The Most Frustrating Types of Late-Paying Clients and How to Handle Them

Most of us have been there: you land that dream client. You’re excited beyond belief and they’re equally excited to work with you. They’ve agreed to pay you what you’re worth and you get it in writing. Clients don’t always turn out to be perfect though. For some unknown reason, they become the client from hell and decides you are only worthy of a portion of the agreed payment, if they pay you at all. What gives?

It’s any number of reasons. They might be someone who’s never satisfied no matter how stellar the work is. They might be well-intentioned but always pay late (for reasons that I’ll get into), or they are a crook who leaves a pile of unpaid freelancers in their wake. It can be hard to know exactly.

This is a topic that I could pontificate on for days, but, for the sake of time, I’ll lay out four basic types of non-paying clients and how you can deal with them.

1. The One With Good Intentions

These are clients who may have a good reason for not paying on time.

These folks sometimes have an excuse as to why payment will be late. Other times they are just not that communicative about it because they might be embarrassed. Often this is because of cash-flow. This type of client might even write you…