Comments on: 5 Rotten Things No One Else Has Told You About the Clients You’ll Work For

By: Edwin James Lynch

Edwin James Lynch — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:54:34 +0000

Some (like myself) learnt this VERY slowly. At my own peril.

By: Edwin James Lynch

Edwin James Lynch — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:53:46 +0000

Good advice. I actually just wrote “all content (images, 3 news items and site text) to be provided in advance” in my contract because I’m sick and tired of scope creep and waiting on content. It takes about 4 weeks for me to do a basic website and I have 4 clients still to provide me with content after 3+ months after initial 50%. Now I won’t take ANY money until I have ALL of the content. Keeps me in control and weeds out the dreamers.

By: Guillermo

Guillermo — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:50:21 +0000

I couldn’t agree with you more about the ‘lifetime support’ haha. A lot of clients don’t realize how valuable your time is until you tell them ‘NO’. Once people start having to pay out of pocket for answers, the flow of questions suddenly comes to a halt.

By: Greensboro Web Design

Greensboro Web Design — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:35:57 +0000

I’ve had clients in every one of the these categories and sometimes they fall into more than one. One of my favorites to work with are the clients who after you’ve designed their site, they want you to write 5 pages of copy to fill it. This is especially great when they have some niche field where only a handful of people know the topic. Anyways, I got a good laugh from this post. Keep up the great work.

By: Elizabeth K. Barone

Elizabeth K. Barone — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:00:26 +0000

Don’t forget the client that changes their mind over and over and over again, and expects each change to be completed yesterday; it’s not like you have other things to do for their project, or for any other clients for that matter.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:09:34 +0000

It should be called “5 Rotten Things You Will LEARN QUICKLY…” lol

By: mydivabydesign

mydivabydesign — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:06:23 +0000

How much is your time worth? Don’t work for free. You don’t get anything out of it except resentment towards others. Not a good thing for attracting clients. Figure out who your ideal client is and go there to market.
Thanks for this article!

By: redfox

redfox — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:01:04 +0000

Ah, yes that’s true indeed … love your instinct (intuition!) … and use it. But above all: use a good contract … because clients will certainly read it. Even if it has a lot of pages. It’s all about their money you know. Put all you’ll have to tell them into it … in a kindly, narrative way. If a potential client makes an inquiry, the first thing I do (nowadays!) is to send him/her a concept of the contract. Almost every advice made in this long thread has been described. Will all this prevent you (me!) from having bad clients? No … it won’t … because this is called live. And living consists of good (80%) and bad things (20%) …

By: Graham

Graham — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:03:59 +0000

Yip – these points certainlly do sound familiar!
I guess it comes with the territory – thanks for sharing these.

By: Edwin

Edwin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:22:10 +0000

Wow. It’s like you were reading my mind. I just read a similar article and they both basically amount to the same thing. Choose your customer, don’t let them choose you!