A bad experience

Last months a guy from USA contact my by Coroflot to do a freelance work drawing a 3d piece.

I am not a USA resident and I am starting working as Industrial Designer, so at first just email him to know more about the work.
The talk was always in good terms and at the end we signed a Internet contract to the work. I know that this kind of contract are not too safe, because if something happen which law is going to prevail?: USA law or my country law?
But I took the risk, the work was very simple and I just wanted to get some experience.

I sent it the work and wait for my payment. I email him with my personal details to do the transactions, and his answer was “I am speaking to the manufactures for any errors, I will pay you when all be fine”. One month it has past and I never get my fare reward, I sent it another email, and again a very polite answer “No problem. Sorry for the delay. Just send me the details and I’ll send it.”

I took the risk, so I can’t complain, but do you have any tips to work as frelancer and with international clients?

Simple. Get a deposit and get paid in full before you send final files. Standard practice for any work local or international.

R

I agree with rkuchinksy, I usually get 50% deposit before starting up the project and 50% before the final design.


It has only been a month? I am not certain how it works in your country but in mine, Sweden, a month is the standard time frame for bills to be paid after you issued your invoice.

The advice given above is good and for the next time, you should consider it if you don’t have a face-to-face relationship with the client.
I can see that you are worried about not getting paid for your work, but I would be careful about naming names of people in the business which show up on google btw, especially when it has only been a month.

The OP needs to watch this video:

And review the accompanying thread.

Design is a business. Treat it like it’s a business.

A month is not unusual, many companies (especially larger corporations) work on Net 30 or even Net 60 terms, meaning you should not expect payment for 30 or 60 days after delivery of goods/services. I would be surprised if there were no reference to these terms in your original contract, if they aren’t in there, then this is something that should be mutually discussed and agreed to in your initial negotiations.

You said you took this job to gain experience, and now you have also added some experience in the business end of things as well.

I would most likely remove the company and person’s name from your original post for now, while the terms of payment are being sorted out.

First of all the last line of my post shuld say:
“I took the risk, so I CAN’T complain, but do you have any tips to work as frelancer and with international clients?”

Thak you for all your advices.

  • For certain I wiil apply the 50% before send a work next time.

  • To the day of today it has past more than one month. After one month of sent the work I did not receive more replies.
    In my country it is commond to wait one month, but for a project or sometihing “big”. Not for a freelance work drawing a 3d or making a render.

  • I will see the video, I hope to learn something more.

  • About named him, maybe was a rookie mistake. I just wanted to make a warning; If this guy contact anyone in the future, that person can have an opinion.

IDiot, I agree with you I took the job to get experience and I get some experience about buisness, so maybe I should change the Subject of the topic…

Best regards,
metl

Maybe you did get burned on this one. If yes, see it as a learning curve, as previously suggested. It seems like you are doing that.

To IDiot’s question, were the terms of payment not agreed upon earlier when you guys negotiated? You mentioned that you guys did put a contract in place. Or was that just an NDA?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds a little bit like you guys were trying to fly under the radar here. In other words keep the money off the books. This is never a good strategy. Again, if I am reading into things, please correct me. Otherwise I think it’s a good opportunity to generally point this out: Don’t burn the Tax man, keep it clean.

Did you send an invoice a month ago stating that you expect payment within a certain timeframe?
I work for clients in the US, then send them an invoice, they pay, done.

I had to set up my on business in order to invoice the clients for work rendered and to keep everything in order. This gives me now the power to collect interest if they miss the payment or hand it off to go to court should that be necessary.

ps// I understand you are not a native English speaker, but I would recommend a spellcheck regardless. It will make you look a lot more professional.

I understand you are not a native English speaker…

Alternately, Google Translate might be of assistance.

I would put “payment terms” on your invoice next time. I also had a poor experience with one of my clients where I didn’t get paid in a timely fashion. I started to put payment terms on there so that way you can hold them accountable for payment, otherwise it’s literally up to them to pay when they feel like it.

A standard payment term is “Net 30”. This means that the person/company has 30 days from receiving the invoice to pay the bill. Then you can put in the fine print that after 30 days there’s a certain percentage of interest perday or week, or something like that.

Hope this helps!