Jri
Member
Hello!
Lately I've been getting a bit of work from white van men wanting logos for their various trades. The work is OK paying and really easy going in comparison to large scale corporate branding.
By and large the clients are really reliable - but every once in a while you get a runner (sometimes before the logo is even finalised).
How do you protect your finances against this?
There are a couple of methods for getting round this that I can think of:
1) Full payment up front
I've never tried this, as usually there's some sort of implied 'word-of-mouth' based trust with most of my clients and I get the impression that most of the tradies that I've been dealing with might be put off by this (I work online primarily, so I can sympathise with people not wanting to put money down for a stranger's service over the internet).
2) % paid in advance
See above, same issue with this really - only people might be less intimidated by it as it almost seems like more of an agreement than a gamble on their part.
3) Watermarking
This one has been briefly covered here. I'm a little skeptical about how much of a deterrent this would be as I've seen heaps of low-res Shutterstock et al. watermarked images shamelessly used on the rafts of tree surgeon and take away flyers that seem to flow through my letterbox.
I'm just interested to see what everyone else is doing. Fortunately, it's not even necessary nine times out of ten - but I want to be secure against the odd Del Boy.
What are your thoughts? Any alternate methods?
Cheers,
Jri
Lately I've been getting a bit of work from white van men wanting logos for their various trades. The work is OK paying and really easy going in comparison to large scale corporate branding.
By and large the clients are really reliable - but every once in a while you get a runner (sometimes before the logo is even finalised).
How do you protect your finances against this?
There are a couple of methods for getting round this that I can think of:
1) Full payment up front
I've never tried this, as usually there's some sort of implied 'word-of-mouth' based trust with most of my clients and I get the impression that most of the tradies that I've been dealing with might be put off by this (I work online primarily, so I can sympathise with people not wanting to put money down for a stranger's service over the internet).
2) % paid in advance
See above, same issue with this really - only people might be less intimidated by it as it almost seems like more of an agreement than a gamble on their part.
3) Watermarking
This one has been briefly covered here. I'm a little skeptical about how much of a deterrent this would be as I've seen heaps of low-res Shutterstock et al. watermarked images shamelessly used on the rafts of tree surgeon and take away flyers that seem to flow through my letterbox.
I'm just interested to see what everyone else is doing. Fortunately, it's not even necessary nine times out of ten - but I want to be secure against the odd Del Boy.
What are your thoughts? Any alternate methods?
Cheers,
Jri