Bad Habits: 8 Ways Freelancers Disrespect Their Own Time
Many freelancers struggle with seeing the true value of their own time and respecting it for what it is worth. In order to have a truly successful career we all need to understand that our time is what allows us to make a living, and the more efficiently we use it, the more profitable our work will be.
As a freelancer, if you don’t respect your own time, no one else will. Personally, I have to say that I have struggled with all of these issues at one time or another.
Here are 8 ways that freelancers tend to disrespect their own time:
1 – Underpricing
Pricing is a difficult decision for many freelancers, especially those who are not yet established. It’s always tempting to underprice your services thinking that it will lead to more work. However, there are real consequences to underpricing. First, you’ll have to work more to make what you could make with higher rates. Plus, customers may view your prices as a sign of your skill level and experience.
Pricing is frequently a problem for many freelancers. While I’m not claiming everyone should increase their rates, I think it’s wise to look at your rates and see if they are an accurate reflection of what your time is worth. For an interesting look from a bit of a different perspective, see Is Charging More the Right Thing to Do? from Men with Pens.
2 – Not Charging Upfront
Most of us have quickly learned that taking no money up front is a bad practice. While it can be a challenge for some new freelancers to expect a portion of the payment (or all of it in some cases) before any work is done, it can save hours of wasted time and frustration. Any freelancer that has been around for a while has a story of payment issues that could have been avoided by charging up front, or by charging more upfront. Unfortunately too many clients never come through with payment, or come through too late. But even more importantly, it shows you which potential clients are serious about working with you.
3 – Not Charging for Additional Services
In most cases a price quote is just that, a quote not a contract. Of course there are situations where a price is set and it’s not flexible, but many times when a client changes their mind or makes an addition to the work being done, the freelancer faces the decision of doing the extra work without compensation or charging more. From my experience, if the additional work is brought on by a change that the client has made, it is best to charge an additional amount (of course this is helpful to be discussed at the start of the project so additional charges are not an unpleasant surprise). Some clients will keep changing their demands if there is no additional monetary requirement from them.
4 – Poor Scheduling
A successful freelancer will be organized to the extent that very little time is wasted. With all of the challenges and temptations that come with freelancing, it’s easy to loose track of time and not get much of substance accomplished during the day. Making more productive use of available time is one of the best ways to increase income.
5 – Working Too Much
Finding the proper work life balance is difficult. It’s much easier to accomplish when you’re working a salaried 9-to-5 job, and much more tempting to work long hours as a freelancer or business owner. In most cases, your quality of work will improve with a better balance, and your quality of life certainly will, and that’s more important anyway.
6 – Trying To Do Everything
Are you trying to do more than you’re humanly capable of doing? This applies to all aspects of freelancing including taking too many jobs, attempting too broad a range of services, handling too much of the dirty work yourself (accounting, invoicing, etc.). You may be better off by focusing on what you do best and hiring others to do the essentials.
7 – Failing to Pay for Effective Services
I think we’re all tempted sometimes to avoid paying for a legitimate service because there is a free option that may not meet all of our needs (but at least it’s free). Could you save some time by paying for a better project management software, or maybe an invoice tool? There are a number of resources that, although they may cost something, can more than make up for the cost by resulting in increased productivity.
8 – Inefficient Use of Email
The convenience of email is wonderful, but it can also eat up way too much time. Darren Rowse recently published an excellent post about his own experience with decreasing the daily burden of email. Personally, I have recently consolidated several email accounts into one inbox and I’m shocked at how much I like it and how much time it can save. Unfortunately, writing and responding to email doesn’t directly generate income, so it needs to be under control.
What’s Your Opinion?
What ways do you struggle with respecting your time? How do you combat these issues?
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Interesting post, Steven, and I think you’re right on the money (no pun intended) with all of these.
As for what we struggle with, managing our business costs us a lot of time. We know it doesn’t have to be that way; we haven’t found the solution yet. A better project manager is definitely something we need, but unfortunately, we haven’t found one yet that fits our business model.
Oh well. Still looking!
(Thanks for the link, too!)
Stick to your contract. every time you finish a job take a better look at your contract. did everything go as planed. what could have been better. and is the a scoop creep clause and a revision clause?
stick to your guns, and if someone keeps taking advantage of you? A good way to get rid of them in a nice way is to raise your rates.
i have been doing this for about 4 years now and i still have old customer’s from when i started, but some will would not pay my new rates. so stick to your guns and they will not hold you back any more.
