5 Problems you should consider before you start freelancing

Freelancing is a kind of consulting work where you charge by project. Essentially you work on different tasks which you agree upon with a client and once the work is complete you get the final or full payment.  It sounds almost like the perfect situation for someone who doesn't have time for full time work or for someone who has a home business and needs a little extra income. It isn't as perfect as you might hope because freelancing means you have to negotiate and agree on each aspect of the project with a client.  In this way it is much more complicated than selling advertisements for a website or adding affiliate links and this is also why things can often go wrong.

Here are the problems I've experienced personally. If you have done any freelancing, you probably could add to the list. :-)

1. A client doesn't know what he or she really wants.
2. A client wants to change the direction of a project half way through (without paying more for the new work or the work that will be re-done)
3. A current client will want extra services for free that were not included in the agreement.
4. A client's negotiation for the best price will compare you with the cheapest and lowest quality service.
5. You get stuck waiting for information you were promised by the project manager and the Manager's boss gets upset that the work isn't yet complete.

While many of these problems might be avoided by making formal contracts, you'll often discover clients that won't want to sign a legal contract. If possible at least write down the agreed points on paper and have a verbal agreement. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't help.  Most companies will work to get what is best for them not what is best for both of you. It normally isn't personal.

A client doesn't know what he or she really wants

While I suppose it can happen in any industry, this happens to me most when people ask me for information on setting up and designing their website. I offer design, HTML and PHP coding, and WordPress Theme and plugin help for websites.  Unfortunately most people have no clue what they want for a website. Many people just say they want a webpage (even though they want a complete site!).  I typically have to go through asking multiple questions just to get a general idea of what they really want. Once I finish going asking questions they normally have a headache.  The only idea I have to fix this is just show them a "sample" website and ask if that is what they want or not. 

People and businesses with existing websites who want a redesign are not much more helpful. When they want a dynamic website, they can't tell me if their web host is a windows server or linux server and normally they can't even tell me WHERE their current website is hosted or if they could give me their control panel login info for me to just log in and see. I can't honestly offer them a dynamic website if they are on a webhost that doesn't allow a database!  

One option is to charge a higher price and include hosting for their website, but here in Mexico most companies don't want to pay more than $3000 pesos (around $290 USD) so I haven't been very motivated to take that option since I'd have to then bill them every year to keep their sites up.  I do offer the service of helping a client get set up with a decent shared host, but they signup for hosting not me.

At that point they typically tell me that they need to get back to me and they don't. It is frustrating because sometimes you feel like you are talking to preschoolers when it comes to technology and since they don't know what a blog is or what comments are or if someone will be updating the site or not. (they want it to be dynamic, but they don't want to add new content!)

A client wants to change the direction of a project half way through (without paying more for the new work or the work that will be re-done)

This has happened several times on projects. We'll meet come to a conclusion on what is needed and on the price all great. Then after starting the work, they'll mention that they were talking about the project and decided that they'd rather do it differently. 

In this case they probably hadn't fully thought out what they wanted before meeting with me. Once they had a chance to sleep on it and discuss the plan they realized that they didn't want it exactly like that.  

This happened to me when I was asked to design a website for a client's second business. I was going to install WordPress on a new Bluehost hosting account and totally customize a WordPress theme for them. That was all great. A week into the project I had finished editing the design and was adding the text they had sent me dividing it up into WordPress pages and they told me that they wanted to divide their business into four websites one per business division so half of my work was for nothing. I had to help them register the domains which was quick, but it meant installing WordPress, configuring it, and adding content to four sites instead of one site.  I was not very happy when they didn't offer to pay more for all the extra work and I admit I really dragged my feet in getting the extra sites set up.   

You can either renegotiate a price for the extra work or risk dropping the project entirely depending on the amount of extra work is included and your time. If it is an important client sometimes it is ok to take the extra work at no cost and then negotiate a higher price for the next project you do for them assuming that something will change.

A current client will want extra services for free that were not included in the agreement

In addition to the previous issue, I've had clients asking me for extra services for free. This is typically due to miscommunication between departments on what I promised or agreed to do so they try to send me their work since it is related. Once one of my clients who I did a website for wanted to have some Spanish-English   translation work done.  The project manager for the website sent me a business proposal that he wanted urgently translated for Monday. It was Friday afternoon when he sent me the document by e-mail.  I replied that business proposal translations were not included in the agreement and asked if wanted to hire me for that service.  I got an upset reply on Monday saying not to worry about it that they found someone else to do it!  I can only guess that they just ran the document through Google Translate very quickly or they decided to pay someone else to spite me, but all he had to do was reply and he did have my cell phone number. 

A client's negotiation for the best price will compare you with the cheapest and lowest quality service.

This problem normally happens to me when I negotiate English language services including English courses and English-Spanish or Spanish-English translations. I charge much less than a typical translation service that you find with an office in a fancy neighborhood, yet I'll typically be compared to the woman down the street who lived in the USA for a year and thinks that makes her an expert teacher or the translator who can barely speak English and charges $5 per page for a translation that isn't much better than one done by a computer. Don't people know they get what they pay for?

You get stuck waiting for information you were promised by the project manager and the manager's boss gets upset that the work isn't yet complete.

To avoid this problem for translations I normally ask for the document to be sent to me at the very beginning before I give a price quote. I'll also normally tell them that it will be X days after confirming that I got the document and I'll e-mail both the person who sent it and the boss so they know. 

For websites I'll normally ask for the company's introduction letter and any PowerPoint presentations or other sales literature they use for selling to a new client and use that information for the website's text.  They normally have a few days while I customize the website template, but sometimes the person in charge of the information gets busy and forgets to send it. I've discovered that it is important to e-mail both people to remind them that I'm waiting on them otherwise it is my fault.

Conclusion

I wrote this post for those who are considering freelancing to help new freelancers know some situations they should come to expect and in doing so plan ways to minimize them and deal with them as they occur.
Some strategies would be to expect problems to occur and ask for 15% more to include the "by the way I also need..." and to include extra e-mail updates so no one is left out of the loop. Extra communication and a clearly defined agreement are key to freelancing success.

The experiences I mentioned are not suggesting in any way that those were bad clients. Those are really quite typical clients and you just have to deal with less than ideal projects with a positive attitude. Expect the unexpected and good luck!