FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.

If there’s one question I see from new freelance copywriters more than any other, it’s “do I need a freelance contract?”. 

Thing is, it’s a question that often answers itself. 

I mean, the folk asking this also complain that…

• Their most recent client engagement is now refusing to pay despite running the copy they created.
• The client they thought was awesome is now adding a tonne of extra work into the agreement without increasing pay (often referred to as scope creep)
• There’s an issue where the client is unhappy with the deliverable because it’s completely different to what they thought they’d be getting.

I could go on. 

There’s a tonne of issues and problems freelance copywriters like you experience… often needlessly.  

Issues that cost money, time, and effort.  

Issues that could be almost completely eradicated with a single addition to your client onboarding process.  

That addition is a comprehensive, water-tight, freelance contract (sometimes referred to as a freelance agreement). 

I’m going to go over the absolute basics you need in your contract to, at the very least, cover your arse.  

However, before I get into the details this piece comes with one huge caveat. 

That is, I am not a lawyer. 

All opinions in this piece are intended as information. I’ll be covering what 10 years of freelancing have taught me to include in my contract and what I think you need to include in yours. 

However, if you want a truly watertight contract, you need to take this article as a starting point. And then go and visit a freelance contract specialist for legal counsel.  

They’ll be able to make all of the wording and approach relevant and applicable to your region and it’s specific laws.  

With that out of the way, let’s get onto the basics. 

What is a freelance contract? 

A freelance contract is a legally binding agreement between a freelance consultant and their client’s business. 

It outlines the specifics of the working agreement, covering everything from what you’ll be doing to how much you’ll b paid and when that payment should be made.  

It’s not a guarantee that everything will go smoothly, but simply having a contract will cut 90% of the crappy clients who will scam you from your client roster. 

Which will allow you to focus more intently on the clients who are gonna help you scale to a 6-figure freelance income.

Seriously, a solid freelance agreement is to shitty clients what bug repellant is to mosquitos.  

In my experience, most scam clients won’t want to sign a contract. By sending them one you’re saving yourself a tonne of hassle later down the line. 

You’ll see a couple of different names for a freelance contract across the web. 

Some will call them a freelance contract. 

Others a freelance contractor agreement. 

Others still a freelance agreement. 

The name isn’t important. The fact that it covers your arse against the majority of scams is. 

But don’t misunderstand me. 

This is not just about covering your own arse. A good freelance contract is there to provide security for both parties involved in the project. 

It’s just as much about keeping the client at ease as it is securing your income. 

Don’t do what I’ve seen some others do and write a contract that only protects you. 

FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.

When do you need a freelance contract? 

I see a lot of people asking if they should use a freelance agreement for job type X, position Y, or offer Z. 

All of these questions are a waste of time. 

If you’re doing work for pay, then you need a freelance contract. 

I mean, you wouldn’t expect any other professional service provider to work without a contract, right? 

Would a lawyer take on a new job without a contract? No. 

Would a builder agree to build your extension with nothing but a verbal agreement? No.  

Would a management consultant improve a large brand’s operations with little more than a hope and prayer they’d pay? No.  

You, as a freelance copywriter, are no different to these service providers. 

Freelance contractors are professional service providers. And we all need to use a contract for every single job we take on.  

I don’t care if it’s $100 for a blog article or $10,000 for a sales letter. 

You, Need. A. Contract. 

Years back when I was first building my business I didn’t think I needed one. 

I was more focused on getting clients in that operating with them as a professional. 

And I got burned. 

At a time in my career where even a $100 payment would make all the difference, I found myself chasing a client for £800 (about $1100 US).

It took me months to get that money because I didn’t make them sign a simple freelance contract. 

I wasted countless hours crafting emails, making unsuccessful calls, and asking friends with legal experience for advice. 

If I’d just got them to sign an agreement, I could have got them to pay up far easier because the law would be on my side.  

But I wasted countless hours needlessly. 

Hours I could have used to make even more money. 

Sure, I got the £800 back, but I have no idea how much money I lost because I didn’t have the time to pursue new opportunities.  

That simple error cost me an unknown sum, but more importantly, it cost me peace of mind in the long term. 

Which is what this all comes back to. 

More than anything else, your freelance contract is an insurance policy. 

It’s peace of mind. 

Something to help you avoid falling into that terrible trap of freelance burnout.

A simple document that allows you to focus on the quality of your work rather than worrying if you’ll get paid or if this project will balloon into an unmanageable beast. 

But what does your contract need to include to provide that peace of mind? 

Here’s what I’ve found to work in my almost decade of freelance copywriting experience.  

What should your freelance contract include?

Again, I need to mention that these are the clauses that have worked for me. 

They’re a starting point, and to ensure they’re right for your business consult a legal professional in your area to get the most relevant advice. 

When coming up with your own clauses to take to a legal pro, there are two specific lenses I want you to view your contract through; 

1. What would a judge – who has no idea of the agreement, who either party is, or our reputations – make of the wording and agreements?
2. Is this fair? Your freelance contract is not a way for you to screw over clients It’s there to protect both parties equally.  

