Top Contract Clauses Freelance Writers Need to Know
For so many years I struggled with reading contracts and understanding all the different formats and legalese they come in. After almost a decade of freelancing and dozens upon dozens of contracts with all different types of clauses, here are the most important ones freelance writers need to know, how to negotiate changes, and how to create a contract that works for you AND your clients.
For more detailed info on contracts plus example clauses, read up here!
P.S. I'm not a lawyer, I'm a freelance writer :), and this doesn't replace legal advice.
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Classic Mandy. I muted myself. Sorry, sorry guys. Let's start, start over. Happy Friday. Welcome in. Welcome to this muted version of myself. So if you've ever had a contract where you end up reading over it, and it's really confusing, it's filled with a lot of legalees or it's filled with stuff that you don't understand. I'm here to help you break it down a little bit. So it took me years and years and years to understand contracts. I actually had other people read them before I ever signed them, because I just didn't understand it. It was pages and pages. Sometimes when these big companies that are like from, you know, really expensive lawyers to write in all these legal phrases that are really hard to understand for regular humans. So I, I spent all this time researching and reading about contracts just because I wanted to know more as a freelance writer, like, I just want to say, I'm not a lawyer.
I do not retain a lawyer. But I have read a lot of contracts. I've talked with a lot of people about contracts and I've read a lot of stuff from lawyers about what these contracts mean. So just disclaimer, not a lawyer, I'm a freelance writer. Shouldn't be a surprise I now, but just saying that. So we're going to go over a few things that freelance writers need to know about contracts and different clauses that they need to pay attention to because man, they can look different. Sometimes you get a bunch of contracts from different companies and they just end up with all these different you're like, Whoa, what does this mean? And why is it so complicated? So I'm hoping to take a bunch of complicated, legal ease, and boil it down to something that we can understand. So one point I wanted to make before, Oh, hi Linda.
Hi Getty. So one point I wanted to make before we kind of roll forward is that I have a contract that's very easy to understand because I don't like legally. So every contract that I send out, like I have a link below for the bundle. So like you can get my contracts and my proposal templates and all of my marketing stuff. In the bundle below it's Mandy ellis.com/bundle. But in there, like my contract is very clean and very easy to understand because I don't think the legalees is helpful. I think the legal ease is just built in from like old systems. This is my personal opinion. I think it's kind of built in from old systems, from lawyers that are trying to protect giant companies. And as long as we make it plain, what we're doing and what we're explaining, like, Hey, if this doesn't work out, here's the legal stuff.
If this doesn't work out, here's what this means. Here's all these little pieces, you know, as long as we explain that stuff and it's clear and makes sense. I think that's good. I don't want to send things to clients where it's like a bunch of gobbledy, goop and hard for them to understand where they're like, yeah, we have to get legal and dah, dah, dah, like, yeah. So we're going to go over a few of the things that I think really help freelance writers understand their their contracts. These are clauses to understand. So I wrote some notes so that you guys have something. So the very first one that's kind of easy to understand is scope of work. So the scope of work is basically what you're doing for the client. So it's basically like what types of what's your word count or what types of work are you doing in a case study?
Are you doing blog posts? Are you doing a white paper? Are you interviewing people? Are you doing some SEO component? Are you doing, you know, gathering images for them? It outlines basically all of the pieces of your project that you're going to fulfill for the client. So when the client comes back and says like, Hey, will you also do this? You're going to be like, sure, I'll do that. But we have to change the scope of work. A lot of times what happens with clients is you'll get scope creep where they're like, yeah, let's add this on. Like, let's just add this in. And they don't really talk about extra fees there. Don't really talk about paying you more. Like as you move up with clients, you know, they'll, they'll be more respectful and say like, Hey, I know you're doing extra work. Let's talk about extra fee.
But sometimes when you're first starting out your clients, aren't big time places that have worked with freelancers before they don't really understand it. So when your scope of work is outlined in your contract, that means that's the work that you're doing for the client. And if the client asks you to do something else, you either need to add that to your scope of work or make another contract, or you need to discuss that. There's an extra fee on there. And I have a line in my contract that says like additions to the scope of work will lead to extra fees. Because that way, if someone wants to add something in, I already have something in our contract that we both signed saying like, Hey, if you add something it's going to cost a little bit extra. And also like it guards against like, if I want to add stuff to a project, like if they say like, Hey, like, will you do this?
