Micromanagement HellHad a conversation with a freelancer yesterday in which he expressed his frustration with a current client situation. He’s in charge of one aspect of a project, yet he seems to be dealing with someone in charge of another aspect whose disorganization is costing him precious time and energy. Worse, she wants to manage…
Tag: client advice
Or You Could Just Foot My Bills InsteadHere’s one for the books – I answered an ad back in March for a fashion writer. I just received a note today from the “employer.” Instead of offering me the gig or discussing it with me, “Guenther” simply wrote this: “I had to postpone the launch of…
Freelance Does Not Mean EmployeeRecently I had an experience that can only be chalked up to a client who had troubles separating freelance from employee. I worked on a project, handed in the project. That’s where it got weird. The client called – more than once and at odd hours. Needed me ASAP. That would…
Your Late FeesWe’ve talked about others charging fees to writers who miss deadlines (and I think all of us agree so far that it’s a great idea). Now let’s talk about your late fees. What are you charging customers who don’t pay on time? Recently I posted somewhere that my late fee was 25 percent….
Late FeesMany of us writer types are old pros at assessing late fees 30 days out. Some of us make ’em steep; my own late fee for clients is anywhere from 20-25 percent of the total due. In most cases, the sight of that fee causes clients to pay pretty quickly. It’s not meant as…
The Buck Stops Where?Had an interesting situation a while back with a client in which I was told that because I wasn’t around to answer questions, this person missed his deadline. The scenario briefly – an article I wrote and handed a week before this particular request came in. Since we’d pushed back on the…
Playing Emotional Hardball Expanding on this week’s theme – difficulties with bad clients – I think it’s time we touched on what I think is the toughest speed bump to ignore – emotional hardball. That’s when you, the professional writer, follow your invoicing procedure up to and possibly including the threat of litigation only to…
Did I Just Step in Something? I love creative people, except when they think they’re being creative when in fact they’re being skanks. Just experienced an incident with one particular creative who owes me money. In fact, the check’s been absent since somewhere around January. I sent yet another invoice, this time with a late…
Job Listings – May 22, 2007Writer Bill of RightsI’m very glad to see this week’s topic has generated so many responses! I’m somewhat sad to see that I was getting lots of agreement – that we’ve all been victims of Clients Behaving Badly. For the most part, we have great relationships with our clients (I…
Client Gaffes and No-Nos I’ve preached plenty about what we as writers should or should not do. Professional etiquette must be followed even in the face of the most wretched humans to hit your in box. For the most part, we writers listen and respond well. However, not all clients understand proper etiquette when dealing…