3 Headaches of Writing for Clients

It’s not all fun and games working as a freelancer

Until a few months ago, I was under the false assumption that writing for clients was a dream come true. You see writers boast about how awesome it is all the time:

“You make your own hours, get paid more and work from your couch.”

I’m not at all trying to say that these aren’t true, but it’s not all daisies and waterfalls. There are negative sides to being a freelance writer that can be a pain in the neck to deal with. Sadly, most writers — myself included — don’t learn about the negatives until they actually find clients to write for.

In the last few months, I found a few clients who were willing to pay me to write for them. It felt like a dream come true, but now I’m realizing there’s more to it than advertised by other writers.

Finding paying clients is an awesome accomplishment for any writer, but understanding the downsides of freelancing is the very next step. Let me fill you in about what I’ve learned in my freelance journey.

Inconsistent Requests

I’ve noticed that the number of requests to work on from a client can be as inconsistent as your local meteorologist's weather predictions. For me, it either comes all at once or it’s dry as a bone. Never in the middle.

Since these are my clients, I’m at the mercy of their bidding.

I’ve reached out to clients before to pitch ideas I have for their platforms but the success rate of doing that hasn’t been high. Most of the clients I write for already have a general idea of exactly what they want and don’t deviate from their main ideas.

Getting consistent requests for work from freelancers is something that most freelancers struggle with. Unless you have a plethora of clients, you have to cross your fingers and hope something comes your way.

I’ve found this happens often in the world of freelancing and was something that I figured would happen but not to this degree. It’s really been either an avalanche of requests for my writing or a trickle and no in-between.

Numerous Requests For Revisions

I went into freelancing what the mindset of: “I want to keep my clients so I will always oblige with however many revisions are sent back.”

I wish I wouldn’t have had that mindset.

Some clients send back so many microscopic revisions on my writing. It might be a one-word change in the headline or an extra hyperlink somewhere in the story.

I’ve never received any major revisions on any of the content I’ve written, but I’m at the point where I wish I would have. Having to make 10 minor edits about commas every time the client gives feedback on the story is more tiring than having to write entirely new paragraphs.

I’m not saying this to complain about it because I’m too lazy to make the revisions. It just takes so much time out of my day and my client’s day. We both have to email revisions back and forth way more than either of us has time for. Sometimes it takes hours to get an email back, which delays the process even more.

On top of that, I’ve had clients doubt my writing abilities in the form of revision requests. These doubts come in the form of: “Are you sure ‘canceled’ is only spelled with one l?”

Emails like these make me smack myself in the face.

At the same time, they make me a little happy because they show me how bad this client needs a freelance writer on their team.

Poor Communication

This one kills me.

Most of my clients either overcommunicate or under-communicate with what they want to see in a story. It’s difficult to give someone exactly what they want when they only give you one sentence worth of instructions. At the same time, I don’t want to be micro-managed either.

I have one client that sends my work back with more instructions over and over again.

For example, the first set of instructions is just that they need a story about a certain topic. Then, they send back my first draft and tell me to include some keywords they selected. After that, they send it back and tell me to cut it down because my word count is too high, but still haven’t told me what the word count should be.

It baffles me that they don’t just include all of this information in the first email. Also, I have to keep finding places in my story to make these additional sets of instructions work.

It doesn’t just stop there. If only that was my main dilemma with communication, then I wouldn’t have given it a subheading all to itself.

Communication about paying invoices can be pretty poor for a lot of clients. They’ll quickly take the story you emailed them and then forget about paying the invoice you sent along with it for weeks.

So many of my invoices get paid late to the point where I’m used to it now. If I send an invoice and a client pays it within a week then I get surprised.

Takeaway

It might be hard to tell, but I do have a couple really good freelance clients. They communicate efficiently and tell me exactly what they need.

Sadly, I have way more crappy ones than good ones at this point. I’m optimistic because I’m still looking for new clients and I don’t have that many yet.

All-in-all, finding clients to write for has been a great experience for me, but it’s helped me realize that I need to raise the bar for myself. I used to think finding freelance clients was the end goal for me. Now, I know it’s not.

Instead of being at the mercy of a client, think about how you can make money writing your own content for yourself. Not for someone else. Something like starting a blog, an email list or writing an e-book will put your writing skills to work for yourself and earn you money.

It’s great getting paid to write for clients, but I think there is more out there for us freelancers.