And I'm like, yeah, I will do that. And I already have it in there in the language that says like, basically if we add stuff costs extra money. So there's that piece, the scope of work is, is pretty general. It should be easy to figure out it's just what you're doing with the client. So Linda has a question right here. My answer real quick. So Linda says, how do you use legal shield? I have not, I have not used legal shield. I used legal zoom for a little bit for different reasons, but I built my contract based on like hundreds of contracts. Like I built my contract after reading all of these things from different freelance writers, from billing contracts, from other people, from building taking pieces from like my clients, contracts, like things I felt resonated with me worked for the type of work
I'm doing and really helped to protect me
Legally, but also make it clear to the client. Like, Hey, here's, here's the circumstances. Like if something goes wrong, here's what we're going to do. So I haven't used legal shield, but I have basically built my contract from a bunch of different things. Like over the years and years and years I've been freelancing. It's like your contract is something that ever evolves. Like I'm always adding something. I'm always changing it. I'm always adapting to different things. I get from clients. Like if I noticed that clients are sending me contracts that are more rights grabby, then I add that to my contract because obviously that's now important to them and I need to say like, Hey, Hey, Hey, here's how we're doing rights. When we work together, like I own the rights until you pay me. So the way my contract worked is it says like I own the rights to works completed in whole or in part until I get paid.
So that way, what happens is like sometimes you get a crappy client and they don't pay you for your work. And you end up having to say like, sorry, you don't own that work. And you can take it down or you can file a notice or whatever you have to do. You still own the rights to that work until they pay you. So that kind of gives you a little bit of legal help in terms of like, if you have a crappy client that gets your work and then doesn't pay you. So there's that piece in there. So the next piece we're going to talk about
His rights. So
One of the things I have noticed is that more contracts are getting more rights grabby. So that means like they're sending you contracts where they're like, yes, like you were going to, you're going to give us the rights to like digital print and then all other streaming or other mediums online that may or may not be created in the future. Like all of the things like things that are not created, things that are not invented yet because they're streaming and there's different things that maybe they want to hello friend. I have a friend sitting on my foot now because she's waiting for Trudeau.
So I
The right situation has changed over the years. Like I used to get contracts and now I haven't been a freelancer for decades. I've been freelancer for about a decade and the contracts have changed quite a lot in that period of time. So the REITs have been more like, Hey, we're going to protect ourselves from anything imaginable that may be invented technology wise in the future because we know how much technology is driving. All things like even contracts, even print, even content that we're writing. Right? So when you get a contract, that's like, we're going to take the rights to everything. It seems very scary.
But sometimes when
You get a contract, a lot of times they're from big magazines. They're from very large corporations where they want to own the rights to things. So you have to make a decision on rights. So basically your rights section in your contract is describing who owns the copyright to the content or the work that you created. So whether it's that, whether it's a business, whether it's you, whether you give them first North American serial rights, which means they get to publish at first and then you get it back after sometimes they have an exclusivity period, which means they get to publish it and you can't shop the idea elsewhere and can't get it published for 30 or 90 days. Sometimes they just have first North American serial rights, which means that they just get to publish it first. Sometimes they have you know, they give you just regular rights, but they say like, Hey, these rights expire in 90 days, you know, content is changing so much. So when you get a right section in your contract, what you need to pay attention to is like, what's kind of all the garbley stuff in there saying in terms of like, who ends up with it and what types of things but like, if you have like a work for hire in there. So basically a lot of times what you'll get is a work for hire agreement. So basically what you're going to do with your work for hire agreement is
Most of the times
You're going to sign it. Sometimes you're going to make some edits to it. But it's not a life or death thing. A lot of times I've seen people get really worked up about work for hire agreements.
