When Freelancing Is No Longer Worth It

Matthew Gates 8m 2,037 #freelancing

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

Lessons Learned When Freelancing Becomes A Nightmare

Most of us are used to working in an office, at a set shift, usually from 8 AM to 5 PM or 9 AM to 6 PM with an hour of unpaid lunch break. While we are never paid exactly the salary we want, the perks of working in a professional office setting usually come with some benefits, like sick days and vacation time. Unfortunately, sometimes we are forced to seek more money, and so we turn to freelancing opportunities. Other times, some of us may just not be an “office setting” type of person and prefer to not have a boss or supervisors or even co-workers, and we turn to freelancing work.

Freelancing opportunities give you the chance to further develop skills and talents. It allows you to work for yourself and build up a client base. While you can charge a client base a good amount for your work, which is often less than what any client would pay if they went to an official company, there are times where you still find yourself undercharging the client, often leaving them to take full advantage of the opportunity, with several deadly phrases, that you never want to read in your email.

These phrases look like:

• “It looks great, I just have a few changes.” [These changes are rarely ever small and never seem to get done, because every replied email is always a set of new changes]
• [After you both have agreed on the finalized changes of a website] “Can add this one small thing?”
• “It’s just a small change.”
• “It doesn’t look exactly like the mockup you sent when viewed in Internet Explorer.” [Refusing to acknowledge that the rest of the modern world is actually using a better web browser]
• “I am going to send you a few referrals because your prices are so cheap.”
• “You can add this to your portfolio.” [When they ask for additional work]
• “Can you set up my social media profiles too?” [They have no social media existence and want you to include it with the website without paying for it]
• [After you have both settled and agreed on a theme or after you got done building] “I really like this website instead, can you make it look like this one?”
• I had a few friends look at your work on my website and they think…

These are just a few of the infinite scenarios of clients not wanting to pay for the extra work you do, not understanding how much work went into something, refusing to use updated technology, getting too many opinions instead of being able to decide for themselves what they personally like, expecting you to do more work than what you agreed upon, and not paying for it, or making too many small changes because they are nitpicking on their own work and overthinking about everything.

If there is anything about being a freelancer, you have already learned this:

• If you are a good at what you do and you are quick at doing it, than set a value on yourself. How much are you worth? How valuable is your time? Don’t get greedy, but charge fairly.
• Learn your value and your worth by figuring out how much your rent costs, how much it costs for you to eat, how much your bills costs, family costs, etc.
• Charge enough money so that your client knows you are serious.
• Charging too cheaply lets your client know they can take advantage of your time.
• If you must give a small teaser, such as a demo website it is okay to do it with Lorem Ipsum text.
• Never put the demo website on their server.
• Never give them full admin privileges for the demo website.
• If you agree on a specific amount, divide it into 2 or 3 payments and after they agree on the demo website, send an invoice immediately to be paid before you continue any work.
• Outsourcing some of your work may be necessary, especially if you need graphic design, but aren’t a graphic designer.
• With experience comes your ability to determine how much to charge — whether by the hour or by project.
• If charging by the project, overestimate your pricing by at least 10 to 20 hours for answering emails, optimizing photos, and making “minor changes.”
• If charging by the hour, charge a fair price, but document all of your work.
• Never give a client a discount, they most likely would never do the same for you.
• If you want to charge “on the lesser end” for a website, make sure you have a base price that still motivates you to continue your work.
• Everything is great for adding to your portfolio, but you can still charge for it.
• If you must walk away because the price is not right, then walk away. Someone else will happily meet the client demands for a cheaper website — but they may be back — and have wasted a ton of money because they didn’t want to pay you and decided to be cheap.
• You may not be the boss when you have a client because you must meet their demands, but make sure they have reasonable demands and are being charged fairly.
• If a client is beating around the bush about paying you, than stop all work on the website.
• If the client is being cheap or is trying to negotiate a lower price with you, walk away.
• Clients are not your friends.
• Clients are good resources for getting new business.
• Never keep a demo website up for more than a week if the client isn’t actively engaged with you.
• If a client insists on being active on their own website, ensure there are rules on what you will and will not do or fix because of their mistake (if they don’t want to pay for upkeep and maintenance).
• A phone call may be necessary, but ensure that everything is in writing in an email. Do not hesitate to write a summary of your phone conversation about work that will be performed on the website.
• Regardless of what you do, make sure everything is in writing.

