If you are a freelance writer, it is safe to say that you rely on the internet day in and day out. Personally, when I do not have internet access, I begin to go through withdrawals. Although my ISP is reliable most of the time, every so often I am without access for a few hours.
Since you never know when your internet could go down, make sure that you always have a backup plan. For me, this consists of trying to stay ahead of all my work by at least one day. Why is this a good idea? Take for instance a project that may be due on Tuesday. If you complete it on Monday, you do not have to worry about rushing things on the due date. There would be nothing worse than needing to send the completed work to the client, but not being able to access your email. If you are ahead of yourself by at least one day, you can usually afford a brief outage without stressing too much.
Although technology and the internet are great, it can be frustrating when you lose access. As somebody who relies on the internet 12 hours per day on average, it is important to have access all day, everyday.
The bottom line: make sure that you never put yourself in a position where an internet outage could cause you a major problem with a client. Instead, try to stay ahead of your work. If for some reason you lose access for an extended period of time, you can always phone clients who are expecting to hear from you.Â
If you are a freelance writer, you are sure to lose clients from time to time. This happens to the best writers in the world, and it is not something that you can avoid. With that being said, you should not simply let a freelance writing client walk away. This is not to say that you should stalk them, but you should do a few things before ending the relationship.
1. Try to get an explanation as to why the client wants to stop doing business with you. Last week I had a client drop me, but he also explained in the same email that it was not my fault. The client was more or less a middle man, and the person on the other end of the deal was hanging it up. While it was a shame to lose this client, at least I know that it was nothing I did wrong.
Remember, a client may leave you simply because they have no work available at the time. This is quite common when working with webmasters. Once you produce the appropriate content for them, they may not need your help anymore.
2. Make sure that the client knows you are willing to work with them again in the future. Using the same example as above, I let the client know that while I was disappointed, that I would also love to be considered for future work. Believe it or not, if you show your interest, this will often times work out to your advantage in the future. This morning I woke up to an email from a client that I last worked with in May 2006. You never know when somebody will come back to you in the future.
3. If they tell you they no longer want to do business because of something you did, try to make things right before ending contact. After all, you always want to make sure that your clients get what they pay for. You may not see eye to eye with them, but you should at least offer to make things right before going your separate ways.
It is never a good thing when a freelance writing client leaves you. But unfortunately, this is sure to happen from time to time. Use the three tips above the next time a client tells you that they have no more work available.Â
Although most of my freelance writing clients are as honest as they come, I have had some run-ins in the past. Unfortunately, this is part of the business. If there were not dishonest clients in every industry, it would be much easier for companies to succeed. But as you can imagine, this is never going to change.
Just recently, I rehashed a dishonest freelance writing client from the past. For me, this was a very unique situation, and one that is quite perplexing to say the least.
Back in mid-2006, I contacted a client that I regularly worked with at my past job. They are a web design and hosting company, so I figured they may have some freelance writing work available. Since I had always worked with them in the past, and they seemed to be honest, no bad vibes ever crossed my mind.
After working on my first project for them, the project manager got back to me and said that their client had put the job on hold for the time being. While this can be frustrating, it had nothing to do with me. Nothing until they told me that I would not be paid because their client disappeared. Since we agreed on a price of $450 for the entire project, I was angry and disappointed at the same time. After all, this is a decent chunk of change for any freelancer.
For a couple of weeks I kept in touch with the client, but eventually gave up. Not because I didn’t want the money, but because they simply did not want to pay. At the time, I chalked it up as a mistake, and figured that I had learnt my lesson.
Fast forward to last month. On a whim, I checked the website that I wrote the copy for a year and a half prior. And guess what? My copy was being used on almost every page of the site. As you can imagine, this infuriated me to no end. Not only did they refuse to pay me upon completion as discussed, but when they decided to use my content, they did not have the decency to get in touch and offer payment.
After calming down, I sent a quick email to my contact at the company. Luckily, he still works there. A couple days later he responded stating that he would look into my claim. Since they did not use all of my content, I received an email this morning asking, “What is your rate per word?†While I understand that they do not want to pay for the entire job, this time I am not going to let things go quite as easy as the first time. It was one thing when they duped me out of payment, but to use my words for who knows how long without paying is unacceptable.
As you can see, there are dishonest clients out there. While it is impossible to avoid them all, try to learn from my story. Even if you think that you know somebody, you can never assume that they will treat you right.