What it's not okay
As big of a deal. If it's something that is more of a one-off thing, like there's pieces where yes, you can republish them. And yes, you can get, you can get
You know,
Like extra fees for them. But I've found like recently in the last few years, the reprint market is really small. People want something fresh, new, like even if you take that idea and put a new spin on it, that's more valuable than them printing something that's already been printed. Like content is everywhere, right? Pilaf, blogs, people have videos. People have live streams. People have podcasts, people have webinars, they have all this stuff. They have magazines and digital additions and online website versions. They have all these different mediums for content. So back, you know, decades ago, it was more important to have reprint rights because the content isn't as widespread and having that article go in multiple places could be a really good extra moneymaker for you. But for me, what I've noticed is as long as the work for hire agreement, isn't crazy. And it isn't basically asking me to like sign away my first born dog, or like do something crazy
Then, you know, it's, it's not going to be a huge crisis. So
When I'm going to read a little bit, so we have a little bit more on work for hire. So basically an all rights agreement that you get is work for hire. That means they take the rights. Like I explained before they take the rights to everything now. And in the future in all technology further invented. And basically like all of the streaming or anything, it might be invented. So when you submit your, your piece to them, you're transferring your copyright to them. So they own it in eternity forever. And you're agreeing by signing a work for hire contract that all of the content you're creating is that you cannot ever ever reprint it. You don't own it. And once they pay you for it, they own it forever. Like you, you can't get it back. So a lot of times people get squirrely over that because they're like, well, I don't want to give the rights away.
Maybe I want to sell it somewhere else. Or maybe I want to keep that idea. Or I really like this article, but you know, a lot of times retaining the rights really matters in terms of a couple of things, retaining the rights matters for reprints retaining the rights matters. If you want to keep that article for some reason. It's, I don't know most of the time it's reprints, but if there's something in there that you want copyright for, maybe you want to use it in a book later. Maybe it's something that I don't know, that is really special to you for some reason. So you want to keep the copyright. And then the third thing is you're keeping copyright for payment. So people will hold on to copyright. Like I said, my business contract that I send says that I own the copyright until I'm paid.
So there's three different options where you have worked for hire. And I assign work for hire agreements as long as they're reasonable. And most of the time, like I said, like, unless it's a, an article, you really feel like you can reprint or you want to keep it for a book or something like that. I think work for hire is okay. I'm also gonna send you guys a resource at the end where you can read a little bit more, cause I know I'm going a little bit quick here cause I'm trying to cover a bunch of different things. So don't panic on REITs. Don't freak out. It's going to be okay. But be careful about them. Think about, you know, the like sometimes the rights that you get from big magazines. We'll talk about how you're, I'm going to sneeze. Hold on.
Sorry about that. So sometimes the rights that you'll get will say like, Oh, we want movie rights or TV rights more. We want television series slash online streaming rights. Don't panic. Anytime you have a question, especially when it's on rights of your content, go back and ask your editor about it. Don't feel like you can't have a conversation with your editor, especially if you're worried about rights. And if you're worried about losing the content that you created. So when you're looking at rights, if you're worried about it, go back and say like, Hey, can I get first North American Ciro rights? Or can I get an exclusivity period where like, yes, you can publish it. But you know, it's only yours for 90 days. There's a bunch of different options that we can work with here to make sure we get rights to our work.
But honestly, a lot of times I sign rights over to them because a lot of pieces are one-off now they don't live as part of a compendium anymore. There, they can be, you know, you can use things and twist them so many different ways now. So I just don't think it's as useful to own all the rights. I think it's useful to own rights to specific things. So one of the things, hello friend, I have a little friend down here just like last week, she's figuring out the system of Trita. So she's hanging out down here. So another clause that we're going to hop to the third one that's really important is indemnification and dispute resolution. So indemnification is one that I used to be really scared about because it's with large companies who have giant legal teams and I'm just one person working on my business and that's intimidating and scary.
So when you're thinking about indemnification, here's basically what it is that the person who is indemnifying, the other is responsible for legal fees and expenses. If there is a lawsuit happening because of your content. So for example, if you, as the freelance writer, indemnify your client, that means that if someone comes back and sues over libel or some other type of media issue, or if you, if the company gets sued, right, like let's say you write a piece for a magazine and they ended up getting sued. If you had indemnified them, you would be responsible for all of the legal fees and expenses that go with with that entire situation. So that sounds scary, but there's a way around this. So what I normally do with indemnification clauses is I ask if we can have mutual indemnification. So I go in there and I say like, Hey cool.
But can we change this to mutual indemnification? Like I'll indemnify, you you'll indemnify me. And that kind of solves a lot of the like legal stuff where it's like, Hey, you writer who doesn't have a legal team, that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like you're on the hook for all these legal things that solves it. So that we're indemnifying each other. It kind of takes off the table, like all of this, like all the legal stuff being pushed on you as a writer. And it kind of brings you on as a team, right? You're now indemnifying each other. You're kind of working as a team. So anytime I get the contract, like my personal contract has the same thing. It has mutual indemnification. But then when I have mutual indemnification, that means I also need dispute resolution. So if we're indemnifying each other, we also need dispute resolution.