Yeah I’ve been looking for a decent Project Management tool but still haven’t found one I like. I’d prefer something that was highly configurable, that provides access via a desktop application, and something that can manage Trak/Dev tickets.
I also thing Freelances should charge for itemized quotes, consultation (ie lengthy business related emails) and premiums for express delivery.
nice list, I think the one I can’t stand the most is right at the top, underpricing. Especially when you are competing and these others seem to want to do just about anything for $2/hour. You made some good points, thanks.
Here’s a 9th Way Freelancers Disrespect Their Own Time.
Especially your #3, “Not charging for additional services” is a great danger not only for freelancers, but for all professional service companies. I used to work for a leading IT consultancy which made itself a name for doing fixed price, large scale projects (easily with 50 mln price tag and above). Here. it was absolute essential to make very clear upfront what’s included in the price and what’s not. “Scope creep” was always considered one of the most dangerous things to happen.
So, make sure your customer understands upfront what’s included in your offer (make a list of the things you will deliver for a certain price).
I always add two additional sections in an offer:
- things which are NOT included (this is a very helpful exersise, make an effort to list at least 5 items) and,
- obligations of the client to contribute (e.g. clear specifications, management time etc.), if possible with a clear description of the consequences for the client not meeting these requirements (usually, extra charge by the hour)
A change management procedure can also help to manage a project, e.g. “all reuests which are not covered by the specification are collected in a list, I make an quotation for the price tag, and then we decide together whethet I should do the additionl work”
Klaus
I love scope creep, absolutely love and adore it. It accounts for a sizable portion of my income.
“Some clients will keep changing their demands if there is no additional monetary requirement from them”
That is sooo true and one of the hardest lessons to learn when you start freelancing. Great article!
What’s my opinion? My opinion is: ~GUILTY~
And not only ‘failing to pay for effective services’ like software and tools, but also finding good contractors you can resource out to. when i redesigned my website, i noticed right away that my writing was awful. so i hired a friend who is a fantastic writer, and she did it for me in partial trade for work on her website. Now, not only do i have a nicely redesigned site, but the text on it is top-notch too
as for getting partial payment up front, another of my rules is to get the final payment before releasing the product to the client. i can’t tell you how many times when i was just starting up that people would disappear, decide they would wait months to give me the final payment, and even one client who went bankrupt when i didnt get the final payment before giving them files or launching the site. now, it’s 1/2 up front, 1/2 before launch. period.
Hey guys, with regards to #8 (”Inefficient Use of Email”), I thought you might be interested in taking a look at a client I’ve been working with recently. The company is called Xobni, and they are launching their new product today. It’s a plugin you use with Outlook to help you organize your Inbox. It also makes the search super fast and automatically extracts phone numbers from your emails. I think it’s pretty cool, and I’m not saying that just because I work with them.
You can check out the post I co-wrote with one of the VPs at http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2008/05/hello-world-meet-xobni.html
My opinion? This is one of the best posts in a long time. Thanks for being frank and pointing out important ways we need to be evaluating our time.
Procrastinating is my fault.
Fantastic advice!!
These are the usual things that I recommend my clients to focus on, in order to make their businesses more effective.
I would also include some others in related areas around…
“Picking the wrong people to collaborate with”
“Not thinking about the potential market when dreaming up new things”. and
“Not being able to tell potential clients why they should choose their services”.
Great stuff!!
Oh dear… I wish I am at this stage already… :sigh:
Melek, I don’t know what country you’re posting from, but be careful with the service trading. Here in the good old US of A, the Internal Revenue Service treats bartered services like income. Which means that you’ve incurred a tax liability when you’re trading services.
As for me, I eschew barter. Why? Because all of the people and companies I do business with prefer to be paid with money. And the IRS likes to be paid that way too.
I’m guilty of #5 and #6, which is probably a direct result of #4 and #7. You just had to scroll back up didn’t you?
I also have a tendency to set lofty goals and then I’m disappointed when I don’t (or can’t) meet them.
When you wrote “it’s easy to lose track of time and not get much of substance accomplished during the day.” Great choice of wording. Unfortunately that about describes every day for me.
Here, here! Oh, the pain.
