Preventing Scope Creep with Draining Freelance Writing Clients
Freelance writing offers the ability to craft a career and a work-life balance that’s right for you. This is why many of us decide to work for ourselves, after all.
But achieving this desired balance is often easier said than done. What happens when your clients’ needs attempt to override your own?
Spotting the Red Flags of Scope Creep as a Freelance Writer
Some clients are simply more accustomed to a traditional employer-employee relationship and lack the ability or the awareness of what a healthy working relationship with a freelancer looks like. This could take the form of one, or a few, of these red flags:
They aren’t clear on what they hired you to do, leading them to burden you with extra work that was not part of the original client agreement or extending the project timeline
They want to micromanage the project they hired you to manage
They are asking for you to turn around projects within the hour
They are expecting you to “jump on a call” that wasn’t put on your calendar in advance
Whatever the ask, micromanaging or disregarding one’s time can be the death of a good freelance-client relationship.
“It’s important to know when to draw the line. How do you identify those moments when you need to say to a client that this is no longer a good fit?”
Eventually, you will need to decide for yourself if this client is worth the extra stress they bring to your business. If the answer is no, you might be better off letting them go.
Cutting Off Scope Creep
One of the hardest parts of freelancing is learning when and how to set these professional boundaries. But taking the time to establish these rules will spare you a lot of awkward conversations down the road.
It’s normal to have concerns about how you approach a delicate task like this. Firing a client is the last thing many of us want to do; burning a bridge as a freelance writer can feel incredibly scary. Clients talk, and no one wants a reputation for being difficult.
“Can you decipher how they are trying to weasel their way through, and to push on the wall of the scope to which you agreed?”
There can also be a tendency for freelance writers to associate so strongly with their work that they can take a client’s demands or dissatisfaction personally. This can lead to overcompensation as we work even harder to prove ourselves. And because so many of us built our business from the ground up, it can be frustratingly easy to dismiss needless struggles as something that, earlier in our career, we would have endured for less.
But here’s something that we’ve found works for us: as soon as you sign a contract with a new client, send them written, mutual expectations for how you expect to work together. Not only does this set the stage from the very beginning, but a transparent onboarding process gives you something to cite anytime their demands cross the boundaries of what you’ve agreed upon.
Even then, of course, you may find clients asking you to do some heavy lifting, often by disguising their request as an extension of the work you’re already doing. In those cases, don’t hesitate to stand up for yourself. “Yes,” you might say. “I could do that work, as well — but it will take this amount of time, and this amount of dollars.”
Pulling the Trigger
Sometimes, even our best efforts aren’t enough to avoid the conflicts that none of us ever wants to have. When this happens, how can you walk out the door with your head held high?
“It’s really important to make sure that your communication represents you in the best way possible. Sometimes, the situation can be rife with conflict — and it’s your job to defuse that conflict, instead of amplifying it.”
First, make sure you don’t make a permanent decision on a temporary feeling. Take a few hours to cool down, to sleep on it. No business has ever benefited from emails being sent out in fits of pique.
With that said, do make sure to reach out to others in your network whom you trust. Process things with a fellow freelancer, talk things out, and get multiple perspectives on the best way forward. If you do decide to part ways with the client, make sure those same people are proofreading your decision, to make sure the tone is just right.
Acknowledging Each Other’s Needs
In our personal experiences, overbearing clients or boundary-crossers have been infrequent. What can be much more difficult is when you and the client simply aren’t good for each other.
“It’s easier to deal with someone who’s a jerk because I know how to handle a jerk. What’s harder to handle is parting from a project that simply isn’t a good fit, despite only nice people being involved.”
And this might not have always been the case! When we first started freelancing, we had clients with whom we not only worked for years but who also made up a disproportionate share of our revenue. But as our growing experience (and rates) came up against their budget, we had to make some hard choices.
In the end, we knew we had to make the right decisions for ourselves and our business. And while cutting those ties may have been scary, we have no regrets for how we felt coming out on the other end: with more time, less stress, and the freedom to build a future that we truly wanted.
