Payment After Work?

If I know the client is good for it - I will conduct the work and then send an invoice.

If it's a new client, I ask for half up front and half on the backend.

Everything I've ever bought online, I've had to pay for in advance. Why would your design services be any different?

No.

I used to be a service provider. My clients paid in full, in advance. Not one ever questioned it. After I knew someone, when they came back I would always have been willing to take half up-front and the other half later, but I almost never had to, because having already ordered once, they expected to pay in full in advance anyway, and that was the basis on which they'd returned. As long as you present yourself professionally, people will treat you professionally. (Especially when your terms are normal commercial terms).

Bro on which platform you are working. Is it odesk, elance, freelance. Each of this platform has the client portfolio. See the portfolio if the client has a good portfolio and had paid other workers them you can work with them and i piece of advice never work with Bangladeshi and Indian employers. I always had a bad experience with them. I don,t know about the Pakistani and Sri lanka employers bcoz i never did work with them.

you may accept them, because they trust you. they will pay to you after work.

I always get full payment up front. I have not had any problems with that because I have developed a professional reputation. So in your circumstances, it depends on how you choose to run your business.

Get that payment first cuz. Either they trust you or they dont. Otherwise, what was their point in contacting you in the first place?

I guess there's no standard way. It depends very much on you (the service provider) - it depends on your skills, your reputation, etc.

If no one knows you yet, can you afford to ask only for advance payments and risk not getting anything? You can't, can you?

The better you are and the more potential customers know you and your work, the better for you the payment conditions you may be able to ask. In case you're very good and the people know it, you can always ask for advance payment. Anyway, when you're very good you can't accept all potential orders (too many), can you? Your time is limited, isn't it? (Well, you can extend your time by outsourcing the work, but then that's yet another case). However...

Even if you're the best in the world in your niche, sometimes you may accept a payment upon delivery of the service. If one of your loyal customers asks it, why not making him happier? It's a loyal customer after all, isn't it? A loyal customer gets a preferential treatment from a smart businessman, right?

And so on and so forth

No. I'd rather ask for a 50% DP then the full payment once the project is completed.
Or, the client should pay me by hour.

Ask for upfront payment or escrow. I have been scammed by fake 'custom sample' seekers before.

I think all freelancing sites have an option called 'escrow' payment or something similar where the client will put full or partial payment to the third party.

Only the client will be able to release the payment after the project is done, and only the provider will be able to cancel the escrow payment if they mutually agree to stop the project.

This is the best option in virtual work space.

I had experienced being scammed by one of my virtual clients and I was not paid for some articles I worked hard for. It was lesson learned for me. My advise is to use an escrow option if available. As an example: A dubious client would ask something like: "For our trial, please link my website to 20 other sites....blah, blah, blah. So if there were 10 applicants, that's 200 sites linked, right? They no longer need to hire any SEO specialist for that.

If you're working for oDesk, Elance and other similar freelance work sites, there are options that you can choose and personally, I'd like to get paid hourly because payments are guaranteed unlike one-time or fixed-payment schemes. And yeah, about the client profiles, some clients write their own testimonials from their self-made "contractor" profiles and make it look like they are credible clients. So just be careful.

Read up on other Warrior members' advice and you're good.

My rule is always upfront first, unless it's a 4 or 5 figure project then give them a nice payment plan.

Don't play ball with the "If it's any good I'll pay you" people.

But on the same token- sometimes sellers are out to exploit buyers too. 2-3 times I've bought a 'service' from Warriors for Hire - never got anything - they took my money and ran. Because they're intangible goods, Paypal didn't want to know, so lost it.

A decent solution is Paypal where they pay upfront but have recourse should you not deliver what they require