Freelance Writer’s Guide to Sticking Up for Yourself

I was talking with Joy Drohan the other day about our monthly assessments. Joy and I are accountable to each other for what we do and earn. (If you’ve not held yourself accountable for your freelance writing efforts, I highly recommend it. And I’ll be starting the Monthly Assessment posts back up here soon, so feel free to join in.)

Somewhere in the conversation, I’d related to Joy a client issue in which I believe the client was trying to mask more complex work as a simple project in order to avoid paying more.

But the content was obviously going to be part of a much larger part of the client’s online portfolio. I could do it, but what concerns me is how they’re going to be presenting themselves. Marketing writing takes a much different approach than say a blog post would. Messages have to align with the overall mission, with the company’s existing messaging, and needs to echo the theme of their entire organization. Blog posts? Not so much. Blog posts are much more informal, and bloggers can relax the standard to some extent (not entirely, and this itself is client-dependent and industry-dependent, in my opinion).

So my short answer to the client was No. Can’t do that for that same price. There’s a good bit more work involved –I’d need to conduct interviews, do a bit more work in writing it, and handle more revisions.

That comes at a higher cost.

When I explained the situation to Joy, she said this:

Stick to your guns.

Great advice.

Joy reinforced what I knew to be true for me — accepting those terms would underserve me.

It’s where I think freelance writers go wrong sometimes. We get used to working with someone or we want to please a new client, so we forget that a writer-client relationship has to serve both of us equally.

If the client is happy and I’m not, I’m not doing my job well enough.

But these are the gray areas, aren’t they? They’re the “Oh, by the way, could you…” requests, the “Ooo! I’d love it if you’d write this….” excitement, the “We don’t see the difference between these projects” pushback. There the things they don’t teach you in J school, nor will they teach you it in any freelance writing course.

These are the danger areas, in my opinion.

Here are some of the more dangerous areas I’ve had to navigate. Know that in every case, the answer was (or should have been) No.

The topic shifts. Dramatically. But the pay doesn’t.

This is where contracts save so much aggravation, or even a paper trail (emailed confirmation of the topic). I’m one who tapes every conversation, so if need be, I can haul out digital verification that yes, the first topic was exactly what they wanted, and what they now owe me for. Don’t be afraid to push back on this or you could find yourself in a revision loop of hell. Suppose you wrote about faucet repair per client instructions. They like it, but… they see now that they might want an article on faucet replacement options, which you then write. Oh but wait… wouldn’t it be great if we showcase our 2019 models instead? You revise. Oh, we’re really missing an opportunity to cover the manufacturing problems within the industry and be that voice of authority….

Yes. That does happen.

The scope of work suddenly shifts from the original project.

I had that happen a few times. Most notably, a client hired me to write blog posts for a relatively affordable rate (for him). We contracted for it, then a year later, he wanted longer blog posts with a different focus. While the focus wasn’t an issue, the length was. Moreover, he tried sneaking it by me by saying “Same as before — keep it to 900 words.”

Nothing doing — we’d contracted for 500 words. So I pushed back. A bit of a verbal back-and-forth occurred with the client insisting I’d agreed to something that we both knew (thanks to a contract) I hadn’t. I got the word count back to where it was. He was content as he wasn’t paying more. I was okay with staying at the original, but I had serious doubts about the client that I wasn’t able to overcome. Once the trust is gone, there’s not much reason to remain with a client.

The client uses his own version of logic.

He sure did, and I ignored his attempts to pay much, much less for project B because, as he put it, “We see no difference between project A and project B.” The contract stated the price for each type of project. I simply referred him to that section. He gave up on his argument, but the damage was done. I wrapped up the project and bid him farewell.

The negotiating becomes a brick wall.

The “this is all we’re going to pay” opener usually results in my thanking them for their time and walking away. I get that people have budgets, and I appreciate that they’re answering to a financial strain. What I don’t get is why they start with a stop sign. Or why, when we’re disagreeing on price, do the insults come out. That rarely gets me to do anything but walk away. It doesn’t bode well that a client starts out with either insults or what I’ve come to see as a hands-on-hips, I-dare-you-to-counter stance. I work with people who are professional in how they present themselves. I give them the same courtesy. If they’re already starting out thinking we’re adversaries, it will never work out.

The insults or bad behavior appear.

I had one client who’d been sweet as can be until I underreported (accidentally — I’d superimposed page numbers in my page count total) the progress on his project. He launched into emailed vitriol that was both insulting and shocking. When I pointed out my error, he said “I wondered if that was it. No worries.” Note that there was zero apology. There was also zero working with him in the future. You don’t call people names and expect them to accept that your error made them act that way.

I had one client I’d worked with for a few years suddenly go from nice to nuclear because I didn’t work for free. That’s the only explanation. I’d finished project A when she realized she wasn’t going to be able to present the project at all. She wanted an entire rewrite, three more interviews, and just two hours of my billable time. I warned her I couldn’t do it in that amount of time. She said to proceed anyway. So when I delivered a project that wasn’t finished (but I outlined it best I could in the time given), she sent me a hateful note about how “unprofessional” I was — all the while she’s letting me have it in the most unprofessional manner. I never billed her for those two hours because I didn’t see the point of continuing the agony of her outbursts. And I never worked with her again. My choice, though I’m sure she wasn’t interested in it, either.

The suggested project is unethical.

Twice in the same month, I had client prospects talk to me about working with them on projects. In both cases, they wanted to have me shop their story idea around, write it, then get money from the publications (and they’d get their companies featured prominently). One was a lawyer who knew better. So let me get this straight: you want to be my boss without actually paying me. You want me to write these things for you to vet, then do all the work to get them published and not mention it to the editors? The two-word response I wanted to give them cannot be printed here, but rhymes with “luck cough.” Instead, they were told No. I won’t compromise journalistic standards (nor jeopardize the trust my editors have in me) for any reason.

Writers, what gray areas have you experienced? What about the project or the conditions made you say No?