6 Sh*tty Tricks Bad Freelance Clients Pull

I love every one of my clients. I bet you love your clients, too.

But before any of us found such great freelance writing clients, we had to wade through some fairly questionable people who tried a lot of different tactics to get more work for less cash.

That’s just sh*tty behavior.

Fortunately, such people are few and far between. Still they do appear, and no matter how high up the freelance food chain you’ve risen, you will inevitably run into someone who is going to pull a stunt that’s so blatantly bad, it ends up on a writer’s blog post.

In fact, that’s what you’re about to read — six times in which clients behaving badly left a stain so permanent that we’re still warning others about it months or years later.

Sh*tty Trick #1: Bait-and-switch pricing

This one tops every freelancer’s list because it’s the most common. Here’s an episode from just this month:

Writer and her colleague teamed up to woo a marketing firm, whose large corporate client had yet to sign on the dotted line. The writers presented their pricing, and the firm contact said “Let me give you some time to sharpen your pencil on that pricing.” No negotiation. Just “change your rate.”

However, the writers were undaunted. No, without a conversation, there would be no rate change. And that’s where it got weird.

Firm contact came back saying the gig was in place, put the proposal out to the writers for their info, and left off entirely mention of price. At all. When pressed about it, he responded that he’ll “try” to keep his proposal close to their pricing. When pressed even further, he said his “pricing was confidential” and couldn’t share with the contractors what that would be. Then when they both pulled out due to lack of clarity on rates, he insisted he’d agreed to their rates, when a previous note had stated exactly the opposite.

That’s sh*tty behavior.

Sh*tty Trick #2: Scope creep

We’ve all had it, too. You start with a newsletter article assignment, then they ask for a sidebar, and pretty soon you’ve given them 8 pages of content for the price of one.

No. Never go forward with additional work without doing this:

• Acknowledging that it falls outside of the agreed-upon work
• Is being done as a one-time favor

Why? Because acknowledging the terms in writing reminds them that you’re not an employee (honestly, some people just forget or don’t realize that your time is money). It tells them that sure, you’re happy to help, but that any future work will be charged at your usual rate. That’s your boundary. If you let one thing creep in without saying it, pretty soon you’ll be six different things in and wondering how to stop the onslaught. Stop it now, and with tactful wording.

Sh*tty Trick #3: Avoiding talking about price

We all dance around it — freelancers and clients alike — but we all need to come to an agreement on the price. What sucks immensely is when you’ve put your price out there, the client doesn’t acknowledge it, but continues talking about the project. In one case, I had a prospective client suddenly start pushing for papers to be signed and W9s to be shared — and they’d never acknowledged my rate, even after sharing the project parameters with me. The reason: The rate they finally stated (not negotiated) was one-fourth of what my project rate was. Worse, they wanted to tempt me with the hope of future projects on the assumption I was starving for work.

Don’t be that kind of freelancer and this trick will never tempt you.

Sh*tty Client Trick #4: The moving target

We’ve all had indecisive clients. Even the best clients can have a bad stretch where nothing seems to gel for them. If we’re good at what we do, we can brainstorm with them and help them get beyond their roadblock.

But sometimes, that client is just lousy at what they do or how they work with others. I had two in my life — both editors — who made the job three times harder than it needed to be. In both cases, there were multiple, unnecessary edits. In one case, the editor would strike something, then complain in the next revision that she needed the very information that she’d removed on the last edit.

The worst, however, was an editor who kept changing the parameters for interview sources. I was running each person past her, but even as she approved them, she’d find something wrong later. I gave up when the last three approved sources were all rejected when, once again, the parameters changed.

Know your limits. If the editors are that confused, try working with them to make sure you both understand what’s going on. And if the scope changes, they owe you money. They cannot change the assignment mid-stream and expect you to rewrite everything on a whim. That’s a separate assignment.

Sh*tty Trick #5: When the Posse arrives

Show of hands (or comments): How many of you have had a project go completely haywire when a client suddenly pulls in friends or relatives to edit or revise for them? My hand is up, for the record. In one case, I’d finished the draft, and the revisions came back. I’m seeing initials next to every change — different initials every time. The client had called in his buddies to give their opinions. Note to everyone who does that or has had that done to them: When you ask six people to give an opinion, you’ll get six very different opinions. And your writer will no longer be able to please you because this is no longer your project. It now belongs to those friends of yours, whom your writer has never met.

That’s sh*tty, right there.

It’s also why my contracts have a clause that voids it if I’m expected to follow the directives of people not expressly mentioned in the contract. Even spouses, yes. If they want their husbands or wives to give an opinion, let me meet them. I need to know how much weight their opinions have, for one thing.

Sh*tty Trick #6: The “I’ll pay you for what I use” directive

Early in my career, I had one of these propositions. It came as I was about to start a more regular relationship with what turned out to be a one-time client. Here’s why it was one time:

Wrote the article. Editor was silent as the grave until the very weekend I told her I would have a houseful of out-of-town guests for my daughter’s graduation. Then the phone would not stop ringing, because apparently my time was not as important as the three weeks she took to get to that assignment of mine.

Once that debacle was sorted, the editor promised faster responses. The owner, however, decided we could simply agree to what I would be writing and what he would be paying. No formal contracts were needed, he said. When I insisted and he pushed back, I realized just how much I needed that legally binding piece of paper in this case. It started and ended with “Of course, I’ll pay you just for what I use, so if you write 2,000 words and I use only 1,800, that’s what you would bill me for.”

Nothing doing. Suppose you used just 500 words? I’d waste a lot of my billable time. He got snippy — “I would never do that.” And where is my guarantee without that contract? “I’ve never needed a contract.”

No. You haven’t. But I bet your writers have.

When the terms get fuzzier with every email, don’t continue. It’s never worth it to start out feeling like you’re being played. Because you probably are.

Writers, what sh*tty client tricks have you dealt with?