6 Freelance Writing Mistakes That are Costing You Clients Everyday

I have made a lot of mistakes in this freelance writing business since the day I started. By ‘a lot’ , I really mean A LOT. It’s such a great feeling when you start getting clients and constant work that you completely fail to notice all the red flags coming your way. You become way too confident and begin ignoring all those warning emails from your clients. You think even if you lose one client it won’t really matter much but then one turns into five and you completely go out of work in a week. What went wrong?

Here are some freelance writing mistakes that are costing you clients everyday:

1. Delivering late

It’s already difficult for people to take freelance writers seriously and they already doubt your professionalism, by delivering late you are only proving them right. Always discuss the time of delivery with the client before starting the project and deliver right before the deadline. Under promise and over deliver.

2. Not responding to the clients on time

Just because you are a freelance writer doesn’t mean you can get away with ignoring those phone calls and emails from your client. Again, that is highly unprofessional. Do that only if writing is an extra way of earning income for you and you never want to make it your full time job.

You have to have constant discussions with the client about the content and your approach, it will only help you create better content. In case you think the discussions with your clients are interrupting your work, decide on a weekly time to discuss things so that you can schedule your work accordingly. I usually keep one day aside from every week to have meetings with all my clients.

3. Not giving enough time to editing

I cannot stress how important this is. Edit your content until you think it’s absolutely flawless and perfect. Sending a first draft without editing it out will only make the client angry and he will probably send your content back. If a client had the time to sit down and proof read every bit of your content, he wouldn’t hire you in the first place.

4. Too busy to notice the client is unsatisfied

So maybe you got too many clients on your plate and you have a lot of pending work on your list, but that does not mean you can completely ignore some clients while focusing more on the others. You might think the client won’t fire you or hire someone else, but don’t forget you are a freelance writer and the freelance writing business is very fickle. You are getting paid for your work only, and if you are not sending satisfactory work then there is no reason for the client to keep paying you.

5. Focusing too much on payments

Yes, I know payments are important and you need the client to pay you on time. But I have also seen freelance writers in India who expect their clients to pay them every day or once in every two days. Nobody has the time for that. If you have so much doubt over your clients, then stop working with them and find reputable clients.

I always make sure I work with good reputable clients, most of them have a registered pvt. Ltd. I know for a fact that a professional company would never refuse to pay unless they are not happy with my work.

PS – I am thinking of doing a post on how to screen clients and know if a client is fake.

6. Working without discussing the ‘terms and conditions’

Again, one of the major mistakes I have seen a lot of freelance writers make. Without a discussion over terms and conditions, you will either end up getting not paid or the client will make you do 10 revisions of the entire content.

Make sure you make an agreement that both parties agree to. Though I will be doing a separate post of Freelance Writer agreement, I would love to share a few things here quickly. The agreement should have payment information – when and how much the client has agreed to pay, it should mention if you are just expected to deliver the articles or publish them on wordpress as well and it should have details about the total number of revisions you would do. Also, add information about the deadline of revisions.

I made the mistake of not creating a terms and conditions for my clients and it led to a lot of problems and extra work for me. I had a client who wanted me to make revisions to the content I had written almost 2 months ago. While I would have done it anyways, its not my fault that the client didn’t have time to go through the content and its actually difficult to visit back something you wrote such a long time ago.

What are the freelance writing mistakes you have made? Is there something I forgot to mention?