Freelance Writer Clients that Should Be Avoided

Believe it or not there are actually clients that should be avoided when you are freelance writing. A paycheck is a paycheck but there are times when you should leave the job alone. This article helps you to identify those clients that should be avoided.

Searching for work as a freelance writer is a large part of making your living. Networking and marketing yourself as well as your skills is what brings home the bacon. The more clients you have the better your income. More clients equal more work. However, there are times when you should avoid certain types of clients and freelancer work.

Plagiarism

There are clients that are requesting you to plagiarize content. They have taken someone else’s work and have asked you to rewrite it. This is not a rewrite job where the original author has released the rights to the client and English may not be their first language. This is all out plagiarism. Walk away.

No contract

The clients that don’t want to make a contract with you. This is especially important for large jobs where you may be writing huge amounts of content before payment is seen. Imagine landing a job for 50 to 75 articles to be submitted at 600 words each and the client is indicating that a contract isn’t needed. He will be sure to pay you upon receipt of his 75 pieces of work. Unless you have worked with this client for a number of jobs or extended period of time and know them to be trustworthy, walk away from this particular job.

An “iffy” payment process

There are clients that may bring you a job and a payment system you don’t feel comfortable working with. Is the payment date not definite? Are you waiting for their payment from their client to get your payment? If so, you may want to walk away if the payment or job is substantial. Imagine passing up other work to work on this job and finding out you may not be paid for a month or two if ever.

I am not really sure what I want

Clients that continually change their mind about the content they need or don’t have clear directions for what is needed can be a large waste of your time and energy. For example, ten articles are written from the information provided and the client informs you that they need to be rewritten. It wasn’t exactly what he needed. He left out a vital component and you are out of time and money and rewriting his content over again. The second time around he forgot to give you all of the keywords. This is reworking for work you aren’t being paid for. Walk away

Deadline in one hour, always

There are clients that seem to always have a one hour deadline. This is stressful to say the least. These are clients where you are at their beck and call 24 hours per day 7 days per week. It makes working other clients work difficult because you must interrupt their work in order to have this client ready to go within the hour. If you are being hired as a personal assistant, take the job. If not, walk away.

These are helpful hints for those clients that you are better off avoiding. However, if you feel comfortable taking the job, by all means, go ahead. However, a word of warning….your life may be a lot simpler if these clients are avoided.

related articles and content you should review;
http://thewritestuffpenandpaper.blogspot.com/2011/03/searching-for-freelance-writing-jobs.html