You’ve worked your tail off and put in numerous hours on a project only to have the client contact you and express total disappointment in the finished project. There is no doubt in your mind that what you presented to the client is the absolute best for their needs but they highly disagree. Is there any way this situation can be turned around? What will it take to make the client happy?

Fear not, my freelancing friend, there IS hope for the situation.

You must remember, even though you are freelancing and may feel entitled to being a bit ‘haughty’ periodically, the bottom line is you are still providing a service to a paying customer. Clients are watching their finances very carefully and in an economy where more and more businesses are on the chopping block, they are watching their business practices even closer.

Hopefully in the beginning stages of the project, you and the client agreed on some sort of guideline for the task. Always have those guidelines, expectations and plans in writing to refer to should an unhappy client situation arise. If this is not standard practice for your freelancing business, please consider making it normal routine to establish the guideline before agreeing to accept any freelance work.

The most important tool in handling a dissatisfied client is ATTITUDE. Your first knee jerk reaction will be to go on the defensive as your abilities and work is challenged. Getting all bent out of shape and firing back defensive remarks will not help the situation.

Listen open mindedly to your clients grievances. Don’t apologize about their complaints, but be sure they know you are hearing what they have to say and you are committed to finding a resolution to the problem. Thank them for allowing you to take the time to turn the situation around.

Ask specific questions about the reasons they are unhappy. Explain the how’s and why’s of the process you applied when working on their task. Stay calm and keep the dialogue clear and focused. Communication is another very powerful asset in repairing the fragile relationship.

Don’t be flippant about your expertise. Make sure your client realizes the experiences you have had in similar situations and what you have learned from those past experiences. Explain to them the different outcomes of various paths that could have been taken. Help them to understand why you chose the path you did and how it will result in the best end results for them vs. other routes you could have taken. The secret is gently reminding them that your knowledge, experience and expertise are the reasons they hired you in the first place.

Be open to compromise. Often times a small concession on your end is all it takes to allow the client the feeling of control over the situation, resulting in satisfaction on their end.

After all communication efforts have failed and the client is still not on board with the outcome of the situation, many times a freelancers only option is to offer some sort of refund or additional services. Although not their first choice for a solution, it has worked for many freelancers when it came down to client retention or taking the risk of some negative word of mouth advertising.

With a calm approach and clear communication, most situations can be turned around and the client will be more confident in their choice of hiring you and the relationship can continue. As with life though, there are a few situations that just can’t be fixed. And as with life, all we can do is chalk it up to a learning experience and make the adjustments needed to avoid a similar situation in the future and move on.

photo credit: Carollainy

As a writer, I know the apprehension and dread that can fill the heart upon receipt of a note or an e-mail from an editor. Is she going to try to second-guess my ending? Does he think he knows my characters better than I do? Now that I’m sitting on the other side of the fence with my big red editing pen, I see that what I once thought were strange arbitrary judgments meant to drive my writing brethren and me to the edge of sanity are, for lack of a better phrase, for our own good!

There are things that can be done, easy things requiring very little blood from either side, that an editor can do to make the process less frightening, less random, and an all-around painless experience.

Read the manuscript.

Okay, so that seems a bit simplistic, but there is something to be said for simplicity. Don’t just run on grammar book in hand, ready to dissect both plot and punctuation. Calm down, settle in, and read the manuscript like it was a book you went and picked up at Barnes & Noble. While you read, keep a little notebook with you to jot down page numbers where improvements could be made, but don’t make them yet. Finish reading the entire manuscript first, because something that doesn’t make sense on page 49 may become clear by page 65. Now read it again, but this time through, write in the comments and suggestions that have popped up along the way, either on the manuscript (if you’re working with a hard copy), or in a separate document (if you’re working via computer).

Remember this is not your story.

Just because you get to edit this thing does NOT make you its parent. This is your author’s baby, and it should be respected as such. Say, for example, you’re editing a romance novel. The hero is tall, dark, and handsome. You hate tall men, so you vigorously insist that the author remove all references to the hero’s height. This is not your story. Personal bias cannot dictate your suggestions. Stick to elements like flow and consistency, and let your author deal with her people.

Don’t be a genre snob.

