5 Ways to Make Freelance Friends
If you ever feel a little lonely as a freelancer, you’re, uh, not alone…While your non-freelance friends are out celebrating a colleague’s birthday or sharing their
Building a great client list is hard work. A freelancer wants to work with the best clients but, unfortunately, trying to filter out the pesky clients from the good ones can make this process even harder.
Pesky clients are hard to spot and can sneak up on you like your 30th birthday. Here’s the good news: we’ve put together a list of five tell-tale signs that you’re dealing with a pesky freelance client so you can avoid them in the future:
Ghosting on a Freelancer is Not Cool
When you’ve got a deadline approaching and you need crucial information from your client, the last thing you need is for them to be MIA. We get it, everyone is busy, but so are you! Part of what makes the relationship between freelancer and client productive, is communication. If your text message bubbles are all blue then you might want to rethink whether this client is worth all the silence!
Guilt Tripping a Freelancer? Nah.
If your client spends more time telling you how they can’t afford you rather than giving you work assignments, then you might have a pesky freelance client on your hands. No one wants to be guilt tripped into giving free services, and because freelancers work for themselves, some clients think they can guilt trip you into lowering your costs. Stick to your guns, you provide a unique service and you deserve to be paid for it. Nobody puts baby in a corner!
A Side Order Of Fries
Getting a clear outline for a project is a gift! But having a client throw you extra work that was not outlined in the original freelance agreement can leave a bad taste in your mouth! If you’ve found yourself at the end of an assignment with more last-minute ‘add-ons’ than a Sprint phone plan, you’re in the presence of a pesky client!
Backseat Driver
Most clients hire a freelancer because they don’t have time to do the work themselves, or they don’t have the skill-set to do the work in the first place. But for some clients, it’s just another opportunity to micromanage! Trying to make artistic decisions is hard enough as it is, let alone with a chirpy client throwing in ideas from the backseat! If this sounds all too familiar, then grab the wheel and let your client out at the next light!
Fickle Pickle
Don’t get stuck with a fickle pickle! Sometimes it’s better to give a client fewer options at the end of a freelance project so they don’t get overwhelmed with choices. There’s ‘indecisive’, and then there’s ‘fickle’! If you’ve been going back and forth with a client for weeks about two slightly different shades of teal, chances are they’re a pesky client! Drop the pickle and run!