If you can make the language clear and understandable and the terms fair for all involved, you can’t really go wrong. 

Then it’s just a case of ensuring the terms are relevant and legally sound.  

Below I’ll be breaking each of my proposed terms for your freelance contract down in detail.  Before that though, I thought I’d put a nice infographic of the most important ones together for you. 

Feel free to share it!

Now, onto the clauses you need to include in any freelance agreement. 

FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.

Names, addresses, dates

You need to include the specific information for each party signing the contract. Specifically, you should include;

• Full names (Peter Boyle – not P.Boyle or P.B.)
• Full business address
• Dates of when the contract is signed (ensuring later time-based clauses have an anchor date to run from)

You can’t skip this.  

If there are insufficient identifying details, a judge might have difficulty proving you or the client are the people the contract is referring to. 

Scope of work

You need to be super fucking crystal clear on the scope of work.

I can’t tell you how often I see people complaining that the client is adding deliverable X, service Y, or action Z to the agreement.  

Additions which mean the project is no longer profitable for the freelancer. 

In the templates I provide through this download, a lot of the details are pre-written. However, this is one of the things you’ll need to customise for each and every client. 

When you’re writing this, make it so easy to understand an illiterate baby would get it.  

Write down EXACTLY what you are going to do for the client.  

No ambiguity. 

For example, if you’re doing blog writing, don’t say “consultant will assist the client with blog growth”. 

Because that could grow to include writing, promotion, strategy, images, and so much more.  

You need to be super-specific. Basically write down a checklist of what you’ll give the client. 

So that could be something like;

“Consultant will produce the blow deliverables for the client every month;

• Two blog posts of 2000 – 2500 words
• 4 social media posts for blog post promotion
• A single one-hour phone call to discuss the strategy of future posts 

Then, if the client says “Can you also do X?”, you can say something like “sure thing, I can add that to the freelance agreement we have in place for an extra $XX per month”.

This way, you never find the work ballooning to a point where it’s no longer profitable.

Contact preferences

Ever heard the phrase “A camel s a horse designed by a committee”? 

It’s a pretty accurate description of how things go off track when multiple people are involved in a single project. 

Something that happens way too often with freelance projects.  

If you’re taking direction from multiple people, the project never ends up doing any one thing particularly well. 

Marketing will want this deliverable to increase reach. 

Sales will want it to sell/qualify leads

Legal will want to water it down so it doesn’t come close to breaking any rules.  

Every department has their own goals and ideas. 

If you want to avoid endless rounds of edits and competing input that will ensure your deliverable is shite, do this.  

Ensure you have a single point of contact within the client’s business.  

Make sure that point of contact is the person managing the wider project your deliverable is to be entered into.  

That’ll mean your feedback is specific and will help you produce something that helps the company achieve its wider goal. 

Which leads to better testimonials and the likelihood of referrals. 

Payment terms

You need to list how, when, and how much you expect to get paid for the work. 

At the base level that’ll look something like the below.  

The fee for this project is $XX,XXX. 

However, you should also include the details of your payment terms. 

For example, I don’t start any work without an up-front deposit.

And I recommend you do the same. 

I view the deposit as the client reserving my time. And the final payment is them buying the work from me.  

You need something up-front so, even if the client doesn’t pay the final invoice, you’re not completely out of pocket on the project. 

I’d recommend a 50% deposit, 50% completion for most people.  

However, for large projects you may want to run it on milestones. 

That could be 34% deposit, 33% for milestone 1, and 33% completion. 

Or 20-25% per milestone depending on the project.

In addition, you need to say how long the client has to pay upon receipt of your invoice. I go with Net 15, which means the client has 15 days from receipt of the invoice to pay.  

You may have to amend this based on the client’s finance department’s processes. 

I also recommend including your late fee charges for those who refuse to pay. 

I’ve had late payers scramble when they realise I charge 2% compounding interest per month of non-payment.  

Whatever your preferred terms are, they need to be crystal clear. I recommend covering the below in the payment section;

• Payment amount
• Deposit/milestone details
• Payment terms (how long do they have to pay)
• Late fees 

Kill fee / termination

Sometimes a project has to be cancelled through no fault of yours.  

Could be budgetary constraints (a lot of people have experienced this through the COVID-19 pandemic). 

Could be the brand deciding to go in a different direction. 

Whatever the course, it’s not fair for you to not be paid for the time you’ve already put into the project.  

You don’t deserve full payment, but you also don’t deserve to go unpaid for the work you’ve already completed. 

This is often called a kill fee.  

Some freelancers write a 25-50% fee into their contracts. 

Personally, I don’t use a kill fee but rather operate with a 50% non-refundable deposit or, for retainers, they pay at the start of the month for my time.  

That way I know I’m going to at least get 50% of the agreed fee, even if the project is ended partway through. 

In addition to the financial element of project cancellation, you want to build the process for ending the project into your freelance contract.  

My preferred method is to include a time period of notice to be served in writing. 

For retainer fee clients, that’s a full 30 days of notice to end the contract. 

