I am a lawyer. I have hired freelancers to build websites. The first rule of deals like this is to not over-engineer stuff. If this contract is for under $1,

I am a lawyer. I have hired freelancers to build websites. The first rule of deals like this is to not over-engineer stuff. If this contract is for under $1,000, create some arbitrary project milestones. Get some money up front whether you quote a fixed price or hourly. (Hint. Don't quote hourly.). Get another payment midway through. Leave about 20% at the back end when you deliver. You get cash up front because it is a psychological test of your customer. The way your customer responds when you say "Give me $100x now" is the way you will be treated forever. If there is negotiation, delay, etc. that is what you will experience forever. You have been warned. You will ignore the warnings. You will experience pain. You will learn. :-) Make the milestones things that you control. Do not tie it to customer approval or decision. Sometimes people procrastinate. That delays your payment. The contract can be simple. Bullet points. Signed by both sides because you're not going to sue if they stop paying you. And if they stop paying you then you are going to stop work. The value of WIP should be something you can walk away from in order to fire a bad customer. This is your psychological threshold. Start playing with the idea that you only put forward enough work so they owe you $1,500. It will hurt to walk away but you won't die. And if you walk away from someone in this circumstance you are avoiding far worse results. The best decisions are sometimes the jobs you didn't take on. But we make mistakes so the second-best decisions are the assholes we fired quickly. Welcome to owning your own life. :-) EDIT: I guess I should mention that I follow this philosophy in my business with six-figure jobs. It isn't for small jobs only.