If most of your work is done in WordPress, you will probably undercharge for several of your first projects. WordPress developers and designers tend to underestimate the amount of time and work that is involved in setting up, designing, developing, and customizing a website because WordPress is fairly easy to you. In reality, however, if a client were to try and set up the website themselves, brand it, customize it, they would most likely not be able to even do it in a day or two. Make sure you are charging what you are worth.

Freelancing is really a great opportunity, but as you deal with more and more clients, you learn what you need to do to survive as a freelancer. I am not talking about the pleasant ones who you deal with for a week or two and the business is done, but I am referring to the clients who draw out the project time length beyond what is necessary. Consider charging a fee for clients who do not meet their own deadline.

This is from my own personal experience from when I first started that I did not charge the client anything for their demo website. At the time, it was two or three years before they even considered “buying” the website, and occasionally, they would call me up, telling me their product was almost ready, but not quite yet. Meanwhile, they had paid me nothing. My interest level was gone.

In fact, whenever they called, I had to re-familiarize myself with the project, which has since been put on “inactive mode”, meaning the demo website was taken down. If there is anything about setting up a demo website: give a page or two, but nothing more.

Don’t waste your time on a demo website without getting money first. Money is motivation. Money pays the bills and the rent. Money lets you live another day. If your client does not understand this, then have no qualms with losing the client forever. There is no reason for a client not to pay for work.

I had visited Los Angeles one time and was walking through the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there was a man selling spray paint art. He charged $20 per artwork. I was able to come up with $18 in cash. He said not to worry about the rest, but I eventually found an extra $2 in my pocket and paid him the full $20. I said to him, “There is no reason for you not to get paid in full for your beautiful artwork.

You deserve the price you are charging. Here is the full amount.” Why would I want to pay him less for his beautiful artwork? So I could save a few bucks? I got the beautiful artwork I wanted and he got paid for his time doing that beautiful artwork.

The same would go for any store that you walk into to acquire something. You walk around, grab the items you want, pay the vendor for those items, and they happily give those items to you because you paid for it with money. This is how real life works and how business has always worked. I have something you need, you pay me some money, and I will give it you. It really is that simple.

Yet clients will complicate it because it is not something that is always immediately available to them upfront, but it is the same exact concept as walking into a grocery store to buy food products and paying for those products. Walk out of the store without paying? An arrest will be made and there will be an accusation and charges of theft. Try negotiating to have the price on those food items lowered? It is most likely not possible as most stores have set prices on everything. Freelancing is real life and real work and it can pay the bills if you charge accordingly.

When it comes to freelancing and experience, you learn that undercharging is a valuable lesson. When you have done so much work on a website and the “money has run out”, your interest level drops, the motivation you had for doing the website drops, any sense of pride you have for the website is gone. Make sure that no matter what you do, you charge enough money for your time. Estimate those costs of back-and-forth emails and “translating client speak-into-web-developer-speak”.

Freelancing could be the most pleasant experience you have, as it can certainly help out with extra bills or afford you the finer things in life, but if you do not understand freelancing, it could turn into your worst nightmare. When it comes to freelancing, it is your job and your living, so do not hesitate to inform the client that you are running a business and your prices are fair. Cheap clients or clients who want things for free are not worth the time. You spent a lot of hours of your life already learning web design and development for free. You do not need to do anymore work for free.

The absolute value of your freelancing work comes with time and experience, and at first, you will probably make some sacrifices, as we all must start somewhere and learn from our mistakes, but if it takes you a decade to learn your worth, than re-evaluate your position as a freelancer. All of us have been in the position and undercharging or just getting tired of the bullshit that comes with freelancing.

To deal with this: realize that it is time to get serious about your freelancing business. It is your business and livelihood. If you were running a real business with employees, you would charge the clients what you needed to charge in order to keep your business running, so charge what you need to charge. Charge appropriately and freelancing work will be worth it. Make sure your clients know you are a businessman, not some kid fresh out of high school who is just learning, but that you are a person who is running a business.

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