For individual project clients, I’ll say at least 7 days notice to tie off loose ends. 

These clauses in conjunction with your kill fee/deposit will ensure you get enough notice to stop work whilst still getting at least some of the fee.

FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.

Ownership

Who owns the work you produce? 

You’d think that it’d be the client.

And you’d be right. Once the work is paid for they should own what you produce. That’s the whole point of this freelance agreement. 

They’re paying you to produce something for them.  

But there’s a caveat in there. 

That caveat being they only own the work once full payment has been made to you. 

If they haven’t paid in full, you still own the work. 

This gives you the right to claim the work as your own if the client dips without paying but still uses what you’ve created.  

So you could then re-use t somewhere else, sell it to another potential client, or simply consign it to the trash can.  

What you want to do with it is your business. 

If the client hasn’t paid for it, they don’t get to use it. 

Revisions

How many revisions are you going to offer your clients? 

If you don’t outline this and say something like “payment upon acceptance of the [DELIVERABLE]” then you could find yourself working for weeks/months on a single piece through countless rounds of edits.  

The generally accepted revision policy includes 2 rounds of edits. 

If you’ve done your research and the client is pretty helpful, that should be more than enough. 

However many you decide to include, ensure it’s detailed in your freelance contract. 

NDA

There’s a tonne of advice out there telling you how NDAs are the devil. And how signing them is a mistake for any freelancer. 

I disagree.  

All an NDA is is a promise that you won’t share the company’s sensitive information (like data, upcoming plans, specific strategy) with other people without first getting permission. 

Which is completely reasonable. 

A lot of brands will want you to sign a separate NDA, however, I recommend you include a small clause about the privacy of data in your freelance agreement. 

If for no other reason than it helps the client rest a little easier.  

Terms and conditions

As a freelancer, you are an independent contractor. Not an employee.  

I’ve spoken at length before about how that’s an important differentiator from a mindset standpoint. 

However,  it’s also important from a legal standpoint.  

As an employee you would expect the client to furnish you with;

• Equipment to get the job done
• Pension/healthcare/benefits
• Training materials
• Them to have your back and vice versa in various situations
• Advice and information to help with taxes

You can’t expect any of these, and really, you don’t want them. 

You don’t want to be kept under the client’s thumb. 

So you need to explicitly state that you are an independent contractor and not an employee. And that your relationship lasts as long as this project. 

Governing Provisions

If this all goes south, in which court are you going to iron out the details? 

Once upon a time this might not have been an issue.

However, thanks to the internet the proliferation of remote workers has exploded.

That means you could be facing an international court case. 

This is all extremely uncommon, but if it does go to court then you want to be in your region’s court.  

So make sure you outline the court who will oversee the case if it goes south.   

Signatures

When it’s all been put together it’s finally time to get the client to sign.  

All you need to put here are three details.  

1. The client’s name (printed)
2. A space for their signature
3. The date the contract is signed

Those are the key clauses you should be including in your freelance contract. 

However, you should also ensure the wording and approach is 100% relevant for your region of the world by getting local legal representation. 

FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.

How should you send, store, and organise your freelance contracts? 

One of the things freelance contract template advice rarely covers is how to organise, store, and send your agreements. 

It’s a shame cause it’s actually super important. 

You need to store your contracts for the entire period the client could pursue legal action against you. 

You’re going to need to check what that limit is in your region of the world (again a call for good legal counsel). 

My business is incorporated in the UK. I know that the Limitation Act 1980 means clients could pursue legal action against me up to 6 years after the fact.  

So I need to keep all the freelance agreements I have for a period of 6 years. 

You need to know what the requirement is where you live. Don’t worry, a simple Google search should help you out. 

How do I store them? 

Well, I now use a tool called Dubsado for all of my freelance contract templates, along with proposal templates. 

Dubsado allows me to quickly and easily organise and send my freelance contracts and proposals to clients. 

I leave all f my contracts within Dubsado for the length of the project.  

Onc the project is complete, I download them and store them in two places. 

1. An external hard drive in a designated folder organised by month and year
2. ONline on Google Drive in a folder organised by month and year

By doing it this way I’m able to send contracts to clients without wasting any time, and I have everything I need should shit hit the fan later down the line.  

If you want a free guide on how to use the freelance contract templates included with this article within Dubsado, check out this free guide of 5 videos.

You must have a freelance contract

There’s no two ways about this. 

If you want to be taken seriously as a freelance copywriter, you need a professional-looking freelance contract.

The benefits of a comprehensive freelance agreement are many. But the most important benefits are;

• You cover your own arse in case something goes horribly wrong
• You look like a professional which makes it easier to charge higher fees
• You’ll immediately dissuade and disqualify scammy clients who never had any intention of treating you fairly

No matter where you are in your freelance career you need some form of professional agreement. 

Without it, you’re playing a very dangerous game. 

Make sure to download the freelance contract templates and watch the free course on freelance contracts here.  

FREE DOWNLOAD -> Get a free freelance contract AND a free video course on how to best use it.