So basically what we're doing there is we're explaining how issues are handled. So I usually have something that says, like, if there's a dispute, a claim, a lawsuit client and freelance, or we'll work together to solve this problem. Like it's not as simple sounding as that, but it's basically saying like, Hey, if there's a problem, we're going to work together. Not only are we using mutual indemnification, so that one per like one side or the other, isn't on the hook for legal fees and making it this really sticky, messy situation. But we're also having a clause in the contract saying like, Hey, we're in this together working on it together. We're also in it together when it comes to legal stuff. And that matters a lot. So I think that, you know you can either ask them to remove it completely. Like sometimes you can just get rid of indemnification completely like step one, you can just say like, Hey, can we remove the indemnification clause?
And, sometimes they'll get rid of it. Your second step is like, Hey, if they want to do that, try for mutual indemnification and then add dispute resolution in there. And then if they still won't do that and they're like, Nope, you have to indemnify this client. Like, sorry, this is just how our contract works. You have to decide whether or not you want to work with them. So I've signed a bunch of contracts like that, where I've identified a client, like before I understood fully what that meant or how that really worked. And you know, you have to decide whether or not that client is worth working with in that scenario. So do you feel comfortable indemnifying them? Do you feel comfortable, you know, like in the small likelihood that someone might Sue them over your content, do you feel okay with that?
A lot of times they'll work with you. Like, let's just put that out there. A lot of times clients won't be like, no, I'm not going to do this. You know, a lot of times clients are very much like, yeah, sure. I'll work with you. Yeah. Mutual indemnification. Okay. Or, yeah, we'll just get rid of the indemnification clause or we'll figure out, you know, some other ways sometimes what happens is they send you their general contractor agreement, which is for everybody, from the plumber to the marketing consultant, to you, the freelance writer, to the person, who's fixing a hole in their wall, like they're fixing the dry wall. Like they send it to everybody or even people who give them deliveries. Right. So there's a lot of things sometimes that are in there that don't apply to you. And it's fair to go back and say like, Hey, this isn't going to work for me.
Especially when you see stuff in there, like insurance and liability. And all those things that like usually freelancers don't have to deal with. So it's always fair to go back and ask the client about it. You can ask them to remove it. You can ask them, do mutual indemnification and you can ask them, do dispute resolution in there. So it's not scary. You can always ask them about it. So don't get freaked out. If you see like freelance or bust, identify client against all claims I ever have happened against like legal in other way. Oh, like, don't get worried about all that stuff. Just go ask the question. It's not a big deal. The next one that we're going to over is payment terms. So payment terms are basically how you get paid, right? It talks about your net terms, which could be net 14, which basically means 14 days after you send your invoice, you get paid.
So net anything is just how many days after you send your invoice to get paid. Sometimes it talks about if you have late fees whether you have rush fees, like if they ask you like, Hey, I need this in six days. And you're like, cool. My contract says any, anything less than seven days will incur rush fees. Just so you know payment terms usually talk about like whether or not you get paid if the contract gets terminated and it also talks about Oh, and that leads to kill fees for magazine. So if the magazine decides not to publish your piece or they don't like it they might have a kill fee in there saying like, yeah, you get 50% or 25% of the regular rate if we decide not to publish it. And it also talks about, you know, how long you're getting paid.
So let's say you have a, a retainer agreement with someone. It says like payment terms are like, I will send you an invoice on the first of the month for the next three months, because we're working together on our 90 day contract. It spells out all the ways that payment is affected. So like, whether that's when you get paid circumstances where you don't get paid circumstances where you get partially paid or circumstances where the length of time you get paid matters. So payment terms are kind of cut and dry most of the time. And you should always have them in there. You should always know when you're getting paid. You should always be able to explain when you can send your invoice. You should always know like how long the contract is. If you if there's late fees in there, like sometimes when you get a contract from a client and it says like net 90, or like they pay you like every, whatever their cycle is, you can always go back and ask them to change that.
So like, I've done that a bunch of times. I'm like, Hey, this is not gonna work for me. Like net 90, isn't going to work. Can you do you know, net 30 or net 14? Which is my ideal. Sometimes with businesses is a little more flexible than magazines. Magazines sometimes have their own archaic model that they work under. And they're like, Nope, this is how we've done it for 50 years. This is how we will do it. Excuse me. Every freelancer gets paid this way. But again, always ask if you have a question, always ask, but I was really scared that when I went back to a client and asked about a contract, they would think like, Oh my gosh, what a dumb, dumb, like, she doesn't know what she's doing. She's so stupid. Why would we ever hire her? No, what I learned was a lot of the good freelancers are like, Aw, sister, like, we're not doing this.
