My Friday started out innocently enough, until my accountant told me that a favorite client for whom I write album and music DVD reviews (under a pseudonym) hadnt paid me since August. But alls well that ends well: PDF saved the day by solving the problem that was holding up my check.
Ive done a fair amount of work for this client, an entertainment site with more traffic than Billboard: Current stats show this site draws 5 million unique monthly visitors and 70 million page views per month—not half bad in this era of content specialization and heavy competition for entertainment eyeballs.
Theyre doing pretty well. So you could imagine the mild annoyance I felt when I found out they appeared to have blown off my November invoice.
I quickly sent in another invoice Friday itemizing every review Id written since August, CCing it to the usual suspects: My boss, his boss, their accountant, and my accountant.
The freelance life can be that way. Even with the best clients, sometimes you go three months between paychecks. Its not written into the deal, but its a very real cost of doing business for ourselves. Most of us out here understand that if we dont like that part of our jobs, we can always go back to the office.
