Herding Pixels

Ah, clients. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re the lifeblood of a freelancers’ business. Whereas working in a company you can get away with being an unsociable moleman, out in the harsh light of the freelancer’s world you must learn how to navigate client relationships.

In my business, I’ve picked up a few tenets I follow in order to keep clients satisfied. And a satisfied client is a client who’ll come back for more, and recommend you to others. Here’s two essential qualities a successful freelancer should cultivate.

Be responsive

I would say this is perhaps the most important facet of good client management, although one I find a constant struggle.

If you’re anything like me, you find you do your best work when you’re in the zone. Some people will work before the sun rises in the morning, and some work late into the night. The overriding principle is to find those long spans of time when you can do work uninterrupted. Paul Graham has what I consider the definite article on this principle.

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

Unfortunately, in your capacity as the freelancer you’re responsible for both management and making. So you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.

Consider it from their perspective. They brought you on in some capacity to help their business. They likely are not familiar with your area of expertise. All they have to go on is the end deliverables, and your correspondence. And since deliverables come along infrequently, and often are opaque to the client, your correspondence plays an outsized role in how a client will feel about your services.

The good news is that learning to be responsive will put yourself head and shoulders above the majority of other freelancers, and allow you to justify a premium for your services.

Here are some strategies I’m exploring to alleviate the maker / manager problem:

Communicate

Being able to explain to your clients the specifics of your work in a way they can understand is an essential skill to cultivate. Clients generally don’t know a whole lot about the particulars of what you do. Why should they? That’s why they’re paying you.

But just because they don’t understand, doesn’t mean they don’t want to.

If you can explain the specifics of your work, clients will perceive more clearly the value you bring to the table. Clients may have misguided or incorrect assumptions about aspects of your business; explaining what you do clearly can bring these assumptions out into the open and hopefully correct them.

Explaining things has the side effect as well of elevating trust between you and the client. They’ll appreciate knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Establishing a trustworthy relationship with a client is the holy grail of client management.

It’s no good to keep your clients in the dark. Educate them. It’s good for business.

It goes without saying that good work is equally important to either of the above. Being responsive and explaining things to clients are helpful, but if the work you do is shit then it’s all for naught. But if you’re incapable of doing good work, well then, perhaps you should reconsider freelancing. There’s plenty of companies that would love to have you : )

When you work for a company, you don’t generally have to worry about how to price things. Your boss will do that for you, likely at a considerable markup. But as a freelancer, that responsibility (and profit!) falls on your shoulders.

There are two common approaches to billing clients that I use:

Billing Hourly

This is my preferred method of billing clients. You work a certain number of hours, you get paid for those hours. If you can find clients who will agree to this, this is the approach I would recommend, as it protects you from getting screwed. It helps if you have established a base of trust between you and the client.

When taking this route, clients will sometimes want to specify a certain maximum ceiling. This is definitely an understandable reflex; however, if you go this route you have to be careful not to box yourself into doing the work at a flat rate. I generally will leave some wiggle room at the top to account for unforeseen issues arising, while setting the expectation with the client that the actual work will likely come in under the maximum.

Billing at a flat rate

A flat rate puts more of the risk for the project on your shoulders. If you fully understand the scope of work and trust your estimation abilities, then this can be a viable option, and clients generally prefer this option over the former.

If you don’t have much experience putting together quotes, this can be a harrowing experience. And you will probably have at least a screw up or two. When I was starting out, I once estimated a project at 18 hours that ended up taking over 60; I took my lumps on that one.

It will also fall to you to make sure the client sticks to the agreed requirements you agreed on, and avoid any scope creep. Since you’re basing your estimate on the clients’ initial list of requirements, any additional changes not on that initial list are going to eat into your profit margins. So any additional changes the clients request will need to be billed extra. This can be a delicate topic to raise, as there can be a lot of confusion, especially with web development, as to how easy or difficult things are. So it’s good to suss out any hidden assumptions as early as you can.

For larger projects I will generally establish milestones and break up the overall scope into smaller estimates. I’ve found this is a good balance; it protects against too much scope creep, and allows you to continually reevaluate your estimates as the project proceeds.

Obviously, every project and client is different, so there’s no “right” way to price out a project. You can mix and match these as well, perhaps with a certain flat rate and an extra retainer for additional enhancements they want done. It’s up to you.

Be sure to stay tuned for my musings about how to price things out as a team.

Disclaimer: I have to say up front that absolutely nothing here should be construed as legal advice. For specific advice you should go contact a lawyer.

I’ve been freelancing now for about 5 months. Legally, I’ve been considered a sole proprietership. What finally convinced me to file for an LLC was the prospect of bringing on subcontractors.

One of the protections an LLC gives you is a buffer against liability. That’s never been an issue in my business so far but I felt that with the expanding business, the time was right.

I set up an LLC in the state of Texas. The filing cost is $300 and it takes about 3-6 business days (faster if you expedite it). You can hire a service to do this for you, but honestly, it’s easy enough that you should just do it yourself.

This info pertains specifically to my experience filing in Texas, and every state has its own laws but the general outline should be similar.

And that’s about it. Send your paperwork along to the state and you’re done!

For me, personally, filing for my LLC felt a lot better then I thought it would. While nothing much has changed in the day to day workings of my business, my overall outlook as to its future has become a tad more serious; instead of considering the possibility that I could return to a job, now I’m pretty much committed to making this thing work. If you’re serious about making your freelance business a profitable and permanent chunk of your life, I’d recommend going for it.