Over the holiday weekend, I received an urgent email from a client asking about the status of a newsletter that needed to be sent out before the end of the month. The only problem was, I hadn’t gotten the original email. Thanks to autofill, she’d accidentally sent it to another Jake in her address book. My decision was easy: She’s a fantastic long-term client who’d made an honest mistake, so I took a break from repairing the deck and completed her job. This event coincided with several discussions I saw on Facebook with freelancers talking (and some complaining) about having to work over the holiday weekend, which brings me to today’s topic: setting freelance client boundaries. [Read more…]
Upwork raised its fees, and here’s what you can learn from it
If you’re looking for a slam on bidding sites or outsourcing services, you’re not going to find it here. No, this is about the news that Upwork raised the fees it charges freelancers from 10% to 20% on projects of $500 or less and created a sliding fee scale based on freelancers’ lifetime billings. (The fees drop to 10% on projects of $500.01-$10,000, and 5% above that.) My interaction with Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is limited to a strange experience with hiring a freelancer whose freelance rates were so low they made me question her talent. [Read more…]
How to use pricing to avoid red-flag clients
I recently received a call from a marketing person who was eager for me to provide the content for a few of her clients’ websites. I knew about two minutes into the call that pricing was going to be an issue, when she spoke the classic phrase you’ll hear from many red-flag clients: “We have a small budget…”
I didn’t want to be rude and cut her short, because that’s not the reputation I want to have in the business community. Anyone who calls me for writing or editing services needs to be treated with dignity and respect. I did, however, need to find a polite way to let her understand that I wasn’t going to be interested in having her as a client. [Read more…]