FREELANCE WRITING
When it’s Time to Fire Your Client
How to put your foot down about it and clear up your schedule for higher-paying work
As a freelancer your time is money. Sure, it's cliché, but it is true and relevant to how you need to set up your schedule in order to make the most money in the least amount of time.
Because that’s the game. That’s how freelancing works. Make the most money in the fewest hours so that you can actually live a life outside your office.
And trust…once you start showing talent in this field, that’s a hard thing to do.
Today, we’re talking about identifying the “low-hanging fruit” in your freelance work so you can cut loose some of those services, gigs, clients, etc, that bog down your time while earning less money.
But what do you do when you realize an entire service you offer doesn’t pay nearly as well as your other services and it takes an astronomical amount of time to do? You make the tough decision to stop offering that service. It’s the only way to clear up that potential time on your schedule for taking higher-paying orders.
And I’m learning, it’s not so easily done.
Case Study in Being Under Water on a Service
It happens. As a freelancer, in the beginning, you take whatever work comes your way without being too entirely picky about it. And, as a result you sort of fall into a niche. This happened for me as well, only I fell into two niches, each very different from the other and one far out-paying the other.
- I began, first, to attract a lot of business in the poetry community — editing poems, taking on mentoring clients, and eventually, I’d move on to edit more than 50 poetry manuscripts from more than a dozen countries around the world. (But when I do the math, I’m earning 10.83–16.25 per hour doing this work. Um, yuk.)
- I began in the health and wellness niche by lucking into a great CBD client gig. I’ve been writing for them for over 2 years now and thanks to my experience, I am now able to attract clients that pay top rates for my work. I have 3 retainer clients I service and take one-off blogs if they pay well enough. (When I do the math for this service, I earn 85+ per hour and that’s increasing with new clients who come in at a higher rate.)
So, what’s the difference?
With poetry editing, I can make 500 bucks with a 4+ week order. With blogging services, I can make that by lunchtime. One day.
Clearly, my passion for poetry is costing me, a lot. So, I made the tough (it was really heartbreaking) decision to pause all my poetry gigs on Fiverr and begin removing the poetry-related copy from my websites, completely branding myself as a professional B2C blogger-for-hire.
I’ve learned that it’s time to put my foot down. It’s time to reclaim my nights and weekends. And let’s be honest, those low-hanging fruit, as we freelancers call them, are the jobs or clients whose work we save to do on nights and weekends while the high-paying gigs get our best calendar hours. This isn’t an insult to the work, or the clients themselves, but an honest evaluation of the value of the time spent on these services.
Strangely, freelancers earn less working nights and weekends, and it should not be this way. In fact, doing this for too long will certainly lead to burnout.
When It Is Time to Break Up with a Service You Offer
- Calculate the hourly rate for that service by dividing the rate by the hours you worked on the project.
- Do this for several orders of that service so you can get an average idea of how much you earn hourly for that service.
- Do the same for your other services and compare. This is how you can also determine the value of an hour on your calendar.
Once you determine the value of an hour on your calendar (if it helps, I use the Planyway add-on to Trello, which is how I organize all of my work) you can better evaluate whether or not to take on an order, and also, whether or not an entire service you offer is no longer profitable.
And let’s be honest here — there are going to be passion projects that pay little to nothing. Like that paid newsletter you’ve been giving your all but which isn’t growing or earning much. It may be time to let that go so you have time for your clients and for the menial tasks that keep your business running smoothly. You’ll need to schedule time for these types of things, like invoicing and data entry. In fact, you need to schedule a lot of things.
Here‘s a sample of what my schedule looks like:
Monday
9:00 am — 10 am: Blog X — research 10 am — 10:30 am: Social Media workflow (This includes promotional posts to all social media as well as newsletters for promotion.) 10:30 am — 10:45 am: Emails 10:45 am — 11:30 am: Blog Y — Send HARO pitches & research 11:30 am–12:00 pm: Content Workflow (This includes articles like the one you are reading right now.) LUNCH 12:45 pm — 3:30 pm: Blog W — writing 3:30 pm — 4:00 pm — Blog Q- Edit/Proofread/Deliver 4:00 pm — 5:00 pm—Research/Pitching workflow 5:00 pm — 6:00 pm — SFM Videos & research
Tuesday
9:00 am —11:30 am: Blog X — Writing 11:30 am — 2:30 pm: Blog W-Edit/Proofread/Deliver 12:30 pm — 1:00 pm — Update Client Data record 1:00 pm —1:15 pm Send invoices LUNCH 2:00 pm —3:30 pm: Blog Y — writing 3:30 pm —4:00 pm — Blog X- Edit/Proofread/Deliver 4:00 pm —5:00 pm — Blog Z — Research 5:00 pm —6:00 pm — Content Workflow
Wednesday
9:00 am — 11:00 am: Fiverr blog, research & write 11:00 am — 12:00 pm: Blog Y-Edit/Proofread/Deliver LUNCH 12:45 pm — 3:30 pm: Blog Z — writing 3:30 pm — 3:45 pm — Social media workflow (break to prepare for meeting) 4:00 pm— 4:30 pm — Potential client discovery call 4:30 pm — 5:15 pm — Blog X- Edit/Proofread/Deliver, Fiverr blog edit/proofread/deliver 5:15 pm— 6:00 pm—Business workflow, data, expense records, invoicing
Now, you’ll see on any given day I am juggling 2–3 professional blogs in smaller time slots. (With my raging ADHD, I find these smaller blocks of time — a divide-and-conquer strategy — works best to keep me on task and keep me from getting cognitively bored or overwhelmed.)
