How do freelancers not get burned when working with a client?

DogNamedRottles said:

The other day while I was playing around with the Wix editor for sh*ts and giggles, I came across their partner program. Basically, it was a way to get benefits from Wix when you convince your client to switch over to the premium service. If you did that, I can see how you could be more protected and even if you're client stiffs you there's still a way to make revenue. Or at least I think since I never was truly a freelancer.

Which it made me ponder some - how does freelancer guarantee that a client will not take their work without paying them? Or how does the transfer of ownership of the content work at completion which prevents the client from taking the work without paying first?

That's always been my aversion from freelancing which is untrustworthy clients which screw you over after doing the work

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Alexion said:

You have Upwork for that. There's an escrow system, and freelancer protection.
A shady client did a chargeback 3 months ago through his bank.

Upwork let me know, asked me to show them what files I sent, etc.
They never refunded the guy, and they never put my balance on hold.

If it was paypal, I would have been screwed over $750

When you work outside these platforms, you always charge in advance.

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DogNamedRottles said:

Just out of curiosity, if say you were operating outside of Upwork and you wanted to prevent a chargeback. Could you do that by having two bank accounts: one that acts as a operating account where it receives payments and another one that is the actual business account where the payment is automatically transferred? Therefore, if they tried to do a chargeback they wouldn't be able to get the money back because the money in the operating account wouldn't be there?

Sorry if this sounds naive, I never dealt with situations like these.

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DogNamedRottles said:

The other day while I was playing around with the Wix editor for sh*ts and giggles, I came across their partner program. Basically, it was a way to get benefits from Wix when you convince your client to switch over to the premium service. If you did that, I can see how you could be more protected and even if you're client stiffs you there's still a way to make revenue. Or at least I think since I never was truly a freelancer.

Which it made me ponder some - how does freelancer guarantee that a client will not take their work without paying them? Or how does the transfer of ownership of the content work at completion which prevents the client from taking the work without paying first?

That's always been my aversion from freelancing which is untrustworthy clients which screw you over after doing the work

Click to expand...

DogNamedRottles said:

The other day while I was playing around with the Wix editor for sh*ts and giggles, I came across their partner program. Basically, it was a way to get benefits from Wix when you convince your client to switch over to the premium service. If you did that, I can see how you could be more protected and even if you're client stiffs you there's still a way to make revenue. Or at least I think since I never was truly a freelancer.

Which it made me ponder some - how does freelancer guarantee that a client will not take their work without paying them? Or how does the transfer of ownership of the content work at completion which prevents the client from taking the work without paying first?

That's always been my aversion from freelancing which is untrustworthy clients which screw you over after doing the work

Click to expand...

DogNamedRottles said:

Just out of curiosity, if say you were operating outside of Upwork and you wanted to prevent a chargeback. Could you do that by having two bank accounts: one that acts as a operating account where it receives payments and another one that is the actual business account where the payment is automatically transferred? Therefore, if they tried to do a chargeback they wouldn't be able to get the money back because the money in the operating account wouldn't be there?

Sorry if this sounds naive, I never dealt with situations like these.

Click to expand...

Alexion said:

You'll just have a negative balance in your intermediary bank account. Banks are not PayPal, they will get their money back.
You are thinking about this with the wrong mindset.

My chargeback rate is around 0.5%. Actually, I don't need to use a percentage. I only got two chargebacks out of 217 clients on Upwork, and that was because they were scammers. Upwork helped, and they never deducted any money.

Since you are on your own, I would suggest using a payment method that's not reversible. like bitcoin or some form of crypto, or USDT as it's considered a stablecoin.

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