Freelance work can be amazing. You get to be your own boss, work in your pajamas, and even take naps if you want. What a lot of people don’t realize, though, is that self-employment is more than just hanging out waiting for money to appear in your bank account - you’ll work harder for yourself than you ever would for someone else.
Sometimes freelancing is just plain tough. While many clients and projects are great, some are less awesome.
Sometimes you hit that moment where a project is delayed, your bank balance is down to $28, and you’ve been awake for 50 hours straight. Other times you hit a wall and can’t go any further, yet your deadline is approaching and you don’t have time to research the answers you need. Or maybe you took on one of those “I just need a simple website” clients and now you have regrets.
How do you deal when your freelancer struggles are bigger than your ability to cope? With internet memes and GIFs, of course! Here are some (totally tongue in cheek) examples of issues all freelancers have encountered.
20 Freelancer Struggles That Are All Too Real
1. When you send an invoice and get an “on vacation” autoresponder.
2. When you miss a deadline.
3. When a potential client doesn’t hire you “because my nephew is really good with computers.”
4. When your family members ask you to babysit or run errands “since you’re at home anyway.”
5. When you see code (or a blog post) you wrote a year ago.
6. When someone tweets you publicly to point out mistakes in your work.
7. When you’ve procrastinated and need to pull an all-nighter to meet your deadline.
8. When you actually leave your house to experience the real world.
9. When a project is much more complicated than you initially thought.
10. When you outsource part of a project and it doesn’t go so well.
11. When a client call lasts way longer than it should have.
12. When your code works perfectly until you try to demo it for the client.
13. When your friends ask how you work so many hours.
14. When you lose a bid for a project you know was a perfect fit.
15. When a much more experienced freelancer shares tips that go over your head.
16. When you’ve been too busy to realize something on your own website has been broken for weeks.
17. When a client sends an “urgent” request at 5pm on Friday.
18. When a client asks for something out of scope but doesn’t want to pay.
19. When you finish the worst project of all time and you finally get paid.
For the record, #8 is my favorite. It’s been a busy summer. 🙂
Elisha
Oh my! This both makes me sad and makes me feel better that it’s not just me with these client issues. Solidarity sister!
I think knowing you’re not alone goes a long way! 🙂
Holly@ClubThrifty
I think #4 is the worst. People are always asking if they can drop their kids by for a few hours or if I can drop them off at the airport so their husband doesn’t have to take off work, etc.
Nope!
Yep, I’m always the go-to for sick kids who need to be picked up early from school, errands that other people are “too busy” to run themselves, waiting to sign for packages… I know a guy who rents office space in town for that very reason - for some reason it’s different when he physically goes to an office instead of working from his home office. I’m not willing to go quite that far but I can understand why it starts to sound like a good idea!
Ingrid Cliff
So many “Yes!” moments in this list. Nice to see freelancers have the same issues around the world.
I would add to the list the super urgent must have yesterday gig that you give up nights and family time for, only to have the client say “I’m super busy right now, I will review it and give you feedback in a week.” When they finally send feedback they want the changes made within 30 minutes of their email being sent.
I’ve definitely had a couple of those lately! I’ve debated adding something to my contract, like an estimated time for revisions once feedback has been provided. I’m just not sure how I want to word it to be sure (1) the client gets a timely response but (2) I don’t get steamrolled.
Ingrid Cliff
I have some fancy legal wording from my IT lawyer to try & speed my clients up … They still delay!
OMGosh these are all so GOOD! #8 so much that I have a Vitamin D deficiency for the first time in like ever. But even more so, that #3……oh my goodness, “my son will do the setup for us”. Or better, the obvious cut and paste emails from said “son”.
I maintained a site that was sold to someone else by the original owner. The new owner opted out of maintenance because of some family member who was “a programmer.” No lie - two months later the site was hacked (nothing had been updated since they canceled the maintenance contract) and they were frantic to get in touch with me. I’m like “But you have a PROGRAMMER in the family! Remember how smart you said s/he was?” Ugh, some people…
Michelle
LOVE this whole post. #1 is something I’ve been seeing a lot lately (since it’s the summer) and it’s always frustrating, especially when it’s a new client and I’m trying to get a retainer so that I can start the project.
I’m really surprised how many people seem to go on constant trips lately. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but if I travel much more than 2-3 times a year, I won’t work enough to afford the trips in the first place! I do make sure to stress that projects aren’t scheduled until a deposit is received, and I’ve bumped people before when they didn’t pay the invoice before someone else did. I like electricity, so people who pay on time get dibs. 🙂
Summer
Yeah, those “quick & easy” projects, where everything they tell you is “Oh, it’s just converting a 5 page HTML site to WordPress”, and you’re thinking “Sweet, I can knock that out really fast”… then they nitpick the colors & fonts & spacing of WP conversion to death over the course of A MONTH, like buzzards gnawing on the last dregs of a javelina carcass and you try not to react like you’d rather slowly insert an icepick into your eye than read their next email 🙂
CAN YOU MOVE THE LOGO 1.5px TO THE LEFT? NO, I MEANT THE RIGHT. NOW LET’S CHANGE THE LINK COLOR 14 TIMES.
Not that I would know all about that or anything. 😉
Fajar
#3. I saw this moment thats my experience. I’ve some client potential ask to me about my jobs. but when I was question, they’re just say ” OK “, and then GO!. I dont know whats wrong?. 🙁
Sometimes I think potential clients make their decisions solely on who has the lowest price. It’s depressing not to hear back from someone once you provide rates (I know from experience!) but it’s probably a good thing in the long run - if they only care about the cost, they might not be the best fit for you anyway.