Getting paid is a pain point for a lot of freelance bloggers. We mainly face these three questions: How, how often, and how much?
Now, how much you charge depends on a lot of factors including niche, experience and confidence. How often depends on whether you are getting paid monthly, weekly, per post and/or if you are charging a retainer for the privilege of receiving your kickass services. (Go, you! I’m so proud!)
And the how part is often solved through a mutual love for PayPal, the most popular online payment processor.
Ah, I love PayPal. Or I used to.
I used it religiously for getting paid, shopping online, and paying for stuff. How could I not? It’s easy to use, comes with a ready template for billing clients, and there’s no minimum amount at which you can withdraw the money to your linked bank account. Whether it is 5 bucks or 5000, you can withdraw it to your bank, and it is free to do so.
Then PayPal got lazy, didn’t comply with some of the business regulations in Turkey, and being an international writer became even more difficult. And Turkey isn’t the only country where PayPal doesn’t work in. This is a problem because editors are increasingly using PayPal as their preferred payment method. Fees are a lot less compared to checks, and some writers even figured out how to pay even less in transaction fees.
There are reputable marketplaces where you are matched with clients according to your experience and selected niches. ClearVoice is one of them. Guess the only way they pay their writers.
PayPal is also the default payment method for most merchants, so this negatively affects your affiliate income as well.
So what are alternative payment methods? [Read more…]