So you’re an avid sci-fi reader and your first manuscript assignment is an 18th-century romance. Don’t fret, and don’t let this color your reading of the assigned manuscript. While I did say earlier to treat your manuscript like a book you picked out for your own reading pleasure, sometimes you have to stretch your preferences to encompass genre elements you don’t enjoy. A loathing of love scenes does not make it okay to tell your romance writer to cut out all the mushy stuff. Specific audiences expect specific elements in their books, and for now, you have to be the chosen demographic.

Grammar check.

After the read and the re-read, the manuscript will begin to be familiar. This familiarity can lend itself to a tendency to miss grammatical and spelling errors. Armed with a grammar book, stay vigilant in your quest to banish all unneeded commas. There is nothing more distracting than a poorly punctuated book, and it will reflect on you, not your author.

Be nice. Communication is the key to everything in the editing process. Tact is a skill. There is a huge difference between, “The scene on page 85 is totally unrealistic and just plain lousy,” and “Maybe if Linda didn’t punch Fred on page 85….” Make suggestions, but don’t shove them down your author’s throat. I’m not saying that you should coddle your clients; simply think about your responses before you express them. If the author cares about this book, then you need to care, too, and give it the time and consideration it deserves.

We’ve all had bad work experiences, whether as freelancers or during our time in the more traditional job arena. Ideally, freelancing would free us from shifty clients, rude employers, and projects that walk our ethical line, but in the real life world of the independent contractor, the ratio of good to bad is probably very close to that of the nine-to-fiver. One advantage we may have, however, is that if we stay in control and know what we’re willing and able to do, we can usually extricate ourselves from situations a little easier than our workplace-bound friends.

Feedback, Feedback, Feedback

Just like that overused, clichéd mantra of the real estate industry, we freelancers MUST rely on feedback if we’re working in any kind of venue that uses a rating system for it participants. Sites like Guru and Elance encourage both sides of every project to tell their colleagues all about their experience, and though it’s a given that employers should be given the chance to offer kudos or non-kudos for work they receive, it’s equally important for freelancers to share their input on the clients for whom they’re writing, editing, and assisting. Feedback isn’t always an official system of stars or thumbs up, though, and it’s crucial that even for the jobs we land that aren’t part of a system, we still need to keep our network of colleagues up-to-date on consistent non-paying clients, scams, and unethical projects making the rounds. We’re not really part of a career path full of regulations, so it’s up to us to watch each other’s backs so we can have a more complete picture of the clients we’re about to deal with.

Talk It Out

No matter how well you know your client—or how well you THINK you know the terms and details of your project—always lock in what you expect to be paid. You don’t have to always send formal contracts around for signing (though it can’t hurt), but you should always have an email or other written form of communication expressing payment terms (how much, when, what method, etc.). Just the other day, I accepted a job, did the assigned project, and had already spent an entire day working on my second assigned project when I was told the client had decided to go with another writer and that my work of two days was no more than sample work. I know better than to jump into a project without some sort of documentation—I’m a professional, right?—but I thought I had it. Never assume until you see the numbers.

Don’t Read Between the Lines

As freelancers living in this crazy age of InterWebbery, most of us conduct a majority of our conversations via email, Skype, online chats, and even social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s all very convenient and can save all that time formerly spent on phone calls and meetings—but there’s something to be said for intonation. If we’re feeling a little off, or if we’re a little unclear of a client’s intentions, a simple email or message can be misconstrued into a crushing insult, leading to a retaliatory retort, leading to … a lost job. Whether you’ve been freelancing for 20 years or a few months, this is always going to be relevant—never reply in anger.

Remember—part of the joy of freelancing is that we tend to have a little more freedom when it comes to how we handle challenging situations. There’s no need to be a doormat, and if a client is impossible to work with, there are always ways to untangle yourself and get out mostly unscathed. The majority of these disputes, however, can be managed if you stay focused on the job at hand and keep in mind that ultimately, you’re in charge.

Freelance writers are good at writing—this is a given. NOT all freelance writers are good with the business end of the business, and as such, might just start to lose track of smaller invoices or have issues and questions when tax time rolls around. If this is you, there are a few things that, simple as they sound, you may not have thought of to keep the money side of things in check.

