Well, it's a bit of a long story.
Essentially, I applied for the project, which was writing 3 blog posts/articles per month. They are a marketing agency with a client who needed that blog project. I initially talked with a person from the agency in Upwork regarding scope, deadlines, brand voice, etc. He mentioned that I would mainly be working directly with their COO via slack on the project, which all sounded pretty standard. So, once everything looked good, I signed the contract and got on to slack.
Their COO then sends me project details for a 3,000-word Landing Page, not blogs. It needed to be SEO/Keyword rich, and they needed it to be completed within 2 days. I immediately expressed my confusion because never once in my initial conversations did the guy whom I spoke to mention anything about landing pages, which are much more technical writing and much longer. They said it was just a misunderstanding, but I was firm in saying that we would need to up the price if they wanted me to do a landing page, especially that large and with such a short turnaround time. They agreed and updated the contract in Upwork, and since they seemed understanding and were willing to pay me more for the landing page I got to work.
They gave me very little in terms of a branding document/goals/target audience, and with such a quick turnaround, I did the very best I could, but they were NOT happy with it. They essentially blamed me for not being a good writer, told me I wasn't worth my price, said I was "a 4 out of 10" in skills, and that true talent is shown by how quickly writers can knock a project out without any guidance. They spoke to me condescendingly and rudely and threw most of the blame on me. Then, today, I asked them if I would start writing the articles now that the landing page was done and sent to the client. They said they had 2 more landing pages they wanted me to work on, but "We could easily get 6 writers who are better at writing landing pages, but we want you to tell us why we should still have you write the landing pages after such inadequate work."
I was NOT about to essentially beg for work that I never even applied for, to begin with. They were not shy throughout the whole experience to remind me that I'm not good at writing landing pages (which I have quite a bit of experience and have never had clients not like my finished work) and that they could easily find better writers. The ironic thing about it though, was after their COO reviewed and edited my work, I went back through and found SO many spelling mistakes in her edits that she made, not me.
Overall, it's been just an awful experience. I feel like I'm walking a very fine line and want to make sure I get paid for the work that I do before telling them I don't want to move forward working with them.