I was just scammed $515! and several days of my time and money for breaking my pay-up-front rule. I think I will try to sell the true story (altered from what this guy hired me to write) at the same price to the magazine he was pretending to serve. It is quite a scandalous juicy story involving a minor celebrity that I interviewed for this cheesecake who merely was obsessed with her and scamming us both! Good grief.
I’m curious how you’d approach charging for estimates? At what point do you tell the client? What do you charge? You can spend endless hours researching their industry / competitors.
Very good article. I’m sure this will save many new freelancers from a lot of problems.
For point 2 about not charging upfront, I think it’s important to consider the client, and the relationship you’ve developed with them. For some clients that I have had for years and trust 100%, I have no problem billing after the project is released and only accept money up-front if they propose it. It can be a sign of good faith and just another reason for them to come back to you — because you are so easy to work with. A lot of hot shot designers ask for a huge sum up-front which doesn’t always put the client at ease. It’s one thing to always cover your back, and of course it’s smart if working for someone for the first time, but client relationships are more important than anything. I think most good freelancers rely heavily on referrals to generate new work, so anything to please the client (as long as you don’t cheat yourself) is usually the right move. My payment terms are very very flexible for just this reason. Maybe I naive or just lucky, but I’ve only been burned once, and it was only a couple hundred bucks.
Alek,
That’s a good point about not charging existing clients up front. I should have put that in the post, but honestly just didn’t think to do so. I agree with you that some relationships will be more important than getting money upfront. Just a judgment call on a case-by-case basis I guess.
James,
At least you’ve recognized an area for improvement. That’s probably not even the case with most of us.
Rico,
Good addition. Thanks!
Great post. I’ve had trouble with many of those areas. Keep on bloggin on.
4-6 are killers. When you first start out you think you can do it all. Then you do it all, overwork yourself, and end up hating what you do. You have to learn how to live life while running your own business. Keeping organized and getting stuff done quickly and efficiently are vital to any freelancer or startup
As far as scope creep goes, I agree that everyone should have a clause in their contract. But if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you should be taken advantage of. Open the lines of communication as soon as something looks like it’s going to cost more, and bring it up with the client. Most will pay you for your extra time- and if they don’t- at least they will understand that this work wasn’t included and keep their additions to a minimum. And after that situation is resolved, add a scope creep clause to your contract! We have a whole section on this in our new book, The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing: how to win clients and what to charge them. And a weekly podcast series also. Check it out at iTunes or here: http://www.marketing-mentor.com/designers-marketing-and-pricing/podcast.html
The biggest problem I have is simply not having enough time, I don’t make enough time to learn, to read, to think – there just seems to be too much work to get through and not enough time – how does anyone else deal with this?
Love the article. As a confidential assistant, all too many times have I heard the excuse that people feel they are saving themselves money by handling all the work that they either hate to do or do not have the expertise to do themselves. I am even guilty of it myself. I tried to create my own website with very minimal coding experience, thinking I was saving myself money but realized that in the long run I was using my time on something I had no business doing when I could have been focusing more on other aspects of my business. I realized I was losing business because of the lack of SEO and professionalism of my website. I have since gotten it redesigned professionally and I am reaping the rewards of having a professional presence on the web.
I have done the same and I am very happy with that, it works great!
I love the thoughts about UNDERPRICING.
You’re right to almost everything you point out….We’ve all been through that and we eventually learned. The most frustrating thing though is the “Not Charging Upfront” thing. Who said that polite people are rewarded???
I am old and have observed a lot. To be a business person, you need the personality that persuades people to part with their money with insufficient reason. This does not mean, as Comrade Lenin would have it, that you have you be a crook. All the same, that is the personalty you need because, no matter whom one buys from, there is no reason one won’t be stung. Even if you have done business happily with the guy 10 times, the 11th time could be a disaster for you, for reasons quite beyond thst guy’s control.
The personality is key. If you don’t have it, forget it. If yoy do have it, you’ll be taking it for granted by the time you’re 8 and you’ll have it well honed by 11.
If you gave the personaity, it is a gift to us all; it makes the world turn to all our benefit. For shame on Comrade Lenin.
John Traugut
Another bad one is “taking commands” from the clients. So far, this is the most disrespecting thing I can think of and have experienced. Clients think themselves as a designer, disregarding anything you have recommended and suggested, tell you rather than asking you to complete what s/he’s looking for, while thinks design is “supposed be” cheap.