This may sound a bit weird (especially for a newbie freelancer)  but if you’ve been doing freelancing for a while, you definitely know that there are clients that are not really worth it. This post explains what bad signs to keep in mind so that you can screen out all the “bad” clients out there. 

The Why

Before going into the details how to read the signs of a bad client, I’d like to touch on why you need to do that. The thing is that lousy clients will never be happy with your work. For starters, it’s just psychologically difficult to work with somebody who is never satisfied with whatever you do, even if you go the extra mile. Secondly, such a customer will never give you positive referrals or testimonials that you might use for getting more clients.

What’s more, you’ll have to basically force them to pay you what you agreed upon before. If you’re not one of those who enjoy harmful emotions, you don’t want to work with such customers. They’ll try to either postpone your payments or find a reason to pay you less than you agreed to work for in the beginning. As you can see, there’s enough why’s to make you really want to stay far away from such clients.

Warning Signs of a Bad Client

Having outlined why you need to be aware of the issues that a bad client can cause, I’ll give you an idea of what to keep a really weather eye on.

Not a Fan

If your customer does not really like what you did before (after checking your portfolio), it basically means that he does not trust you and your skills. In the first place, it’ll make it quite hard to agree on the prices that work for you and ensure that you can provide high-quality work. Such a client is basically a bargain hunter.

Unrealistic Expectations

You client may not understand how things work in your industry and ask you to do something that is either not really possible or at least not for that sort of money that he offers. As a professional, your duty is to explain it to your client that he wants something that is not actually doable in your circumstances. In case it’s just impossible because of the unavailability of that technology, you can just tell your customer what’s up. If his price is unrealistic, you still need to let him know why, but you also need to go into the details why it is so. Just explain what doing something he wants would involve and how that would influence the prices you’re going to have to charge. Your client will get your point if he’s a rational being. Should he not, it’s just not your client.

Overspecific 

In case your client wants to discuss every single (however insignificant) aspect of your work, you need to stay alert. It’s a very bad sign, because such an approach from your client will slow down the project a great deal. Sometimes clients want you to explain just about everything that you do in terms of technology (how to create a contact form in PHP, etc). If it’s your case, just refer them to some web educational resource or just tell him or her that you’ll have to charge for educating him. Don’t get me wrong, a certain degree of education is a mandatory and integral thing when working with a customer, but that does not mean that you need to go really in-depth and share all your knowledge and  teach him all the skills you know. There should be a limit.

Slow Thinker and Doer

From time to time, you may stumble upon customers who communicate in a really slow way. You send him an email message and he replies in like 3 days or a week. Should you be OK with that, then it’s perfect, but ,if you like to really focus on one thing for a long time span, you’re going to have issues with a slow client. The truth is, it actually makes sense to specify in your initial agreement how often you need to reply to each other’s messages.

The DIY Client

Though it’s sometimes perfectly OK to have total freedom at what you do with your client’s project, it’s not that positive in the long run. The thing is that even if your client tells you to do whatever you think best and just get back to him with a ready site or whatever you provide, it’s definitely gonna backfire down the road. That’s because once you send him a completed project, the client starts finding “issues” with something that you invested a whole lot of time and efforts into. The best way would be to break your project into logical milestones and just double-check with the client if everything goes well every time your reach a milestone. Thus you can be sure that you won’t have to redo everything from the gitgo.

The Bottom Line

As you could see for yourself, you absolutely need to read those bad signs, because doing so allows you to get rid of all the bad clients. That allows you to focus on the good ones and do more high-quality work for them. And it’s instead of proving something to your bad customer or just begging him to pay for the work that you actually did for him. Did you have a bad customer? What’s your experience?
Images By: Paul Cross – CC BY 2.0