I've been a freelancer/consultant for a decade now. I was telling my Writing for the Media students about what I've learned and figured it was good enough for a blog post.
1) Never apologize for a perceived or actual lack of experience in an industry or niche. Spin any inexperience into a positive. For example, if you're bidding to write a healthcare website, say that your lack of corporate healthcare experience is helpful because your questions will be the same as your client's customer's questions.
2) Underpromise and overdeliver. Think you're going to have something done by Saturday? Tell 'em you'll have it to them by Monday. Then send it to them before Monday. Shows you're on the ball. Plus, if you get waylaid by life (it happens), no harm done, you won't have missed your deadline.
3) Always listen to client criticism and thank them for it in your response. The client is who you need to please. If they think enough of your work to criticize your path, then reevaluate. Your work will be better for it, and your client deserves some thanks for that.
Those are my top three. Who else has one?
I know setting pricing for freelance work is always a topic of discussion. I heard a good rule of thumb once. Set your price high enough that you won't mind doing the work, but low enough that you can walk away from the job if you want to.
It's bad to have such a low price that you feel like you're wasting your time, but if you set it too high, you'll feel beholden to do the work, even if you don't want to.
A good point, but really, the only time I've walked away from a project was due to the bankruptcy of my client(s).
Patrick? Fringes? Got any gems of wisdom to share on this subject?
“We need this 90-day project done in one day because we've procrastinated and forgot to think any of this through properly” never deserves any other response than a polite no. Attempting to meet crazy time constraints makes only the freelancer look bad, not the client, when the freelancer fails to
…fails to meet the crazy deadline.
(thought I'd finished my comment before answering an email. Damn job getting in the way)