6 Customers, 6 Ways They Pay Me (What Each One Really Costs)

So here's something that people don't tell you about being a full-time entrepreneur is I have six customers that are paying right now and every one of them pays me in a different way, not just different amounts, but they pay me in different ways, different rails entirely. And at first, you know, when I was smaller and it was doing less, I didn't really realize how much of a mess this was. But when you start, you know, trying to do your taxes and figure out, you know, where you're actually at financially, it's just a pain. Everything's all mangled and I know I don't like it. I like getting paid, but I don't like that. It's so messy. So that's what this video is, is six ways the money showed up, what each one actually costs me, which ones I would do differently and how I get all this organized. But nobody warns you about this part. When you're starting side hustles, everyone talks about starting the thing, landing the customer, doing the work. Nobody tells you that once you have a few different income streams coming in, the getting paid turns into its own job. There's no paycheck. There's no direct deposit on the 15th. There's a bunch of different companies, different places, all paying their own way on their own schedule. And it's up to you and AI to keep it straight. So I have an opinion on all the different ways that you can get paid. So let me just go through them one at a time real quickly. The first and my favorite way to get paid, and this is kind of my default is with Stripe. So I usually, when I'm working with someone, I send them a Stripe invoice and just hope that works for them because Stripe has a great API. I can access it straight from cloud code, which is, it's, it's just very, the fees are low and it's just my favorite way of getting paid. It's the closest thing to normal in this whole business. There is a processing fee on top of each payment, but it's pretty low. It's like 2.8% so it's not bad. If I could get every customer on Stripe, that is what I would do. So real two is PayPal and I have a lot of customers. They want to pay via PayPal. They want me to send them invoices. I mean, honestly it works. It shows up. PayPal is where I've had weirdness with payments held for review. You know, someone's sending a payment as a personal payment when it should have been a business one. I don't like this. And then there's, they quietly take quite a bite on international payments. Also cloud code does not allow any access into PayPal. So I have to do it manually. So somebody says, can you send me a PayPal invoice? I have to actually go into PayPal and click send and request myself. Whereas Stripe I can actually do from cloud code. I can say, Hey, send an invoice and it'll do it. So, but if a customer says PayPal is the only way that's fine. It doesn't matter. So real three is a straight bank wire and this is usually for bigger, more corporate deals. There's, you know, I think usually a $20, $30 fee on a wire. So if they're just paying, you know, $100, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And this is fine to get a wire. It's just very slow. And there's a stretch where you're kind of in the dark. You send the wire and then it's up to the bank and you're not really sure where the money is or where it's processed or when it's going to come through. Sometimes I've had up to like seven or eight days where I just haven't heard. And you know, it's really a hassle to call into banks and try to get through their automated support systems. So if someone insists a wire, of course I'll take, I'll take money through a wire, but I definitely not my favorite rail for, and this is what I used to. Almost all my payments used to come in via cryptocurrency, not as much anymore, but for crypto companies, it makes total sense that they pay via cryptocurrency. I do prefer if someone's going to pay me for something, a lot of times they want to use like their native tokens. I don't really want that. I want a stable coin, USDC, USDT, not their, you know, token that speculatively has a price or might not have liquidity or now it's up to me to have to go figure out how I'm going to swap this into something else. It's like, if you send me USDC, I'm, you know, crypto savvy enough where that's as good as cash to me, but please don't send other tokens. I used to have a big challenge in getting cryptocurrency into my banks, but, but I don't really anymore because of spritz. Honestly, spritz has changed my crypto experience, but you can get a card that you top off with crypto. You can get off ramp straight into your account. Spritz has made this very easy. So actually if somebody pays me USDC, USDT, I don't mind at all. So real five is ACH. This is fine. There's no fee. It lands in a couple of days. It's boring and it works. The one problem is with Claude code. It's kind of hard to see when people paid me. It's nice and striped. I can have an invoice that's paid or not paid this. I have to kind of like wait for it and then I have to keep checking the bank and then was it paid? I have to log in and kind of see was this actually paid, but it's fine. There's less fees. So honestly, ACH sometimes is my favorite. And real six, this is the sixth way, but it's the agency portal. This is when just different companies sometimes have like a portal or an escrow service of some kind that does the payment. And these are a huge hassle. Every time you have to submit all this tax info, verify who you are. I mean, a stripe invoice so much nicer. I don't turn these down usually unless they look kind of sketchy, but it's just an extra hassle. But this brings me to zero and the reason that I bring up zero is because it solves the exact problem that I've been describing this whole video. So again, six customers, six different rails, card payments, PayPal wires, crypto, bank transfers, all the customer portals, all landing in different places at different times. None of them talking to each other. That was my whole problem. This is why I really appreciate zero is it combines all these different places. You get all your invoices in one spot, one list of who owes me what, but you can get stripe and PayPal in your bank account, all reconciled together. Payments come in and zero matches them against the right invoice. So I can see at a glance what's settled, what's still outstanding, no spreadsheet, no guessing. They also have this AI assistant built in called jacks. So instead of digging me through everything, I can just ask, you know, how much money did I bring into this month? And then it pulls in this number. This is a sample account, but it brings pulls in this number from all the different accounts and all the different records. So nice having it all compiled here. So I'm not an accountant and I don't want to be one. I just want some software. I want one screen that tells me the truth about my money. That's all I use it for. And it does that job really well. So if you're juggling income for more than one place, check out zero please. Currently they have 80% off your plan for the first three months. So it's a great way to check it out and see if it'll be a good fit for you. We'll put all that down in the description to go check it out. So if you're running a side hustle, you're about to land your first customer. What I would actually tell you, this is advice I wish someone had given me. First off, if you're doing work for somebody, get half of the payment up front, half at the end. I've been ghosted on work, especially digital work. You know, if you're doing work in person with somebody, people maybe, I think it's less common for people to look you in the eyes and then just not pay you. And you know where they live, things like that. When you're doing work online, it happens a lot. I've been ghosted a lot. So what I always do is I require they pay half up front. Then the other half is after I finished the work completely. Second, I always make sure that money has landed before I consider it paid. So if they just say, Oh, it's being processed or I sent the wire, I don't take that. Okay. It's when it reaches my account, any holds are lifted up off PayPal or whatever. That's when it's paid. So third, pick how they pay when you can. So you have more say in this than you think. When a customer asks you how you want to be paid. A lot of times I just send them a Stripe invoice. And then if they say, Oh no, I need to do PayPal or something. That's fine. But I always just start with a Stripe invoice and suggest that, but whatever rails you end up with, put them all into one place. Okay. It could be zero. If you have some other system to keep it all managed, that's fine, but make sure you get all your income into one place. So you have a good visualization of how your business is doing. So if this was useful, please like, and subscribe. Appreciate you guys very much. God bless you all. And have a great rest of your day.