Why charging an up front is a must?

May 12, 2005

Many a time I come across clients who don’t want to pay for my services but share the profits afterwards when the website begins to do business. From a content writer’s perspective, it doesn’t make sense to me because I’m not here to invest (time invested is money invested) in various business ventures. I already have a business — providing content writing services to clients who really understand what a world of a difference good content can make. I like working for clients who deem content as a fundamentally important component of their overall online business strategy, and hence, are ready to pay for it as a legitimate business expense.

There are two sorts of people who ask for a work-now-get-paid-later arrangement: entrepreneurs who have a genuine idea but lack funds to implement it, and people who are not serious about their work and only doing it because they can do it without spending money and time on it. I appreciate the efforts of the genuine entrepreneurs and sooner or later they’re going to succeed — no bias, my priorities simply lie somewhere else. In order to keep working, in order to sustain myself, I need to earn a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I don’t want to wait for a vacuous payment that might originate 4 months down the pipeline.

If I do work for someone, I cannot start it unless I get an advance. Some people like it, some don’t. Good thing is, 90 out of 100 like to pay an up front amount. Fair enough :-).