Example of Sending Invoices to Customers for Marketing Made Simple

Example of sending invoices to customers for Marketing

'I'm a freelancer. I have a challenge when it comes to payment terms and when someone hires me for his campaign, especially new clients'. So, okay. You have not said what the challenge is, the challenge is it to get paid or is it to get paid on time?! Because these are two different things, because some customers are unfortunately like that, where they don't pay on time or they don't pay. So you need to keep things very simple and you have your written terms and conditions upfront. I'm not saying go to an attorney or a lawyer and make a long contract. Just say, I expect to be paid on such and such date, when I send you my invoice, or within so many days. The way we work, and we had this problem as well, and every business has, big or small or freelancer or whoever you are, everybody has similar issues. So the way we work with our clients is we say, the invoice will be sent to you on the third, or on a certain date and after three days or so, we will charge your credit or debit card, which is held securely on stripe.com. So we don't keep hold of their credit card or card details. It's securely set up on Stripe. And all we do is just charge the amount because it varies from month to month. But if you have a recurring, let's say you're charging a hundred dollars for an account every month until they cancel, then you can set up a recurring billing either through PayPal as well, which is very straightforward and easy or through Stripe. And then they will get charged the same amount on the same date, every time…. ‘In this kind of business, what is the fair and best way to sort out the payment terms for both of us? And is it good to quote the project lump sum, including the budget?’ Not really, the budget is irrelevant because once you hit breakeven or better, you should be scaling the budget because you don't want to be losing out and that's what you need to do and then you expand the campaign and when you are expanding the campaigns, by going remarketing, YouTube, display, Gmail, and so on, or scaling into other territories, the same search campaign, which you may be running, you need to do more work. So obviously you need to charge for your time. So you can set up a billing on performance basis, a billing basis where you charge a percentage of the ad spend. So if they spent a thousand, you charge a percentage of that. If they spent 5,000, then your fees will also go up. Because if they're spending, if they've gone from 1000 to 5,000, that means the campaigns are working, you are making them a positive return on investment and they are not losing money. If they were losing money, they will not scale. So, you know, and they know, both of you know, they're making money and if you have worked out all your numbers before a single penny is spent, then you know, straight away, what is your cost per acquisition or your ROAS target, and then you scale it. So yeah. Get everything in writing, get it signed and then you are protected. And one more thing, which I would also add, a lot of them are very cheeky! They will then put in a refund request in PayPal or Stripe or whatever, as long as it stays in your terms and conditions that you cannot offer partial or full refund once the work has started, then you're covered. You've got the signature. So a great question you asked, thank you. I hope I answered your question and that's what you were looking for.