What the agreement has to cover
Even for a $200 deal, get these in writing. An email thread both parties have replied to is far better than nothing.
- Deliverables, precisely — "Two vertical videos, 30 seconds each, delivered as ProRes and H.264, plus two alternate hooks per video." Not "some content".
- Usage rights — Channels, term, territory, exclusivity, editing rights. The five questions from the usage-rights guide.
- Fee and payment terms — The number, the currency, and when it's due — net 15 or net 30 from invoice, not from some vague notion of completion.
- Revisions — How many rounds are included, and what an extra round costs.
- Timeline — When they give you product and brief, when you deliver. Your clock should start when you receive what you need, not when the contract is signed.
- Kill fee — What you're paid if they cancel after you've shot. 50% is a reasonable ask.
- Approval — What counts as accepted, and a deadline after which silence means accepted. This clause prevents projects hanging open forever.
Take a deposit from new clients
50% up front for any first engagement with a new brand, balance on delivery. This is completely standard in production work and almost never refused by a legitimate client.
It does two useful things: it covers you if they vanish, and it filters out the brands that were never going to pay. A brand that objects to a deposit on a $400 job is telling you something important, for free.
Invoice so that paying you is easy
Most late payment is not malice. It's an invoice that arrived without a purchase-order number, or went to a person who doesn't handle accounts payable, or lacked bank details. Every friction point adds a week.
- Send it the day you deliver — Not at month end. The invoice clock only starts when it arrives.
- Include a unique invoice number — Sequential, e.g. JC-0043. Accounting systems need it and will bounce invoices without one.
- Itemise against the agreement — Same wording as the deal. "2 × short-form video, 90-day paid usage" reconciles instantly; "content creation" gets queried.
- State the due date explicitly — "Due 14 August 2026 (net 30)" beats "net 30" — nobody should have to do arithmetic to pay you.
- Put payment details on the invoice itself — Bank details or a payment link, on the document. Not in a separate email.
- Send it as a PDF — To a named person, and copy their accounts inbox if you have it.
Add a payment link
Invoices with a one-click payment option get paid measurably faster than invoices that require someone to set up a bank transfer. Reducing the effort of paying you is the cheapest collections strategy there is.
When payment is late
Escalate on a schedule, and stay unfailingly polite. Almost everything resolves at step two.
- Day 1 past due — Friendly nudge in the original thread, invoice re-attached. Assume it was missed, because it usually was.
- Day 7 — Ask directly for a payment date, and ask to be pointed to accounts payable.
- Day 14 — Formal notice: reference the agreement, restate the amount, note that late fees apply if you specified them, and pause any work in progress.
- Day 30 — Final notice before escalation. For meaningful sums, a formal letter of demand — or small-claims process — resolves far more cases than creators expect.
The tax basics people find out too late
Two things surprise nearly every first-year creator. First, in most countries you owe tax on self-employment income that nobody withheld for you, and you may owe it in instalments during the year rather than in one lump at the end.
Second, gifted product is frequently taxable income at its retail value in many jurisdictions. A year of enthusiastic gifting can produce a real tax bill against income you never received in cash.
The defence is boring and effective: set aside a fixed percentage of every payment into a separate account from your very first invoice, log gifted items with a value at the time you receive them, and keep receipts for genuine business expenses — gear, software, props, the product you buy to shoot spec work.
Know your numbers monthly
Income minus expenses, per month, per client. It takes ten minutes if you log as you go and an entire weekend if you leave it to January.
It also answers the questions that actually grow the business: which client is worth keeping, which category pays best for the effort, and whether that gear purchase paid for itself. Creators who track this raise their rates sooner, because they can see exactly what an hour of their time earns.