Work From Home Couple

Michael, who runs his own Today.com blog, http://fearlesshistory.today.com, reminded me when he commented on one of my earlier posts of one of the biggest challenges of working from home. And it’s a challenge that’s doubled when both you and your spouse work from home at the same time: Waiting for those freelance checks.

It’s one thing if you’re a salaried employee who happens to work from home. But if the majority of your income comes from freelance work, as does both mine and my wife’s, then you always seem to be waiting for someone to pay you. It seems that companies suffer no guilt from paying late when you’re working for them as a mere freelance contractor.

What can you do about it? Not much. When I notice a late payer, I usually start with a friendly e-mail message, something like, “Hi, there. I haven’t yet received my payment of XXX for the work I did on XXXX.” I also offer to re-send my invoice if they need it. If that doesn’t work, it’s time for phone calls. And if that doesn’t work?

That’s where it gets tricky. You can always threaten legal action. But are you prepared to follow through? I hate to say it, but sometimes the cost and hassle of court action — most times, in fact — just isn’t worth it to recover a missing payment. Sad but true.

I’ve been fairly fortunate. Sure, some publishers have stiffed me. But not that many, and I’ve been doing this freelance-writing thing for about 15 years now. When I was a relatively naive young freelance writer, I did do $2,000 worth of work for a start-up Internet publisher, an outfit calling itself Boomers.com. The company saw itself as creating a community for Baby Boomers, and I was hired to write sports columns for them. I never saw any of that money. But I did learn my lesson. One: Avoid writing start-ups, unless the amount of work is easy and relatively small. Start-ups are notorious for going under. Two: Don’t do additional work until you’ve received that first payment. Three: Make sure the company you’re working for actually has a model in place to generate income for itself. Boomers.com, apparently, didn’t.

The key to success when working from home is to make sure there’s always enough work coming in, and that you always have enough assignments, to make up for the occasional deadbeat payer.

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