My freelancer is not responding for almost one month

[a64492d4]

My freelancer is not responding for almost one month.

She’s really good actually coz she made an article for me and she’s finished the first half of my ebook. Now on the second half she keeps on delaying it. Last time she said her uncle died so she got busy. She apologised for the delay. now she’s not replying to my messages. Last time she messaged me was nov 26. 

No updates whatsoever.

I really want to keep her coz she’s really good but she’s always behind her deadline.

What do i do? 

Im thinking of ending her contract. And find another writer 

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

re: "My freelancer is not responding for almost one month"

LOL.

Sounds like she's not really "your freelancer" then, is she?

So here's the thing:

I don't care.

That's a big key to my success as a client.

Why is this freelancer not responding?

I don't care.

Did she win the lottery and decide to quit working. That's fine. Did she adopt puppies and now spends all her time caring for them. That's fine. Did she convert to Ishantanism and no longer believes in article writing? That's fine. Did she fall in love? Decide to sail around the world in a kayak? Contract blue-green color blindness? Dead uncle? Freelancers have an unlimited supply of dead uncles.

Whatever it is, I don't care.

I put myself and my project first.

I have a project that needs to get done. I have a deadline.

From the start of my project I hired more than one freelancer.

I have multiple freelancers on the team who have overlapping competencies, are familiar with the project, and can step in and work on the needed tasks.

Last week John took a two-day vacation, so I assigned Janet to fill in and do John's work in addition to her own.

Last month Jasmine disappeared completely. We never heard from her. But this didn't delay anything. After a day of not hearing from her, we assigned her work to Joshua.

re: "I'm thinking of ending her contract. And find another writer"

It doesn't really matter right now if you end the contract or not.

She's not doing anything. So having the contract open or ended, it makes no difference.

If you like her work (you said she's really good), then keep her on contract, and assign her tasks when she's around. Assign her tasks that aren't deadline-dependent. Because she's always behind deadlines.

But for now, while she is missing in action, assign her work to somebody else on your team.

Just make sure that you keep your team updated about who is working on what, so that they don't do the same tasks simultaneously if you don't want them to. You can PAUSE a person's contract if they are temporarily AWOL if you don't want to close their contract, and want to make sure they don't come back and start working on a task assigned to somebody else.

[a64492d4]

Thanks Preston, this cleared my mind