Like, I'm not doing net 90 and I'm not doing, you know, I want first North American steel rights. Like they go back and ask questions and they, they know their rights. They know what they should be paid. They know like all these things. So really when you don't ask questions and you just sign something, that's more of a signal that you don't know what you're doing than someone who comes back and has questions and asks about it and is thinking about it and understands the legal stuff. So always ask questions. It's, it's really important that you understand what you're signing. So number five would be our non-competes non-competes have been sneaking in a little bit more in my contracts recently. And basically non-competes say like, Hey, if you work with us, you can't work with any of our competitors in this industry, which is BS.
Like, let's just put that out there. They can not do that. So there is an FTC regulation that this is restraint of trade in this format. So in certain formats that FTC restraint of trade law does not apply. But when you are restricting trade of businesses within an industry like ours it applies. So any contract that you get that has a non-compete basically that says you can't work for other clients in that niche, that's essentially illegal. So just flash here, just remind me, I'm not a lawyer. These are things I've read from legal websites. So just flash, but let's go on. So them asking you not to work with other people in your industry is illegal.
And when in
This context is illegal. So when you get that in a contract, you get a non-compete the answer is to go back to them and say like, Hey, can you get rid of this non-compete section, right? That's your very first status? Like, Hey, can we just remove this non-compete session? Because like I said, a lot of times freelancers get contracts for other people, right? The other industries, other blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't apply to us. So basically think about it this way. If someone came to me and said, like, you can't write for real estate, any other real estate company than us, like, I can't grow my business. I now can only work for them. And if I lose work from them and I've worked for them for a month and they're like, Oh yeah, the non-compete lasts for three years. Like, okay, for the next three years, I can't work for anybody in real estate.
Like that's not going to be okay, that's not going to work. So what we want to do is number one, remove it, ask them to remove it. If they won't remove it. And they're really stubborn about it. And they're worried, you're going to leak trade secrets all over the internet. You can go back to them and say like, fine list your top three competitors. And I won't work for them for the next year or six months, or however long you want to say, but it's not forever. Like it's not forever. So you need to set a time limit and a number. So you need to go back and say like, if you must have this non-compete for some magic reason, you can only pick three competitors. And it can only last six months to a year because you don't know how long you're going to work with them. Let's say you only work with them for six months while your non-compete is up in six months. Cool. Now you can grow your business. You don't want it to be the super long non-compete where
You're basically outlawed
From working with any of their, any people in your industry to grow your business. Like that's not okay. So if they won't agree to that, right, if they're like, Nope, this is a non-compete, you must sign it. Like, I just don't think that's a good business practice. And I wouldn't work with that client if they want to restrict your business so much that you can't work within your industry. And they're so worried about all these things like that. They've created this magic, new idea that no one, no one in the last thousands and thousands of years has ever come up with like, no, you're on crazy planet. Like I'm out. Sorry. No. And, and I have bills to pay. I have kibbles to put in bowls. I have things to do, like, sorry, that's not going to work. And guess what? There's many more clients who are much more reasonable and understand your running a business.
They're not going to sit there and make you make you cut your business just so you can work with them. Like that's crazy. So if you see a, non-compete ask them to remove it. And if that doesn't work, then what you want to do is ask them for three competitors and set a time limit of like six months to a year. If that doesn't work and they still want to go with this crazy, non-compete just run away, run far away and run fast. The last couple of things, our NDAs and confidentiality, I've signed a lot of NDAs. And they asked me to be confidential about processes or things or spreadsheets or whatever. And those new time limit too. I've had NDAs come into my inbox that are forever and hallways. Like you must sign this NDA and never tell anyone anything, because even when you're 85, if you forget and have Alzheimer's and tell someone we're going to legalize you like now, so you need to have like, you need to have a time limit.
I like one year, like anything that I can keep to a year or below is like all star gold to me. Sometimes they want two years or three years or five years, like five years is way too long. They probably will be the dust in your inbox, like five years from now. So what you need to do is sign the NDA that has like, at least a year, like, or at least like at most, a year, I really hate two years. I think I've signed one. That's been two years. But anytime that comes up, just like, go back and ask a question about making it shorter because you do not do not sign an NDA. Like someone put in one of the forums, like one of the groups I'm in and NDA that was forever. Like, she's like, Oh, I found this template to use for an NDA that I can send to people that are like, you know, instead of using the business's NDA, I can use my NDA, but her NDA template had it forever.
