Setting Your Standards as a Freelancer: A Few Suggestions
Having standards is important when you’re trying to find and work with clients on your own. It’s surprisingly tempting not to stick to your standards: a quick project that you wouldn’t normally take can look pretty appealing if you’re having a slow month. But sticking to your guns can be important in more ways than one. If you take that problematic job, not only are you doing something that you don’t want to do, but you’re also likely to hand in work that you know isn’t as good as you could do. Even worse, that sub-standard job can take up the time you need to find higher paying clients, sticking you in a position where you can’t afford to move forward.
What Standards Do You Need?
It’s easy enough to say that you have to set some standards, but figuring out what a list of standards should look like is difficult. Most of us come up with an absolute lowest price that we’ll accept for our time and then wind up stuck. But knowing what you need to make isn’t enough. There are some other rules you need to lay down for yourself about what kinds of clients you’ll take on.
- No spec work: The pay off for spec work is rarely worth the time you might put in, especially when you consider your time across multiple projects, but I’ve heard of a few freelancers who are willing to take projects on spec when things are slow. A better use of that time might be marketing yourself — the odds that you’ll wind up with a paying client are usually better.
- Rush projects: Most freelancers decide whether to take a rush project on a case by case basis, but setting more specific policies will pay off. For some freelancers, it may simply make sense to turn down most rush projects, but what defines a rush project? And if you are willing to take on rush projects, what will your fees be for each one?
- Types of clients: There are freelancers out there who won’t touch a project if it comes from an ad agency, and others who will only take clients who are ad agencies — preferences on the types of clients you want to deal with can vary significantly. Whichever way you go, though, write it down. You’ll almost always be better off sticking to your preferred clients and focusing on bringing in new projects from them than trying to chase someone else at the same time.
There are plenty more standards you can add to your list. Think in terms of what you just don’t want to do in order to help narrow things down. It’s something of a rarity to see a standards list written in the positive, if only because many freelancers start freelancing because they don’t like certain aspects of past work.
Sticking to Your Standards
The hardest part of having standards comes after writing them down – it’s enforcing them. Having a sheet of your standards that you’re willing to show to your clients, or use to remind yourself, can help you stick to them. But a large portion of sticking to these rules is realizing that they are a question of prioritizing your work. There are times when you truly need to prioritize marketing yourself as a freelancer over taking on new clients. One of the best signs of such a time is if the only work you’re being offered are projects that violate your standards.
It can be rough to turn down paying work, even the low-paying projects, if you’re in the middle of a slow period. There may be times when you have to relax your standards in order to make sure that the bills get paid. But even if you have to bend your own rules on occasion, those rules are important to have in place.
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rush projects are the enemy
I think it depends on the client and project + your current workload. I typically charge 50-100% more than my standard rate for rush jobs. And this can make the difference between meeting weekly/monthly income goals or not – and possibly even exceeding them.
On a number of occasions – I’ve been able to take extended weekends off due to multiple rush jobs the week before.
Just make sure you’re paid promptly for the work that needed to be turned around so quickly. That’s the worst – client demanding work quickly – then lagging on payment.
a great reminder and encouragement as well. The more standards we hold ourselves to – the better our business will flourish. thanks!
After writing for a living for more than 30 years, I’m noticing that a lot of standards are getting thrown out the window in order to make a living. Writing isn’t valued because everyone has a keyboard, so, as a client said to me, “how hard can it be to pound out a few hundred words?” My reply? “It not the words, it’s the content that sells your product.” Bring back high standards AND good pay for writers!
“It’s not the words… its the order they come in!”
Excellent tips! I think it’s also important to stick to your guns on issues of content. Some clients look respectable, but then want content that can be illicit or questionable. I know that sticking to my guns in that area has opened up a few doors with networking within the nonprofit and church community.
This is a great article for new freelancers. You absolutely need to set standards for yourself and not accept certain types of jobs. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed and under-paid possibly.
Plus, it is all about how you portray yourself. If you are accepting work from low-paying clients, it shows a lack of confidence in your abilities, thus the client will think your work is low-quality. If you think your abilities are exceptional, portray yourself as confident and only accept those within your standards.
Good post and tips for freelancers.
Personally I love rush projects. Can generate good income and usually takes me around 4 days to slice a design to (X)HTML/CSS, create a custom WordPress theme and fill in the content.
Of course doesn’t apply for other type of work (e.g website design).
Quality over quantity
This very usefull! to add to my freelancer experiene!
i want to try freelance standard now. Now standard, professional tomorrow
I find it easier to stand ground when I have work in the Studio. But I have been getting better at saying No to a bad client.
I believe being fair to oneself is just as important to being fair to your client.
I think that, when you’re getting started, it doesn’t hurt to take whatever work you can, to gain experience in the field and boost your portfolio.
But when you get to that point where you are experienced enough and confident enough in your own abilities to satisfy clients, and the only thing missing is actual work; I think this is the time to outline your ideal client, the specific work you want to do, and then enforce those standards.
After working around 50 hours in the last three days, I can safely say that I definitely need to reexamine my rush job policy.
Thanks for the post. Very good.
Great article! One of the hardest things to do is turn down low paying projects in periods of down time. I’ve learned to enforce this as one of my “standards” over the years.
Early on, in periods that were slow, I would take on these types of projects. However, I would find myself investing the same amount of time that I would put into a more well paying job. And I just felt that this was wrong.
I’ve learned that when things get slow, don’t sell myself short. Invest my time & effort into marketing that will pay off with a well paying job.
This might not be the case for everyone, but it’s helped me over the years.
I totally agree with you, you need standards.
But notice that this statement goes against one of the most commonly mentioned advantages of running a small company (or one man band or whatever) – that you can be flexible with your clients.
The truth is that the minute you are, your relationship with a client is doomed. Next time they come to you, your last time flexible action will be considered a norm and a new bending of rules will be expected.
Let’s face it, why do huge businesses introduce standards (or t&c’s as they call them)? To protect themselves from all the crap small businesses so happily push themselves towards.
Excellent article! Saying ‘NO’ was my New Years resolution. Self worth also has a lot to play & the value that you place on your time (what little we have of it) as to how much we need or want the job.
I am loving the whole standards/rules/terms & conditions/procedures thing as you know at the end of the day everyone knows where they stand however you can choose be flexible if you need to be.
This is an inspiring read when all things seem to fail and one runs into a freelancing dry spell. It’s all about the art of selling yourself as a freelancer that counts. When times are tough, one can easily be tempted with cheap deals without the payment guarantee, or worse, having to work for peanuts. We are all professionals here with something great to offer and we must take pride in that.
Thanks for the article, made me think…
As an editor and freelance writer, I won’t take an assignment unless I know I can do a quality job. If deadlines or rush jobs are too unrealistic to complete, and quality would suffer, I just won’t accept them. Too often, I’ve found people want articles written at a price that is insulting to me, and I’m sure to other professionals as well. There are some writers, however, who agree to ridiculous compensation for their efforts. As a result, clients and employers may think we will all work at the same low price. Writing quality work involves research and thought, not just throwing a bunch of words together. Fortunately, I have a few clients who have no set deadlines, and appreciate quality over quantity.
thanks for your suggestion. i’m getting benefit from this post.
This is a great article. It is very important to stick to your standards once you set them because if you sway once you will probably do it again thus throwing away all your standards. Thanks for sharing.