The numbers on the spreadsheet aren’t the only important part of your freelance business. The experience is also so important because it’s the work we’re doing day in and day out.

And sometimes, no matter how good the price is, a project just isn’t worth it. That says a lot coming from me, because you know I’m all about the bottom line!

I thought I’d do a fun roundup two of my worst projects over the last year, each earning a spot for a completely different reason. (I tried to find three, but thankfully, these were the only two that stood out). Also I’m still #grateful for each of these clients because money is money…I just don’t think I’d do either of them again. Unless I needed another project to meet my monthly goal. 🤣

This was a white paper client that started out like a dream. Healthy four-figure budget, very freelancer-friendly contract with clear deliverables and payment milestones. But things that look good on paper don’t always work out in real life.

The first red flag was a scathing edit on what was described as an “outline” in the contract, with questions around why I chose to use so many bullet points in the “first draft”. Things turned around with the writing process (my editor was actually amazing to work with), even though the team asked for much faster turn around times than stated in the contract.

The real problem came, of course, after submitting my first invoice. That amazing contract promised payment for each milestone a week after approval. And despite consistently moving to each progressive milestone, the pile of unpaid invoices continued to stack up.

I eventually did start to get paid, but it kept taking well over a month after each invoice. The last two milestones took so long I finally had to chase down the company’s part-time accountant who straight up told me they were waiting on their own outstanding invoices and couldn’t pay me until a distant date in the future. Ouch. I marked the date, made sure to follow up and was indeed eventually paid, but it was a STRUGGLE. I’ve had very few experiences like this over my 13 years of freelancing so this one really stood out.

This next meh project was my own fault. I routinely work with agencies and sometimes they ask me to write for clients that aren’t in my typical wheelhouse of financial services. Usually it’s no big deal, but for far too many months I wrote B2B content for a food ingredient manufacturer. It was actually quite technical content involving a lot of food chemistry and guys, it was HARD!

Let me write about IRA withdrawal rules all day long, but pea protein isolates and the viscosity of food coatings? Hard pass. And I should have passed on it. But I didn’t. Again, grateful for the cash, but those articles took me so long to write. I don’t even want to calculate what my hourly rate wound up being.

Even though these clients are outliers for different reasons, I’m glad that I only have two in the last couple of years that could even make this list.

Now it’s your turn - while I hope you DON’T have any client horror stories, I’d love to hear any juicy stories you want to share. We can laugh or cry together! 😆

Happy freelancing, my friend!

Lauren