I schedule three individual time slots for my professional blogs. One initial slot of usually 30 minutes to an hour for research and mapping out the blog, gathering the resources I’ll use, and reaching out to potential collaborators for professional input on the blog. Then, a second time slot on the next day, a larger one, for the actual writing of the blog. Then, a third and smaller time slot for editing, proofreading, delivering to the client, and wrapping up loose ends like updating my records for the client.
Note that there is NO wiggle room between these appointments.
Nor are there large blocks of space available for me to spend hours analyzing and editing a poetry manuscript with all of the client work going on.
And, there’s not much time in there for personal writing or content writing. Those slots usually go on my nights and weekends because there’s nowhere else for me to schedule them.
Also, life happens as you attempt a schedule like this. So, as tasks that I complete are marked as “completed,” others (like Social Media workflow, for example, or email slots) get picked up and moved to weekend days or onto my nights — which I have scheduled as “personal time.”
Week after week I find I am committed to working both Saturday and Sunday.
When your schedule is tight like this it means a few things for a freelancer:
- Your time is in demand.
- Your skills are in demand.
- Your services and expertise are in demand.
And what happens when demand goes up? It's Economics 101 — Your prices go up to balance the demand.
Which is easy to visualize, but not so easy to carry out. So, let’s talk about how you can do this — maximizing the profit while maintaining a reasonable schedule.
Clearing the Path to Success
So, you have identified the low-hanging fruit (sorry if that term offends, but it really is a fast way to explain). Let’s take a look at how to handle these.
Scenario 1
You realize your services are in higher demand and feel you are working around the clock to keep up. New orders coming in mean you struggle to figure out when you will do them. Perhaps, you are even turning work away or telling people you are overbooked. Perhaps you have a waiting list.
What you know you need to do: Raise your rates.
How to do it: Decide on your new rates and initiate the conversation with each of your clients. Explain the new rates. Release the clients who cannot meet these rates. Pitch your services to new clients with the new rates and fill in the open spaces with the new client work.
Scenario 2
You have one client who orders one small order a month and gives you little advance warning.
What you know you need to do: Release this client or ask for a retainer of X amount each month to keep them on as a client.
How to do it: Ask them for more advanced notice so that there’s time in your schedule to do the work. Explain that your schedule is getting full earlier each month and that if they want a time slot for the work they’ll have to schedule earlier in the month with you. If there’s no contract in place, offer a service contract for X amount each month to be ordered by X day of each month and delivered by X day of each month.
Scenario 3
One client consistently orders last minute and expects a fast turnaround.
What you know you need to do: Release the client or implement a charge for quick turnaround work.
How to do it: Ask them for more advanced notice so that there’s time in your schedule to do the work. Explain that your schedule is getting full earlier each month and that if they want a time slot for the work they’ll have to schedule earlier in the month with you. If they still need last-minute work done, explain that there will be an additional charge for this service.
Scenario 4
One particular service you offer doesn’t pay as well. You now approach those orders feeling it isn’t the best use of your time.
What you know you need to do: Stop offering that service.
How to do it: Update the copy on your website to remove the service. Tell new inquiries that the service is no longer available. If they say “name your price” then you can negotiate a much higher rate with them to make it worth your time. Some folks will pay whatever you ask just so you will do the work for them.
Scenario 5
You have one client paying a full 10 cents per word cheaper than everyone else.
What you know you need to do: “Break up” with the client.
How to do it: Send a well-thought-out email or give them a call to explain that your rates have significantly increased to balance a growing workload. Thank them for a great working partnership but explain that you can no longer serve them. Most clients will be happy for your success. They might also agree to meet your new rates. Negotiate or part ways.
These are simple examples of how to clear the path to your success. It can be especially hard for any freelancer to cut loose existing work that pays for potential work that pays better.
The bottom line, here, is that you can’t service all those higher-paying clients & gigs if you don’t have time and if you, yourself, don’t value the time that you do have.
I hope this has helped to encourage you to value your time and efforts as a freelancer. Go ahead and prepare a template email for the scenarios that fit your circumstances, then edit that template with a personal touch before you use it. This may help to save some time on your communications as you clear up those spaces in your calendar for the high-paying clients and services you’ve worked so hard to earn.
Your author today: Christina M. Ward is a lifelong beauty and wellness enthusiast with a professional writing career in the wellness, health, and clean beauty industries. Her work has been featured in cbdMD, VEGAMOUR, Today’s Health Science, LA Weekly, the Village Voice out of New York, Men’s Health, and OK! Magazine, among others.
Join Christina’s free newsletter for more information on how to freelance for a living, as well as occasional plugs for her new poems, like this one.