It went forever. Like, and she was like, yeah, I'm going to send this to my clients. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need a time limit. You can't do it forever. Like you have no idea. Like that's a bad, bad look. It's no, you need a time limit. Anything that you need to keep confidential. You need to, to what needs to be kept confidential for how long and from who all of the things in your NDA need to spell that out. So if you get an NDA in there, it's typically like, sometimes it's a clause. Sometimes it's another document, but you need to pay attention to that because you don't want to be like, Oh yeah, I worked at this other company and they did this. And like, no, you need to have a time limit on there, on your NDA so that you're not releasing other things that you could be legally in for.
So your NDA is your nondisclosure agreement. That basically just means that you are not disclosing pieces of your agreement or how you worked with them or trade secrets or special sauce or magic formulas to anybody else. And to keep yourself legally safe, you want to keep that as short of a time period, as you can. So your nondisclosure agreement and your confidentiality kind of go together. So the last little piece I'm going to go over, I know we're a little bit over time than we needed questions. Cause this is really, really important. I really struggled with contracts for a very long time. And I'm hoping to make this like as understandable and clean as possible. I know it's a little jumbly sometimes, but I think a lot of freelance writers really struggle with contracts because they're going from being an employee to owning a business and they don't get that.
There's like no onboarding sometimes where you're like, Oh crap. Like what do I do when I get a client? Where how do I send a proposal? How do I send a contract? How do I do all these things? Like? So contracts are really important. They mean a lot in our business. And I think knowing basically the nuts and bolts of them and understanding it is really, really critical. So we're talking about number seven is insurance. So this was something I didn't get until a couple of years ago because I had never been asked. I didn't even know that like writer insurance was like a thing I knew there was like health insurance and liability insurance and stuff. But I did not realize there was like errors and omissions and like general liability for specifically writers. So I got this for a client and I've kept it because I feel good about it.
I liked the extra production protection that it provides and it's like $1,200 a year. So basically a hundred dollars a month. So the insurance is basically protecting you against like being sued or any kind of legal stuff that pops up. Like if you misquoted someone or you made a mistake somewhere along the line. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit more like more specifically, I have notes. So your Eno is basically protecting you against like claims of negligence, omissions of errors that you've made misrepresentation inaccurate advice slander or libel. And then if you get like then it can also be like, if someone accuses you of missing a deadline or being negligent, like that falls under Eno, which is Arizona missions general liability is protecting the copyright infringement part. So if you have general liability that protects you and your company from copyright infringement or property damage or injuries or also like harm to people's reputation or harm to other things that like it's generally covering a bunch of liabilities that you have.
So why I kept this was because I just feel like it's a good business practice to have insurance for your business. Like once I got it and I understood more about it and I, I actually went through this really crazy period to get it because it was just like all of a sudden I needed this thing and I had to pull it together at the very last second, but I felt really good about having it because a bunch of my friends who make oodles more money than I did and were like, Oh yeah, I have that already. And I'm like, Oh, okay. And also I think that there's a lot of situations where, you know, it's just really good to have it. It's, it's a nice buffer, you know, if you already have an LLC, that's one buffer, but insurance is another buffer that you can have against, you know, legal issues with your business or mistakes that you made because we're human, we make mistakes.
But you know, like I said, it's about 1200 bucks a year for Eno and for general liability together. But I got it because of a client. And I still think that it's useful to get like, as you start working with bigger clients, so maybe you don't need it in the initial, hi Charlotte. Maybe you don't need it in the initial years of being a freelance writer, as you kind of get things together and work out your processes, figure out onboarding, excuse me, sorry. I have hiccups say contracts and how you want to run your business. But I think as you get more into freelancing, having the insurance is really nice. It also helps if you're going to have a VA or some other person help you with your work, this protects you and your company. So whoever works for your company this would allegedly protect them.
So those are kind of like the things that we need to pay attention for, with contracts, all the clauses that are kind of high up, there's other clauses that you'll see in contracts. There will always be some sort of weird stuff. Like anytime you work with certain bigger businesses that give contracts to like hundreds of different types of people, you will come across the weirdest stuff. I promise you, but these are kind of the important ones we need to know to keep ourselves as legally protected as possible. So as I go through some questions up here, I am going to pop on my little first, even though I have one over here. So very sleeping as per usual. So Barry sleeping, he looks like he's really comfortable. And then Minnie's over here. Mini. You got to go lay down over here.
