Being a freelancer on Upwork is a privilege, but it isn't always roses and rainbows.
As independent contractors, we freelancers must evaluate our clients, vetting them for potential success, just as they evaluate us.
A contract is a mutual agreement to perform work in exchange for remuneration, and there are a few unscrupulous clients who, either through ignorance or malice, can make for a devastating experience for the hungry freelancer.
Recently, I received an offer from a client without having had any initial conversation. She skipped over the invitation part and went straight to offer, claiming that she was impressed by my profile, and she liked my direct, no-nonsense approach.
Frankly, I had been burned a time or two by "bad" clients (mostly through inexperience on their part), and had rewritten my profile to be less Pollyanna-esque and more blunt. In my profile, I quote my rates for editing, writing, and proofreading, and I invite those clients who are contemplating me but hesitant on my prices to go ahead and craft an invitation for me, so that we can at least chat.
This retooling of my profile summary has been invaluable in weeding out most of the "bad" clients.
So my client asked for a 450 word article, offering $45. She reached out to me late at night, 9 PM MST, with the initial offer of a $20 milestone, the remaining $25 upon completion, and a short note stating that she was impressed with my forthright profile summary, would I jump on the work, since it was due almost immediately? I was at a play in downtown Denver, but I told her I would work on it the next morning, promising to make her deadline. Her enthusiasm overshadowed my initial hesitation at her splitting a short job into unneeded milestones.
And I did. I sent her a first draft, which became a third draft, and then a fifth draft. The deadline evaporated and I worked until very late in the evening the next day, texting her through the Upwork interface and sending draft after draft of revisions that never *quite* seemed to be adequate enough.
There is a bar of quality that is imposed by Upwork, it's called "Top-Rated" and it is a badge of honor for those freelancers who are able to maintain a 90% or better client rating. Our ratings are the summation of individual scores among six categories of specific behavior during the contract. Any client can (and will) leave less than perfect feedback for reasons ranging from inferior quality or communication to, as one client mentioned to me, "I don't believe that a 5 star feedback is possible for anybody. It looks too good to be true."
One client leaving you a four-star overall rating drops your Top-Rated score drastically because a four-star rating is equivalent to an 80% rating, which hammers a Top-Rated freelancer too hard, percentage-wise.
My client with the moving deadline and the inability to convey what she wanted eventually said "Go to bed, it's late your time. I'll get the work finished myself. You've gotten me close enough."
That was close to midnight, the day after the initial offer, and I went to bed worried, knowing that my score was going to take a beating from a combination of a client who was incapable of conveying what she wanted and my inability to hit the mark.
The next day, she shared with me the 450 word article she'd crafted, and fully half of the article was new information, things she'd never mentioned. I pointed that out, and she admitted that, in order to truly write the article well, one needed to have the background knowledge that only she had.
Which left me staring at a contract I'd put hours and hours into, a contract worth only $45 in its entirety, and an initial milestone of $20. Then, to cap all this off, she went dark for four days.
At the end of the four days, she asked me what a "fair price" would be for the contract, since she had to do the work herself? I explained, tersely, that she should pay me the entire $45 because of her inability to communicate what she wanted, and that I had bent over backward to send her multiple revisions, over and over again, to satisfy a contract that should have taken no more than twenty minutes or so. I had demonstrated my willingness to put in extra hours, multiple revisions, and a dedication to the quality that was so very elusive.
She felt slighted by my response and let nine days go by before she reluctantly approved the $20 initial milestone. And not a penny more.
Needless to say, my feedback for her as a client was very low. Her feedback for my work was less than five-stars, pointing out that she had to "step in due to time constraints" and finish the work, and that she was additionally upset about my responses to her when she tried to negotiate a fair price.
This hammered my Top-Rated score down to 93%, and taught me a valuable lesson: it's okay to REFUSE a client's Upwork offer if they are a bad client.
If you are a freelancer struggling to maintain a Top-Rated status on Upwork, be wary of the following client traits:
- Long periods of no communication between your proposal and their response. If it takes more than 24 hours, you are dealing (almost certainly) with a client who does not have a strong sense of urgency.
- A client that pitches a certain amount in the job proposal, but offers you a contract with milestones. See the above example of a $45 contract split into tiny milestones.
- A client who wants to have an initial discussion getting all your thoughts on how to solve their particular problem, or asks for "free" work up front. I had a best-selling author ask me to edit her novel chapters, for free, as a "test" to see if I was up to snuff. That's a no-no in the Upwork world and I reported her.
- A client who sends you a file to open that isn't a document or spreadsheet file. These are almost always malware. Report and block them immediately!
- A client that needs to have a telephone interview or a Skype interview before they send you an offer. They want a certain project done, and your time is, literally, money. Get a contract in place first, and then have the interview. Bill for the time during the interview. If they want to pick your brain on your dime, Upwork has no responsibility to get you paid for your expertise that you give away for free during that "initial" conversation. So don't do it.
Remember that, as a freelancer, you are in charge of your own income. We don't grant long interviews on Upwork because your profile summary and your cumulative rating should give them enough feedback to hire you before you have that long conversation. Don't let a greedy client talk you down in your rate, either. They want the best quality for the least price, and you want the best price you can get, at the quality you can provide.
Don't feel bad about turning down a client's Upwork offer, because there are plenty of legitimate, professional clients who will pay you exactly what you are worth, hire you almost immediately after you've sent a fair proposal, and will pay you on time. If you do a good job, they will leave you five-star feedback.
Remember that YOU are the gatekeeper to your precious time, and guard that time carefully. We have only a finite number of heartbeats in this lifetime, and there is no reason to let bad clients ruin our lives.
Just walk away from bad clients.