1. Don’t Lose Track of the Small Stuff

For many of us, “smaller” jobs, like $10 blogs or $25 reviews, make up the bulk of our income. Unlike more involved editing or ghostwriting projects, you might do ten or twenty of these quicker jobs a day, and they might all be for different clients. It is imperative if you want to maintain your freewheelin’ freelance lifestyle that you implement some sort of method of organization, which is even easier nowadays with so many apps and software packages that help you keep accurate records. You want to be able to know when April 15^th starts creeping up exactly how much money you’ve made from every individual client.

2. Know Your Clients

I’m not saying you have to send birthday cards to everyone you’ve written a press release for, but for every client you work with, maintain current contact information and, again, an up-to-date record of all the work you’ve done for them. If what you’ve made for any individual client adds up to $600 or more, they’ll be sending you the Independent Contractor’s version of a W-2 form, a 1099-MISC. Audits are always a scary phantom looming in the tax process, especially if you’re claiming a lot of business expenses or a home office, so accuracy is essential.

3. Keep an Eye on Your Bank Account

Again, obvious, right? Surprisingly, lots of freelancers have no idea how much actually goes towards work-related expenditures. Membership fees to sites like Guru and Elance, domain name and Web fees if you have your own site, any advertising or supplies like business cards or promo items—all these things are deductible. Even magazine subscriptions to publications that help your craft or memberships in writing or freelance organizations may qualify. ALWAYS KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS! Plus, if you work from home, look into exactly what can and can’t be considered when calling it a home office. There’s a wealth of information available via the Internet, but sometimes it’s best to consult a professional at least once.

And that’s where many of us face a dilemma—outside forces in our business? We’re freelancers precisely because we want to do our own thing, not be accountable to someone else. I’ve found that when it comes to the business stuff, sometimes it helps to enlist a number-cruncher, especially if you’re not one, to help you keep everything straight or at least help you create a system that lets you stay on top of ALL aspects of your thriving freelance career, not just the creative parts.

Even if you’ve been freelancing for years, there are always going to be times when business hits a lull. Nothing to do with the quality of your work or the satisfaction of your clients—for some reason, be it the economy or the phases of the moon, clients come and go, often with no explanation. When you start to see a decrease in your workload and you start feeling like you have too much time on your hands and not enough cash to buy a burrito, it may be time to look in to new avenues of client-finding—or maybe just try and remember some of the tricks you might have forgotten over the years.

It’s All in Who You Know

That’s right—it may be time to mine the invaluable resource that is your Address Book. Now, I’m not saying you should hit up your Aunt Ellen and charge her to write this year’s Christmas letter, but there might be a business colleague or old high school acquaintance in need of a press release or some Web site content. Don’t just assume that everyone you know understands what you do for a living, because unless you’ve written for them before, most of them probably don’t. For example, maybe you worked with John at the bank before embarking on your freelance career—and maybe now John is trying to start his own Web design business. A quick email to catch up can lead to a collaboration that will benefit you both. Take full advantage of all the social media that’s out there now and reconnect with all those possible clients you’ve lost touch with over the years.

It’s Also All in Where You Look

If you’re a freelancer, you know all about sites like Guru and Elance, Web sites where you search through Project Descriptions, bid on jobs, and maintain a profile and quality score. Sites like this have their good side and bad side—it’s great to be able to find job listings specifically tailored to your skills, and the ability to evaluate a possible client based on Feedback from other professionals is invaluable, but there are a lot of employers looking to pay ridiculously paltry sums for your work, and there are a lot of professionals willing to underbid you and work for those sums. Also, these job marketplace sites may offer payment security in the form of escrow, but they also charge transaction fees for any money earned through their sites, as well as membership fees. If you’re on the search to bulk up your client roster, however, sites like these are a pretty simple solution, and if you haven’t visited them in a while, you should go take a look around.

It’s ALSO All in … Your Freebies?

You may have done the cold calling thing when you first started, but even if you did, you’ve learned a lot since then. You’ve probably written sales copy for dozens of businesses, Web copy for sites all over the country, even helped clients get the word out via Twitter, Facebook, and press releases. Well, it’s time to make yourself your client. Pretend you just got the job of marketing YOU. Write up brochures about your business, make some business cards—you can even order some pens or magnets with your contact information. Sending some packets out to some well-researched potential clients can open up avenues of communication that have been heretofore untapped, and might just reap benefits immediately or in the future. Sure, you have to invest some time and some funds, but procuring even one client makes up for the postage and materials cost.

