As you have been building your private photo editing business, I bet this question has popped into your head at some point in time. When should you collect payment? Should you collect it before you send images over? Should you do it after you complete the job? Or should you be billing bi-weekly or monthly?

First, I want to say something that will probably be really hard to hear.

As editors we have the assumption that because we spend a lot of time on our services that we will 100% get paid for our work.

The reality is though that ALL businesses will take a loss at some point.

If you own a restaurant, sometimes a customer’s meal comes out undercooked or just be wrong all together. Often times the business will make the customer not pay for the meal. It’s not like they can reuse the food that they served. Which means this comes out of the profit margins of that business.

Same goes if you own a retail store. At some point you will most likely have someone shoplift items.

It would be naive for private editor’s to think that we are an exception.

While I’d like to think that none of my clients would take advantage of me that way, the fact of the matter is that this isn’t a perfect world.

Don’t get me wrong, of course there are ways to take precautions against a client fleeing without payment. However, as business owners it is our responsibility to make sure we are setting up a system to where we are evaluating the risk factor when it comes to collecting payment. But we also have a responsibility to make sure that we understand the mindset of our clients.

Let’s talk about the three options as to when to send an invoice for payment.

OPTION 1 | BEFORE YOU START WORK

This is the most “risk free” option, in terms of payment, that you can have as a private photo editor. You will never be doing any work until your client pays the invoice for your service.

Sounds like the best option right?? RISK FREE!

Before you just stop here let’s look at the client psychology of this really quickly.

Have you ever paid for an expensive service and got something back that wasn’t perfect? Or it wasn’t exactly what you thought it would be? Immediately you start questioning why you did that. Was that really worth the money? Did I make a mistake? Did I hire the right person?

The photographer felt the pain of money leaving their pocket before they got something in return, and so they may be viewing your edits with a more critical eye.

While you may have eliminated the risk of not receiving payment, you may be opening yourself up to an entirely different risk – the risk of losing clients.

The photographer may have given you their entire wedding season schedule and gave a verbal commitment that they would use you for the entire year. However, if they felt the lines of communication were closed after they got the wedding back, and were not satisfied they could easily walk away thinking that their would be no confrontation in termination services.

OPTION 2 | AFTER YOU DELIVER IMAGES

I’ll preface this by saying this is what I do and it has worked out great for me and my business!

Many people view this option as a big risk in not getting paid, and I will say, it is a risk. However, I have never had someone not pay me for my services. I do know that statistically it is something that will happen to me at some point.

I have found that by delivering images and requesting feedback before invoicing, especially during the early stages of my business, paid big dividends in growing the relationships between me and my clients.

It really opened the door for communication and made sure that the photographer was satisfied with how everything looked before I asked for money.

This reassured the photographer that I cared about how they felt about their images and genuinely wanted to grow with them.

As my relationship with a photographer develops and feedback is no longer necessary, I invoice after I send the images, without asking for feedback.

OPTION 3 | BI-WEEKLY OR MONTHLY PAYOUTS

This is my least favorite option, mainly because it is highly risky in all areas, but there are definitely circumstances where I see this could be helpful.

The only time when I think it could be helpful to have a bi-weekly or monthly payout is when you have a high volume client.

A high volume client would be when someone has 5-6 weddings in a month. They have an established business that is bringing in enough money to where a $500+ bill at the end of the month is not really affecting their bottom line or causing them to have buyer’s remorse.

In contrast to that, the time this payment method is not great to use is when photographers have a small number of weddings in a month or for those whose business is not yet established. For example, if a small business photographer shoots 2 weddings in a month at $200 each, it is much more palatable for them to make two $200 payments that month as opposed to one $400 payment. There is just something about seeing a smaller number that helps making a payment easier when you aren’t shooting tons of weddings every month or might be just starting out.

In conclusion, let me say that their is no such thing as a right or wrong way to collect payment as an editor. It simply is a matter of what is going to work best for you and your business. Keep in mind that nothing has to be set in stone either! Maybe you start with having clients pay before you start editing for the first two weddings and after that you invoice after you deliver images. Who knows! Experiment and find what works best for you.