[Inaudible] Come on, come on. You got to go all the way over here. No mine. Don't mine. There we go. Good job. You did it. She's figured out the system. Y'all she's figured out the system. Good job there. You're great. Eight plus
You did a great job. You slept through the whole contract thing, Right? Me. Can you lay down or can you give me your pop? Can we show someone the things?
Okay. Can you give me your pump? You have to give me your mom pop good job, even though I had
To do it. All right. So Linda's question was how have you used legal shield? I have not. And then there's another one. I'm gonna pop in here. Did do so Linda says she got the bundled and reviewed them. They are great. Thank you so much, Linda. I'm really glad that they've been helpful. Like I said, like I built the bundle out of things that I really wanted as a freelance writer, like things that I couldn't really find on the market unless I created my own stuff and I got tired of creating my own stuff all the time. So yeah, so the bundle itself is like from years of me adding things and putting things together and like talking to my other freelance friends and talking to people who were in the industry of like, how does this work? And what does, you know, does this make sense?
And sending them like they're actively sent to other people's legal departments and businesses and magazines. And so I'm glad that the bundle was helpful. Linda, let's see if we can pop something out. So she goes, how do you do no refund causes? So Linda, this is a great question. So she says, how do you handle no refund clauses? I've had issues where clients sign a contract, agreeing to a no refund, then screen for refund after receiving the documents. So my contract says, no refunds will be given it's in the payment terms section. It says no refunds will be given at something that they sign. Like. I think that as long as they sign it, they know what they're signing. So there's that. But if they're paying you over, like, that's one of the reasons I do 50% upfront and 50% on delivery is because like, when you're working with the business, at least getting something upfront, if for some reason, something bad happens and they don't pay your other 50%, at least you got paid and you can just tell them like, sorry, your contract says no refund.
So even though they're upset and they want a refund, like your contract says no refunds, and you can say, Hey, I totally understand. You're upset. You know, but the contract we signed says, no refunds, I'm sorry about that. And if they file some other situation, like if they file a claim on PayPal or whatever, like you have a contract that they signed that says no refund. So that should clear it up pretty quickly. So the times like I have given refunds, even though my contract says no refunds, I have still given refunds to clients where I felt like it was just fair to give them a refund. Like I decided we weren't a fit for each other. So I gave them a partial refund. I decided that the work that we were doing, like, I was just like, man, I am not a fit for this.
Like, even though they like working with me, this work, isn't a fit for me. And so I gave them a refund on that. Like sometimes it's just good business practice to give someone a refund, even when your contract says no refunds, because you know, it makes them feel better. And plus it's, I feel like it's more, that way, it's more fair to give them their money back for something you didn't do or something that isn't going to get accomplished or something you're not a fit for. So the, okay. So next question. I have one from Tommy that says, have you ever been paid at Kilby? This is a good question. I think the answer is once I think I got paid to kill fee one time. And they're not as common in magazine contracts anymore. So I got paid a kill fee like years and years ago because I wrote an article and it turns out they changed direction for the pup.
Like that edition, they changed it or whatever it was, it was a long time ago. And it was once. But that's the only time I've been paid to kill fee. And it was sad because I really love that piece, but at least I got paid partially for it. Linda says NDA, so yeah. Non-Disclosure agreement. Yeah. So Linda, it sounds like if there's nothing wrong with the document and they want a refund, they're like looking for free services, that's like a client issue. Like that's something where you're working with people who aren't giving you good vibes. So like from the beginning, like that means you need to work with people who have like a more reasonable budget and raise your prices. Or if you start working with people who are giving you a lot of trouble up front, like they're real nitpicky about the contractor, they're real nit picky about this, that, and the other thing then that to me is, is already starting to be a problem because that means that even if you turn in something perfect, they're still going to nitpick it and be like, this is imperfect.