Again, if you’ve been in this freelance world for a while, you already know this stuff, and you’ve probably utilized one of, if not all of, these techniques at some point. Sometimes, though, familiarity can bog us down in a rut, and we just need to be reminded that there are all kinds of clients and projects out there, and more importantly, lots of ways to get them.

While new freelancers might struggle to find one customer here or there (and will serve the heck out of that customer to keep them happy), seasoned freelancers who start to make a name for themselves will have an opposite problem: Too many clients and more on the sidelines who are eager to sign up.

There is such a thing as too many clients. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to tell what the “magic number” is because some clients might have varying needs or might send projects back multiple times. There was a time in my career when I had two clients and they took up twelve hours of each day; and there have been other times when I had fifty clients who, collectively kept me busy for eight hours a day.

Recently I found myself forgetting who all of my clients were and starting to stress out about the possibility of missing a deadline. When that happens, it’s a sign to me that I need to optimize my client list. (Yes, I raise my fees from time to time and yes I schedule work farther and farther out, but I’ve found that there needs to be something else that addresses the current list of clients). So, here’s what I do when I start to froth at the mouth from being overbooked:

• First, list all of your clients on a big piece of paper or the closest whiteboard. Search all sources and include clients even if they get a tiny project from you once in a blue moon.
• Second, draw 6 columns, and these 6 columns will contain the criteria you’ll use to determine how to optimize your client list. (I’ll tell you what goes in the columns in a moment).

Choose your favorite 3-level scoring system. Green, yellow, red; +1, 0, -1; happy face, neutral face, sad face; good, bad, ugly; high, medium, low. That kind of thing. Make it easy on yourself; don’t bother with a percentage or out-of-ten number. This is all “gut feeling” stuff.

The columns are as follows (and you can put them in any order, but this is the order I put them in):

• Rate: How much do they pay?
• Ease: Are they easy to work with? The easier the better. (Of course you want a challenge but I’m talking about those nit-picking customers who send stuff back ten or twelve times compared to the ones who love you and accept your occasional errors)
• Consistency: Do they send you regular work or is it sporadic? Are you their “on-call” person or their go-to person?
• Size: How big is the workload they send? Are they sending you a dribble each month or a torrent? (Of course you may not ONLY want to work on big projects, but working on a few big projects tends to be more profitable than switching several times a day between smaller projects).
• Opportunity: What does your future relationship look like with them? Is it bright? Is there a lot of work coming down the pipeline or is this a one-off project?
• Leverage: Can you leverage this relationship in the future? (For example, a ghostwriting project with a strict no-attribution policy will receive a lower score than something you are a co-author on).

Now, rate each client based on these six factors. At the end, you’ll have a very clear idea of the clients who are the best and brightest for your long-term growth. Make a plan for each client: For your best clients, figure out how you can lock yourself in by adding value and strengthening the relationship. For your worst clients, figure out how you can improve the situation or extricate yourself from it.

For the most part, we freelancers are of a different mindset than the typical 9 to 5 crowd. We tend to be a little more independent, a little more self-starting, and a little more fond of variety. While we understand the pros and cons of the freelance lifestyle, however, oftentimes our friends and family do not. They call, they come by, they expect us to be able to drop whatever project has a deadline looming and babysit for an hour or eat with them while they’re on their lunch break. It’s true—these ARE actually perks to not being beholden to a cubicle, and most of the time, we freelancing folk are able to set our own schedules and do our own work thing. Problems arise when everyone else begins to devalue that work simply because we can do it from home, or in our PJs, or on our own schedules—and then we’re there at three o’clock in the morning trying to keep a Tuesday deadline. It’s up to us to reclaim our careers and set the boundaries we need, and there are a few easy ways to implement change that won’t cramp our freelance style.

