How to get paid before sending files

How to get paid before sending files is the freelance loop everyone already knows: finish the work, send an invoice, wait, then pack a ZIP. It works. It also means you are the person connecting a bank notification to a transfer at 11pm.

A paid download link puts the preview, the price, and the unlock on one URL. Payment is what turns "look" into "take." The lock lifts when checkout completes. You do not send a second ZIP by hand.

Why the invoice-then-ZIP split stalls

• The client cannot fully judge what they are buying until the files arrive, so they delay the invoice.
• You delay the ZIP until the invoice clears, so they delay looking.
• Someone has to send a second message when money moves.

A protected preview breaks the stall. They can see the wedding set, the grade, the beat, the PDF contents. Paying is the remaining click. That is how photographers use a gallery with checkout on the same page.

How the unlock works

1. 01

   Upload the deliverable

   The real files, not a web-sized substitute you will swap later.

2. 02

   Turn on selling and a preview

   Blur, watermark, short audio/video clips, or document samples. Price in pounds, at least £1.

3. 03

   Send one URL

   When checkout completes, that page offers the download. No follow-up Dropbox.

When to keep a separate invoice

Retainers, mixed goods, purchase orders, and clients who must pay by bank transfer on their own schedule still need an invoice tool. Spike is the extra for file-shaped products: galleries, stems, presets, PDFs. You can do the retainer on the invoice and the finals on a folder link.

The files can wait in the library. The link does the asking.

For the general selling model, start with how to sell digital files online.

Deposits are a related case. If you take a booking fee on an invoice and the gallery fee on Spike, say so in the booking email. Two payments are fine when the jobs are different. Two payments for the same ZIP is what the paid link is meant to collapse.

If a client pays and then asks for a missing file, add it to the folder. They still have the URL. That is the library extra: you are not issuing transfer number four because frame 204 was left out of the first ZIP.

Connect onboarding is the one-time cost of taking cards. After Stripe is linked, pricing a folder is a switch. The selling guide has the clicks. This article is the reason to use them when the stall is "invoice in one app, files in another."

If you work in pounds, price in pounds. Buyers see that number. You are not converting a dollar listing for a UK client at the last minute. Minimum price is £1. That is enough for a small pack; galleries will sit higher.

If they pay and then ghost the download, the files are still on the page. You are not chasing a bounce that ate a WeTransfer window. That is the library extra: payment and delivery share a URL that does not expire because someone opened email late.