I saw a tweet by Andrew Turner this morning that got me thinking about how hard it is to protect yourself when dealing with clients.  To really be safe, you must write an air tight contract to keep the client from shutting the project down, halting scope creep, and avoiding the other many possible pitfalls that comes with doing service oriented work. 

However, writing good contracts adds a lot of overhead to your business.  Often, this overhead is hard to recoupe on small to medium sized projects.  If done correctly, it often takes nearly as long to write a good proposal/contract as it does to actually do the work.  The problem is that you put out all of this work without really knowing for sure if you are going to get the project. 

With that in mind, it is really tempting to cut this time out on smaller projects by not properly writing up the work to be performed or not having a contract at all.  In my experience as a website developer, the smaller projects are usually the biggest headaches.  These are the projects that have tight margins and the ones you must define explicitly before starting to work. 

Balance, Young Daniel-Son
I try to strike a balance on my project proposals/contracts.  I have enough experience that I can typically tell when a client is going to be troublesome before I start a project.  When I sense this, I make sure I spend extra time nailing down exactly what they are requesting.  This almost always saves me multiples of that extra time later on when the projects starts to go south. 

However, on typical projects, I often don’t spend too much time on the contract.   I take my stock contract template, rewriting a little to suit the project, and send it out.  This, if I choose wisely, decreases my overhead and increases my profit margin. 

When do I get Paid?
When you enter into a contract with a client, you are taking a small risk that they are going to pay you when finished.  As a business owner, I don’t like risk.  So, on all of my projects I share the risk with the client.  On smaller projects, I ask for 1/2 of the contract amount up front, and 1/2 when it is completed.  With this arrangement, I run a risk of only getting paid 1/2 of the total amount, and the client shares in the risk that I will finish the work they have paid for. 

As an added bonus, I often find that this up front payment helps the client see the value in the project and it is often easier to get the information I need out of them to quickly finish the project versus clients who have no up-front investment. 

On larger projects, I will set milestones and have distributed payments when that milestone is met.  I used to break simple website designs up into three payments, 1/3 up front, 1/3 when the design was approved, and 1/3 upon completion.  The middle payment was contractual proof that the design was approved.  However, waiting on that payment just slowed down the entire process and made these contracts drag on for several weeks more than they otherwise would have.  Also, clients are visual.  When they see the design, they think the site is 90% done.  They have no clue that the design is on 10% of the project (on small websites) and that the next phase is 90% of the work.  This thought process combined with a “midpoint” milestone confused many customers and  they never understood why it took so long to complete that last phase. 

Dates
It is not a bad thing to set dates and goals for completion, and it is often required by the client.  However, never say a particular date like “april 12th”.  Always state something like “21 working days from notice to proceed”.  You never do know how long it is going to take to get an approved contract, and that week they thought about it might come back to haunt you when the date you put in ink comes around.   

You want to also put wording into your contract that lets them know that these dates are based on your assumption that all required materials will be provided by the client in a timely manner and that these dates are subject to change based on unavailability of materials and/or sickness. 

Get a signed contract, then work
It is so tempting to hop right into designing that new website project you just finished discussing with a client.  However, I can’t count the number of times that a client said “the check and contract are in the mail” only to never send them or back out at the last minute.  Make sure you have that signed contract in hand before you begin working.  Otherwise, you may be wasting your time. 

Don’t be afraid of the client, and communicate with them early
I see this a lot with freelancers, especially younger ones.  They are so intimidated by the client or afraid of losing the job that they will let the client run them over.  If you have a contract, and it clearly states what work you are to do, you have a right to ask for more money when the work exceeds that.  In most cases, the client expects it. 

In almost all cases I have seen, if you immediately explain to your client that what is being requested is outside of the contract and that it will costs $x more, they are fine with that.  Where inexperienced freelancers get in trouble is by waiting until all the work is done and then sending the customer that inflated bill for the extra work without having explained it to them before you completed it. 

If you allow a client to cross the line of what you are contractually obligated to do without enforcing your right to more compensation, they will almost always continue to push that line during the project and it will quickly get way out of hand, costing you tons of money. 

Sometimes it is better to walk away
In more cases than you realize, you can make more money by just turning down a job and moving on to something better.  If they don’t want to deal with a contract or pay anything up front, you are going to have nothing but trouble out of them and you may never see a dime for  your work.  In these cases, simply walk away. 

These were just some tips I had in mind and quickly jotted them down.  If you have any questions, please post in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.