1. Be your own boss. Sure, this may sound like a no-brainer for a freelancer, but really think about what that entails. You set your own hours, you keep your work and your funds organized, you get the assignments yourself—YOU are in control. To people looking in, this might seem like it means your calendar is free and you can do whatever you want because, after all, you’re the boss. What it really means is that, for most of us, discipline is key, and while it’s true we’re not forced to adhere to the constraints of an “on the clock” life, if we don’t take our jobs seriously, why should anyone else? That might mean posting working hours if you work from home, turning off the phone to personal calls during the day, or scheduling breaks for yourself—you’re the boss, and you know what works and what you need.

2. Get dressed. By now, it’s almost a cliché that the freelancer who works from home sits in their pajamas all day watching “The People’s Court” and dining on whatever’s handy. Honestly, if that’s your thing, go for it. Sometimes, though, the unwashed writer isn’t so much a sign of freedom as it is a sign of laziness—“Why should I put on clean clothes and comb my hair when I’m not going to see anyone until (insert time frame here)?” Again, it’s all about the value you put into what you’re doing. You don’t have to look “professional” if you don’t want to, but put a little effort into preparing yourself for the day. Going back to the idea of being your own boss, why not wear something YOU would appreciate in an employee, even if that’s a feathered hat or a Night of the Living Dead t-shirt. It might sound silly, but it also might make you sound better on that important phone call with a client.

3. Invest in organization. You’re not a slave to the workday hours of the world, and that’s the way you like it. It’s wise, however, to get yourself some sort of software—even if it’s a 99-cent app for your iPhone—that keeps track of deadlines, meetings, contacts, invoice dates, and any other important business-related information. If you determine you do your best work between 11:00am and 4:00pm, block out that time on your calendar everyday to work. That way, when someone calls and needs a ride to the store in ten minutes, you can look at your calendar, see what you have scheduled, and ask your boss (again, that’s you) if you can take a break. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t, but there’s something magical about having your activities committed to something your eyes can see that gives it more weight.

See, it’s not as split personality as it might feel in the beginning. Freelancing is always going to be about freedom, but that doesn’t always register with family and friends who are more traditional in their career thinking. Don’t worry—setting boundaries you’re comfortable with isn’t compromising to their job box, it’s simply giving you the power to dictate when you work, where you work, and how you work. What’s more freelance than that?

When new freelance writers ask me what kind of writing I do, they are sometimes surprised to discover that I work primarily in web content. “Don’t magazines pay more and isn’t it better to have your name in print?” they ask. Indeed, magazines seem like the superior freelance writing alternative but before you decide to go down that route, you need to remember a critical part of your freelancing business that most freelancers completely forget: Cash flow.

My choice to write web content over magazine content is not because I prefer to charge less. Instead, there is a very practical reason for it: Cash flow is the money that comes into your freelancing business. Cash flow is a critical part of business because it allows you to keep working: You can pay your bills and put food on your table. Even if it’s not a pile of profit, it’s still important to have cash coming in so that you can afford to continue earning more cash.

Way back when I first started freelance writing full time, I had already written a few magazine articles before and knew something about the magazine industry: They can pay pretty well, but it can take days or even weeks (4-6 weeks is the average that I’ve found) to get a response on an article idea. Once you get a response, you write the article and submit it. Once they approve it (after your revisions), they put it into their publishing cycle and it might not be published for 1 to 6 months. And in most cases, magazines pay 1 to 3 months after publication. Add that up and you could be looking at 6 to 9 months before you see payment, sent by check through snail mail.

How do you pay your bills in the mean time?

Web content may pay less per word (but you’ll discover as you build up some experience in this business that it doesn’t actually pay that much less), but the projects can be won faster, completed faster, published faster, and you’ll get paid faster. I may earn slightly less per word writing for the web but I can earn it at a far faster rate.

Don’t get me wrong, magazine content is good: We still live in a world where print content tends to be viewed with more credibility and authority than web content, and once you have your foot in the door of a few magazines, it’s easier to get more magazine work. And, once you have a good system going where the content you wrote for a magazine six months ago is paying you today while the content you wrote for a magazine five months ago is paying you next month. But until you get to that point, magazine writing is going to keep your cash flow from being as good as it could be.

Whether you are starting out as a freelancer or you’ve been working for a few years, cash flow will continue to be of critical importance to the survival of your business. While you might end up finding ways to pursue higher paying projects, remember what I’ve told you here as a lesson to consider when weighing your options between potentially more profitable projects or projects that provide cash flow today.

