Are You Stuck Chasing Payments As A Blogger?

This is a collaborative post. 

 

One of the amazing things as a blogger is that you get to earn money online. You can use it to pay for a holiday, save up that emergency fund or even pout towards your early retirement dreams. The possibilities for where that money can go are endless, and totally up to you! 

 

In fact, the more you work and dedicate time to being online and growing your own online brand, then the chances are that more and more companies are going to contact you. This being that they would like to use your audience to market something that they want to sell! This can be a fashion brand, a banking brand; there are so many options. 

 

The nice thing about this is that you can choose who you work for and decide on your own budget. You can request a certain amount to be paid in exchange for a blog post, or social media campaign. It all depends on how your online business works! Some of the biggest names in the social media influencer world make thousands each month in relation to sponsored content. Which means that all of that work needs invoicing and payments received. 

One of the major downsides to earning money online and sending digital invoices is that some people just don’t pay. They don’t pay on time and they are slow to eventually send payment. I know there are some bloggers out there who have waited months for a payment to be made from a company. Sometimes, these are really big, multi-national companies who just don’t pay their invoices on time. 

 

However, there might be a solution for you, especially if you are being held back or cannot afford the bill as a result of slow payments. 

 

Invoice Financing. 

Invoice financing might work will for you if you are struggling to keep up with bills as you aren’t being paid on time. Invoice Financing allows immediate access to cash, and therefore a positive cash flow. As the majority of online businesses don’t have any property as such, this can be a problem with traditional routes. 

 

However, because of the value of invoicing, that secures the finances instead. 

 

There are two different types of Invoice Financing. Invoice Discounting and Invoice Factoring. 

 

Invoice Discounting. 

Invoice Discounting is more straight forward. You sell unpaid invoices to  a lender and they give you a percentage of the value. Then, once the rest of the invoice is paid, then the lender pays you the remaining amount back, minus their fee. 

 

Invoice Factoring. 

Invoice Factoring works in the same way to invoice, but you are not responsible for collecting debts from your customers. SO, if a company is struggling to pay your invoice as they themselves are facing financial struggles, then with Invoice Factoring then this wouldn’t be your problem. The lender deals with this as well. 

 

Obviously, in an ideal world we would all get paid on time; either the day you send your invoice off or within the usual 28 day period of payment terms. However, there are always going to be cases where people just don’t pay up. When I first started taking sponsored posts, I had one who just didn’t pay, no matter how much chasing I did! I eventually removed the post as they didn’t ever get back in touch. 

 

However, if you rely on your online business as your sole income, then you might need to look at different options for getting that cash flow going. Invoice Financing is just one of these options. As always, you need to read the small print carefully and see exactly what you might be signing up for. Hopefully, this would be as a last resort after chasing the amount yourself.