You didn't do a good job. Like you suck at this. So there's certain things where like, people like to tinker, there are certain times where people like to tinker and they, they want to mess with their stuff and kind of edit it and make it their own. And that's fine. But the difference is that if they come back and they're like, well, you don't know what you're doing because of X, Y, Z. And like, if you already start to have problems in the beginning, like that's a big thing. And if you end up having a situation where you keep having it over and over again, then you need to ask for all your money up front. So if you keep having a situation where someone's like wanting free services, or you keep ended up in this client pool where people are like refund, refund, refund you either need to get out of that type of work and you need to raise your prices so that you're not working for people who are asking for so many refunds and you need to get paid a hundred percent upfront and make it very clear that when they pay you, there's a note or a something on that invoice that says like, please note, no refunds are given.
So not only is your contract saying no refunds, but your invoice then is saying no refunds. But honestly, I think if you're having that problem, you're in the wrong client pool. So get out of the client pool, get out of that type of work and find people who value what you're doing. Cause a lot of times the people who are asking for free stuff, they don't value what you're doing. They're just like, you know, that doesn't, they're, they're looking for a cheap thing that they don't want to do themselves. They want to pay 20 bucks for that. Isn't going to work out. So just run far away from that. So okay. So we went a little bit long today, but if he felt like this was helpful, if you felt like you got value out of this, or like, you feel like this could be something you could share with a friend to help them make sure to give it a thumbs up, make sure to subscribe below.
I do this every week Fridays 12:00 PM central time. 10:00 AM. I think Pacific time. I'm not always great with time zone. So it's noon, noon central 10:00 AM Pacific, but if you've felt like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up, subscribe, tell your friends about it. I'm going to go over one more time. The clauses, just so we have it wrapped up at the end. So I wrote all these down just so we have them. So number one, scope of work, this is basically what you're doing for the client. This is all the types of work that you're doing. Revision policy, all that stuff. Then your number two is that you're doing rights and they're different for businesses, magazines, and then work for hire agreements. But it's okay to assign work for hire agreements, as long as you understand what that means.
And then that with businesses, you have a specific policy about what the rights transfer is and with magazines you can try first North American civil rights or get an exclusivity period of 30 or 90 days, whatever works for them. Your next one is indemnification and dispute resolution. So this is who's on the hook for legal fees. And then how will you resolve a problem? I like mutual indemnification. And then I like a dispute resolution that spells out like, Hey, we're a team working together. Amongst these issues, your next one is payment terms. So basically how you get paid, the avenues you get paid like Stripe or PayPal or ACH, which is direct deposit or check also like late fees or termination terms or kill fees or like how long your contract is, your fifth one is non-competes. I do not like non-competes.
I asked for them to remove every time. And if for some reason I want to keep working with that client. I really like them. I will say name your top three competitors. And I will not work with them for six months or a year, but I keep it really short. And I keep it to a very small number of people. But almost like every time I just ask them to remove it, if they won't remove it, like if they're very staunch in their stance about having the non-compete in there, I would run away. Like they're trying to restrict your business. They do not have respect for you growing your business. They care about them and their rights and their property and whatever. And your next one, your number six is your NDAs and confidentiality. So your nondisclosure agreement is NDA and confidentiality. This basically talks about like what things you can't share with other businesses like IP or processes or spreadsheets or whatever types of things they share with you can't share with other people.
Make sure it's not forever. I like at least like a minute, like a most a year, but sometimes they make you do two years, but don't sign three and five years. Like make it as short as you can. Last one number seven is insurance. So I didn't get this for awhile, but I found is helpful. You get Eno, which is Arizona missions and you get general liability, which covers you from like all different types of things from like property damage to copyright claims and Arizona missions is basically like negligence or liable or you gave inaccurate advice or like you miss art represented something. So I find insurance is helpful once you're a little bit later, excuse me, later in your career. But the insurance is great just for like, if you have other people working under you, like if you have a VA or if you have basically someone or you're working on more complicated things that you're worried about legal stuff with, but I've kept my insurance just because I like having it.
But those are your seven things that you need to pay attention to in your contracts. This went a little long today. I'm going to give you guys one last update because Charlotte's being sassy. Charlotte, you have the sit over here. Come on. No, you have to participate over here. Come on, come on. There we go. Oh, now you're like went far away. Come on, sit you down. Good job barrier. All-Star you're the most beautiful hamster on the whole plant. He's like, yes I am. And I'm beautiful at 14 and a half. You're just sassy. You got your funny little ear and your little teeth. Okay. All right. So I hope this was helpful for y'all. Let's do it this week. So I hope this was helpful if you feel like it was share it, subscribe like it. And I will see you guys next Friday. Bye. Hope you have a great weekend.
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