It's a little extreme but I had a friend who had several clients attempt to stiff him on work. The one thing he taught me was to always have control of your wo

It's a little extreme but I had a friend who had several clients attempt to stiff him on work. The one thing he taught me was to always have control of your work until the client pays in full. This means setting up a url from a host you control, so when work is done, you can deploy and client can review it as you move through the design / development process. Client doesn't pay? Take down the site, send a notice saying nothing further gets done until they pay. Since you own the source code and the client has nothing since you control the domain, they usually pay up. If not, you're out some hours of work, but your work can be used for other clients and the deadbeat gets nothing. Remember, always maintain control of the data until the project is completed. Even if your designer or developer, you should always maintain control of what you do until the client pays in full.