I think it also depends on how seriously that client takes your time. He or she must understand that hours for you in this case is money you make per hour, and if you were not waiting for their work you could be spending those hours productively (not necessarily in terms of money, though). So you have to think whether you are hanging in there just because they currently don’t have work for you but consider you an important part of your team or it doesn’t really matter much to them. If it is the former case, I think you should politely move on.

Right on, Martha–that’s it. I try to retain the danglers and let them know I’m there. But I’m always looking for the next client.

Great article on a great topic!

I’ve had a few danglers over time, the lion’s share of which I’ve either been able to successfully renegotiate the terms of our arrangement or cordially move on.

In one recent case, however, I began to suspect that a client for whom I was supposed to do an entire Web site build, content redevelopment, ongoing maintenance and consulting was beginning to let me “dangle.” I was well into the design and technical development phase and had even been paid a decent amount for work to that point. Then, well, they sort of just stopped calling me back. Despite my best efforts to get in touch, I could tell I was being pushed to the margins of their internal creative process (side note: my original contact with this company moved on to a new job, which made me feel a bit vulnerable to begin with).

Today I happened to check their site to see if they had used any of my work, which according to our contract, is their property despite the fact that I hadn’t seen the project to completion. Turns out, they’ve decided to go with a totally different design (which frankly is NOT as good as mine — and I don’t even consider myself to be a particularly brilliant designer, as most of my work falls within the realm of content strategy and development), and have implemented a totally different backend solution from the one that I suggested. Furthermore, whoever coded the front end portion of the site used, to say the least, questionable practices in doing so (old school table layouts, etc).

My first reaction was to call them up and demand to know which of their employees’ teen-aged kids had low-balled me on the fees (what else could it have been, right?). But the more I thought about it, the less sense that seemed to make. Still, I would be interested to know exactly what happened and patch things up if necessary. This particular company had been one of my best clients since I began my freelance business more than two years ago, and the feedback I received on my work (including this particular project, up until they dangled me), was always very complimentary. So I was pretty shocked when they cut me loose in such a rude and seemingly arbitrary way.

Apologies for the long sob story, but it brings me to my question: what do you all think I should do? Should I try to call them or just let it all slide? And what do you suppose could have happened?

I would think you always want to be prospecting for new and better clients so there’s never a question of whether you can afford to drop a “dangler”.

Stephen Tiano
Book Designer, Page Compositor & Layout Artist

kristen,

I think you’re right; I’ll give them another shout, if for no other reason than to figure out what happened.

Thanks for your advice everyone.

Jeff

Bob:

Right on.

I put a call in but haven’t heard back. Since I wrote last, I submitted to the doldrums of office life and accepted a full time job — started last week, so if I don’t hear back from this client, I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Still, I’m interested to hear what they have to say.

Thanks all,
Jeff

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