This kinda goes against the trend of selling yourself as providing value and not merely your time, but you can also ask to be pre-paid for a certain amount of t

This kinda goes against the trend of selling yourself as providing value and not merely your time, but you can also ask to be pre-paid for a certain amount of time. Similar to a pre-paid cell phone plans, ask your client to buy 10 hours (or 5, or 20) of your time, work those X hours, repeat. This is the system I've been using myself for the last couple years, and I've never had to worry about getting paid. And I know I'm going to raise some eyebrows with this, but I've never had clients sign contracts either.