This past month, I have taken on more freelance work than usual and have consequently had the opportunity to work with a greater variety of clients. Generally speaking, I’ve been pretty lucky with clients since starting my freelancing journey a little over eight months ago. That’s not to say I haven’t had horror stories to share. My first bad freelancing experience on Upwork actually resulted in me taking a 6-month hiatus from freelancing. Yes, so essentially, I’ve really only been freelancing for about 2 months total. And yes, that freelancing experience was that bad! Luckily, I was working a full-time job at the time, so I didn’t have to tend to the demons of that bad situation at the time… which was both good and bad. It was good because I didn’t have to worry about the money, but it was bad, because I didn’t take enough time to fully process why I ended up in that situation in the first place.
If you are someone getting into the world of freelancing, there are some really important ideas that you should be well-acquainted with before taking the plunge. Here are some general lessons I’ve learned or things I’ve noticed that I wish I had been aware of prior to taking my own plunge.
Some Clients Don’t Know Your Value… and Don’t Care to Know
When I first started freelancing back in November 2017, I had two vastly different freelancing experiences. One of them was fantastic. The client provided me with a brochure that needed redesigning. I enjoyed every minute of the design process, and passing drafts to the client and getting feedback was super easy. The client even provided me with hand-edited drafts of the brochure in pictures so that I could actually see exactly what he was thinking. These are the clients that freelancers dream of!
Freelancing newbie error #1: trusting that all clients will see the worth of you and your work and won’t exploit you.
On the other hand, the second freelancing experience I had that month (the one that led me to take a 6-month hiatus from freelancing) was a complete nightmare. I was trying my hand at transcription and made the huge mistake of assuming that the client’s pricing was set at a reasonable rate. Freelancing newbie error #1: trusting that all clients will see the worth of you and your work and won’t exploit you. Sadly, I learned hours and days into the project that this client was expecting an insane amount of work for next to nothing. Upon realizing this, I presented a reasonable adjustment request which was returned with a shocking lack of empathy or human concern. Let me put it this way… I was basically working for pennies by the hour by the time I decided to tell the guy: “Keep all the work I’ve submitted. Keep your money. I’m done.”
It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that people like this in the world existed! How could someone live with themselves knowing they are benefiting off of slave work basically? I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, given a quick glance at human history and acknowledging all of the many dark streaks that have always existed and still exist in different ways. People like that never cease to shock me though, regardless of the fact that I understand they exist. One thing I should highlight is that this client was from Australia. Let’s just say that I have stuck with U.S. clients from that point on. And that brings me to the next thing…
Foreign Competitors and The Race to the Bottom
When I first started freelancing, I tried out two platforms–Upwork and Freelancer. Freelancer is where I realized something very crucial–to many clients, my low proposals could be considered “too expensive” against the backdrop of what foreign competitors were willing to offer. I was essentially competing against pricing that, if I fully bought into it, would earn me a free ticket to homelessness… because in India, $2 goes a lot further than it does in the U.S. Freelancer allowed me to see who was bidding for jobs, and the low bids I was competing with was disheartening. I felt tempted to lowball it just so I could get my foot in the door. In fact, I had briefly thought of entering the race to the bottom, where the cheapest wins.
I thought about it for a day and then deleted my Freelancer account. I then changed my Upwork search location filter to “United States”. And that was that.
Clients May Not Know Your Value… But You May Not Either
Even within the U.S., you are still facing clients who see potential freelancers from all over the world, so even if your clients are from the U.S., they have probably seen very low prices from foreign freelancers. Because of this, it becomes even more difficult for them to gauge the value of the work you do.
In addition to this, the U.S. freelancing community is filled with people who don’t know their worth, and because of this, they drive the market prices down. Students may do this. People brand new to the industry may do this. Despite being good at what they do. Women are notorious for this. Myself included.
One thing you should keep in mind about women is that they are socialized (and perhaps even wired) to care for and please others. This can be potentially bad for business. Very bad, in the sense that women are willing to do free labor to “help others” and to “be a good person”. I’d read countless articles and stories about how highly talented and skilled women were short-changing themselves due to lack of confidence paired not wanting to ask “too much” for their work in order to be good and help others. This is a problem I have fallen into myself. This brings me to the next part.
Do Your Research Before You Start a Single Project
One thing I wish I had done prior to jumping into freelancing was do more extensive research about pricing. Having facts and a true picture how how things really are in the market will give you perspective and allow you to counter any illogical discrepancies between your asking price and the value of your work. Having these facts also gives you the tools and support you need to shed faulty beliefs about what it means to be a “good person” and to “help others” in the face of realities (e.g., making a living, handling exploitive people).
I did, in fact, research this, but I realized months later that I was doing it all wrong. I tried to rely on articles that spouted out nebulous ranges and too many ifs, ands, and buts. Where I really learned the most about pricing was looking at my potential competitors.
The end product is what matters in a field like web design. Not how long you’ve been doing it. Not what you studied in college. Not how old you are. Your work speaks for itself.
Since I am forging a freelancing career in web design, I needed to know how much other web designers charged for similar-grade work. I spent one morning this week just searching web design companies that were local and beyond as if I were a customer. What I discovered was a bit shocking (and sad). People who were creating sites for clients that were the same if not lower-quality than the ones I was creating were charging two to three times more than I was!
Here’s the thing to remember–don’t use anything as a litmus test for the value of your work except for the product itself. I was convincing myself that I didn’t deserve to charge what others were charging because “I have only been doing this for a few months.” So what? The end product is what matters in a field like web design. Not how long you’ve been doing it. Not what you studied in college. Not how old you are. Your work speaks for itself. And that’s that.
To be completely honest, I didn’t start doing any of this actually useful research until just a few days ago. All I can say is that I wish I had done it sooner.
Flaky Client? Maybe It’s Time.
I’m going to end this by saying something about flaky, mean, and unfair clients: don’t feel bad about ending a bad freelancer-client relationship. This goes for any kind of relationship really, and freelancing is no exception. Just like in romantic relationships, in the beginning, you’ll perhaps not know what to look for (the red flags), so you may fall into some bad relationships here and there. But over time, you should be able to see a potentially bad client from a mile away. Don’t keep falling back into the same traps over and over again!
Just this morning, I had to end a relationship with a flaky client. Essentially, I have had him as a client for over a month, and all that I have been able to get out of him was a domain name he wanted. I would send information, and I’d wait for days sometimes over a week for a response. Here I was, reserving time for potentially starting this project for an entire month when I could have been seeking work elsewhere. The final straw was when we had a phone meeting scheduled and he said he’d call at a certain time. I waited 15 minutes after the scheduled time by a silent phone and then got an Upwork message from him saying to move it to the next hour. So I waited. Waited. Did some work. Waited. Eventually it was time for bed. And then, it was into the next morning. And that’s when I sent him a cordial resignation from the project. If it was this difficult simply getting this project started, I couldn’t even imagine how difficult it’d be getting through the entire thing! Things are clearly better off this way.
Ultimately, life is too short for flaky clients, mean clients, and clients who don’t know your worth. This is especially true when you consider that the world is filled with awesome clients! Why waste time with bad clients when you could be making time for great ones?
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