Most of the successful freelancers I know have made a decision at some point to specialize. In fact, without realizing it, you’ve probably started thinking about it, too. It starts out as a narrowing process where you slowly weed out some of the things you don’t want to do. Then you get to a point where you start to only take on projects that are related other projects you’re already doing.

For example, earlier in your freelancing career you might start out by declining projects that are unethical or that don’t pay enough. (Good. You don’t need those projects anyway). Later, you add to your list of projects you won’t take on various assignments for which you are not very proficient.

Still later, you find that you really like writing something and you don’t really like writing other things. For example, I hate writing print books. By about page 100 I want to be done. So I don’t take on print books. You go through this process slowly, over the years, as you learn about your likes and dislikes and skills. You might even start more narrowly defining who your customers are. It’s not that you won’t take on customers outside of that target but you just prefer customers within that target (and after a while, your specialty in this market will become an asset to you because customers will refer their peers to you).

But how narrow is too narrow? I found out the hard way just a few years ago. I generally specialize in 3 areas but was finding that just 1 of those areas was sending me over 50% of my business. So I decided to specialize in it. It went okay – and it was certainly very profitable – but there was a problem I hadn’t counted on: I really missed the other 2 markets I used to write for. I had discovered my limit. I was able to specialize only to a certain point – to those 3 markets – and no narrower that way. (I’ve also specialized in other ways, too, like in what kind of content I provide to those 3 markets).

As you think about intentionally narrowing your business down (perhaps by deliverable or perhaps by target market, or there might be some other ways that you want to narrow your business) consider how narrow is too narrow. Think about:

• Can your new, narrower market sustain your revenue expectations? In my case, I was fortunate because it did. But I do know of other freelancers who defined their targets so narrowly that they couldn’t find enough customers.
• What happens if someone else contacts you to work for them but is outside of your new, narrower market?
• Are your new, narrower deliverable in enough demand that you can only offer them and still make a living?
• What happens when a customer asks you for some other kind of deliverable that you now no longer offer?

Narrowing your focus is a great way to increase your income and position yourself as an expert… as long as you narrow your business just enough and not any more than that!

Freelancers are called upon to create great content over and over and over (and over and over, ad infinitum). That can be tricky. If you spend 8 hours a day writing, by hour #8, your brain might not resemble the juicy “thinking-muscle” it was earlier in the day. Multiply that day by 250 (or so) for a year of work, or by 2,500 (or so) for a decade of work. It’s no wonder that freelancers may burn out and move on!

So, how can you stay fresh and current? How do you remain inspired after about hour #4 or #5 (or #10) when the going gets tough? More difficult still, how do you remain inspired after year #4 or year #5 (or #10)? Here are some answers:

• Read often. I like to think that writing drains my mind and emotions but reading fills me back up again. I read as much as I can; I rarely watch TV. Generally I read at least one novel every week or two, and I skim and/or read at least one business book every day or two. On top of that, I read the news, blogs, and a ton of online content.
• Read widely. When it comes to reading, I read anything I can get my hands on: Fiction or non-fiction, inside of my niche and outside of it. Even though I work in focused markets, my reading in seemingly unrelated fields frequently ties in.
• Have other interests. It can be tempting for freelancers to get caught up in the money-making part of business. That’s okay to a point but you need to do other things. Have some hobbies, and make sure they are constructive and relaxing and not something you do sitting in the same chair that you normally work from.
• Keep your day separate. Set aside work time. Set aside non-work time. Keep them apart and be intentional about both.
• Do something you’ve never done. Skydive, bungee jump, travel, karaoke, paint a picture, go to the ballet, whatever. Stretch the boundaries of your experience.
• Take a class. This one’s my favorite! I love to learn. Take a class in something related to your area of specialty, but also be sure to take classes that are not related to your specialty: Watercolor, cooking, website design, photography, small engine repair. Learning is part of it but just expanding your base of experience and knowing more than you did the day before is going to help give you things to say and new ways to express old ideas.

If you’re a busy freelancer, it is so easy to become narrowly focused on your small area of attention. That’s not always a bad thing in the short term but it will sooner or later impact your work by making you seem irrelevant or repetitious. By intentionally doing a few of these things, you’ll stay fresh and able to sustain good freelancing for longer.