be very hectic at times. You have to juggle multiple projects and meetings with clients all to make sure your bills are paid. And the only way you’re going to keep ahead is by managing your money properly!

Freelancers don’t often consider the payment process as something to analyze and work out. It is considered an afterthought that you’ll assume payment since the client is happy to work with you. But sadly this is not always the case, and project work can go south very quickly leaving you dry on next month’s rent. In this guide I want to share just a few tips for managing payments and getting your money on time.

Discuss Terms Upfront

This is obviously necessary if you want to appear as a professional in the eyes of your client. You shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the topic of money right away after discussing project details.

The only reason you’re working on such a project is to earn money in the first place. You need to make sure you are compensated properly for all your effort. Things can get hairy if you jump right into the work and start discussing funds at a later date. It’s all too easy for the client to lowball your estimate and with much of the work already done, you may feel inclined to just accept it.

Never sell yourself short and never start on any work before clarifying your payments. Even working on some of the most interesting project ideas will not be enough to keep you going. The initial motivation will pass and you’ll want to have an idea in the back of your mind for just how much you’re working.

Use Contracts

If you aren’t somebody who is familiar with legal jargon I recommend browsing through some older articles to familiarize yourself. The legal territory of drafting contracts can be confusing and stressful if you’re a newbie. But it’s also vital when you begin working on big-name projects which are paying well into four-or-five figure salaries.

Consider your best method of payment either hourly or set per project. Generally you can only choose one, unless you go back for additional work and switch between these two methods. But you should include either the total expected project compensation or your hourly wage and ensure this clause is clearly visible to both parties.

Don’t be afraid to work with your client so you both are signing a contract you can agree with. Always keep a local copy for yourself to look back on in case of issues down the road. Text in print is your best argument against a client who is unwilling to pay. Or even after payment is sent and they come back to you expecting free touch-up work you can refer them to the project contract.

Going Digital

No matter which payment method you agree upon there will be some delay. Wire transfers and cheques are solutions but will require a bit of faith on your end. I recommend holding onto digital platforms such as PayPal or Dwolla.

When a member of these online networks transfers money it can be in your account almost instantly. Granted it will still take some time to move the funds into your bank account, but this is the case with any payment method. Working with a trusted PayPal member means you are much less likely to be shafted on money – both now and in the future.

Keep Yourself on Schedule

It’s easy for us to sit around and discuss managing the client’s wallet. However you need to ensure that your skills are on par with the project work required. If you do write out a contract it may be wise to include a rough estimate for the allotted timeframe.

Based on the amount of work needed you will have to adjust your schedule accordingly. If you think it’ll take 1-2 weeks for a project to be complete it is safer to write in 3 weeks. This gives you some padding just in case you get caught up in other drama. It also looks much better to finish a project early than underestimate the timing and fall behind.

Getting onto a schedule is imperative to keep you and your client on the same page. This may require weekly meetings or phone conversations to touch base on the progress so far. Keep a close professional relationship and be sure to respect your client’s opinion on project details. Ultimately you are in this for a paycheck and cannot get too invested.

Keep Emotions at Bay

It can be difficult removing yourself from a project. Especially if you pour hours and hours of hard work into a design idea. But when you are a freelancer you need to keep your emotions in check and try to limit yourself. I often find myself heavily invested in smaller projects where I’ll get caught up on smaller details.

This can result in re-designing areas of the template which are just fine to begin with. Logos, buttons, banners, marketing e-mails, and other seemingly important page elements are all included based on your project needs. Don’t let this turn into a huge waste of your time! Designers have to invest a bit of their emotional energy, but too much and you’ll find yourself burnt out with little-to-no motivation left.

Conclusion

I hope these brief ideas can get you thinking in terms of freelancing for hard-earned money. Being a freelancer is an extremely profitable position since you are basically working for yourself with no middleman. But you need to understand the foundation of running a business and managing contacts properly. If you have similar ideas or suggestions for getting paid on time please share with us in the post discussion area.

Can HTML5 Help Find a Cure for AIDS?

There is a volunteer computing project going on right now called “Social Docking” that is written entirely using HTML5 and is run completely within the web browser. It’s an initiative to find compounds of pharmaceutical interest towards AIDS and Alzheimers. All you have to do is visit this HTML5 app socialdocking.appspot.com and let the app be in your browser for about 10 minutes before closing it. You can open a new window to browse the web or do whatever you want on your computer during that time. The idea is to get the simulation to run for 3000 iterations. This low cost supercomputing project will help researchers study three molecules including, HIV-1 integrase, which is a promising target for an AIDS vaccine.

The advantage of socialdocking.appspot.com is that it is web-browser based (as opposed to client-based Folding@Home, SETI@Home, which use BOINC). It also integrates as a Facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/socialdocking but ChemDoodle’s XHR level 2 doesn’t work when Facebook users have SSL enabled on their accounts. Eric Jang, the app’s creator, had to remove the WebGL-related things from ChemDoodle and modify it to use JQuery Pollen AJAX methods. Thanks to level 2 XHR to fetch chemical structures from SMILES strings + Web Workers, the virtual screening app automatically retrieves the next available job once it finishes docking one chemical. It can be run for $0 using Google App Engine’s free billing scheme. Right now, web browsers have not put a lot of effort towards implementing the subworkers specification of Web Workers because there are not many applications found for Web Workers. The hope is that cheap supercomputing projects like these will improve the attention Web Workers receives from web browsers.

Here is more on the science behind this great HTML5 app from the app’s creator Eric Jang.

Developing new drugs is super expensive. It takes a billion dollars and years of clinical trials for company like Pfizer to roll out a new drug into the market. One way that these companies save a lot of time and money is to use Virtual Screening – instead of testing every possible drug candidate in a test tube, they refine a massive database of chemicals by simulating the molecular physics that go on when a drug binds to a receptor. This is called the lock and key model, which states that if a ligand binds strongly to a receptor, it is likely to induce some kind of change with the receptor, and hopefully to some beneficial effect within the cell.

For this project, I am studying three molecules at the same time and trying to find ligands that bind strongly to them. The blue one on the left is HIV-1 integrase, which is a promising target for an AIDS vaccine because it is critical for the HIV virus integrate itself into the host’s DNA replication system. The second one is Acetylcholinesterase, which can be targeted for treating Alzheimersand other forms of dementia. Acetylcholinesterase breaks down a neurotransmitter, so I’m interested in targeting the inhibitor domain that hopefully will render Acetylcholinesterase inactive. Finally, the telomeric RNA quadruplex is a unique secondary structure that personally I have been interested in for some time because I’ve done research on the past with telomeres and G-quadruplexes. It would be really interesting to find some kind of chemical side chain that binds to the arm loops and can allow us to study its role in telomerase regulation and find out more about the topology of quadruplexes.