I Turned Down My First Freelance Writing Job
3 important red flags that stopped me from signing the dotted line
This may sound crazy but I turned down my first freelance writing opportunity. I’m happy I did.
After being on Medium for over a year and flaunting my goal to be a paid writer, I was afraid to admit this.
I mean technically I’ve been paid by Medium but I wanted to land that first client and finally say hey I’m in the club.
Whether it was my guardian angel or my gut, something told me to step away from this deal. I’ve seen many stories by freelancers about nightmare clients or turning down work because they are too busy. Still, I haven’t seen many talk about rejecting clients due to sketchiness.
Desperation can blind logic
I was desperate to land a client so I could have easily entered into something that didn’t make sense.
See as a freelancer you are the business owner, HR, accountant, and your own lawyer (well I assume most of us are).
We don’t have a legal department to say, “Hey does this contract make sense?” It is on us. So while I’m disappointed I didn’t land my first client, I’m happy I trusted my intuition.
Not all jobs are created equal and sometimes the desperation of landing that client gets in the way of logic. I thought this was going to be my opportunity to finally break in but something happened. All of a sudden my gut told me no — Don’t sign that contract. Don’t engage with this person.
I felt like throwing a tantrum. I was 5 seconds away from signing the dotted line only to send an awkward email back stating I was no longer interested.
As I reflected on this, I realized this gig had “red flags” written all over it.
3 red flags
To give more background, I joined a bunch of slack channels and scoped out job boards. I was connected to this individual via a job board and they proactively reached out to me. Here were my initial red flags.
- Lock in a rate — From the get go, this individual wanted to lock in a rate for all the content I’d be writing. I didn’t have a clear idea of what the topic would be, how much research would be involved, etc, so it was hard to give a solid rate. All this person told me is that they wanted me to write about technology topics. So I could be doing 2 hours of work, research, and writing or 7 hours of work for the same rate.
- Quick reply to my portfolio — The person didn’t ask me for my portfolio and when I sent it there way they immediately replied, “Oh I love it.” Not even a speed reader can read that fast. This showed me they weren’t really interested in my style of writing or experience. Just getting writing for cheap.
- Contract — Yes as writers there are contracts involved and that is fine. Still, as I read through the contract it felt wrong. I didn’t know half of the things it said and as I researched freelance writing contracts there were some red flags. Indemnity clause — yikes. Maybe it was paralysis by analysis but I felt very adamant that before I sign any legal contract I need to know the ins and outs. Don’t blindly just sign.
While I could kick myself for losing my shot, I’ve resolved that this was not the right fit. The person was clearly more interested in locking me in at a low rate rather than working with me.
Go with your gut
It is important to figure out if you are overanalyzing a situation or it is your gut. As a new freelance writer my gut is all I have at times.
I’ve decided to keep learning, reading great content by writers and setting up the infrastructure I need to run a business. While mistakes will be made, I want to avoid huge ones that can lead to legal messes.
So I’d like to turn it to you writers. Has this ever happened to you? Did you turn down a job? Did you take a job and have it blowback on you? Did you hire a lawyer?
Freelance writing and content creation articles I found helpful:
Please connect with me on Twitter → HERE (clickity, click, click) and subscribe to receive email updates every time I publish on Medium.
This article is part of the 60-day writing challenge. (№ 29)
