Some Pitfalls Of Freelancing And How To Avoid Them
Some people get into freelancing on purpose, some on accident. I was more of the latter.
After having a new baby, I decided my time needed to be better spent. Long hours and weekends spent at offices doesn’t bode well for building a stronger family dynamic, and given that we just had our last child, it was time to look for a way to force a healthier work-life balance. So, I took up some small consulting jobs part-time and was able to wean myself away from my office gig in less than a month while keeping my income intact.
I’ve always enjoyed customer experience and marketing. In my mind, they go hand in hand. The same goes for sales… it’s all one big casserole of understanding the behavioral economics and psychology behind the customer journey.
I moved into the digital marketing world right before every Tom, Dick, and Harry did the same thing. I know that sounds “hipster” to say it, but it is the truth. Since my background is mostly insurance and investments, I noticed there was an absence of marketing consultants in this niche who cared more about the customer experience than just making a conversion. So, I decided to make some extra cash on the side, helping other professionals revamp their entire business philosophy to improve the customer experience.
At the start, it just made sense. I soon realized shortly after beginning the journey down Freelance Avenue that the road was going to be laden with some potholes that no one talked about all that much.
Here’s what I learned:
Oversaturation Of “Incompetition”
I was going to be that guy who played a significant role in completely revamping the customer perception of the insurance and investment industry. I was going to help take the dying retail insurance agents to new levels. I was going help them to compete against the rise of AI and all the DIY insurance companies by doing this one major thing: Have the insurance industry care about customer experience and develop marketing programs to reach thousands.
My thought behind this was simple.
“The greater the experience people have in dealing with a scammy industry like insurance… the more perceptions will change and the customer again could feel confident that their agent does have their best interest at heart.”
After all, emotions fuel opinions, opinions fuel perception, and perception is reality, especially when it comes to consumers.
Then the Tai Lopez’s of the world crawled out of whatever hole they were hiding in. Facebook, Instagram, Youtube… all these major outlets were littered with every marketing “guru” trying to sell you on some get rich quick mantra while selling their overinflated courses on how to start your own agency and retire to Thailand or something.
Money… women… rented Lambos… large houses by the beach…all these tantalizing images of wealth and success spurred a glut in the marketing consulting world while preaching that you could make thousands of dollars a day and be just like them.
And the people bought it: hook, line, and sinker.
Shortly after this marketing craze took hold, I noticed a trend in clients and prospects I was talking to about perfecting their business. These new “experts” were really messing it all up for the rest of us. Not only were they a dime a dozen, but the shoddy work and the focus they placed solely on conversions left a bad taste in many people’s mouths. Some prospects paid $25,000+ while working with these “agencies,” only to get marginal results at best and leaving the client with not only a faulty perception of the industry but unrealistic expectations of marketing ROI.
Thanks for that.
I’m sure other freelance skills like coding and design deal with similar types of issues. It only takes a few bad apples to ruin your reputation before you even get the chance to make a name for yourself.
Competition in the marketplace isn’t a bad thing. Still, as a freelancer, you have to not only worry about similar or better-skilled competitors bidding against you for contracts, but you also have to play damage control and clean up the messes made by the low-quality ones who are mainly talking with little follow-through.
Solution: Own the reality that others can do what you do and what others have done to discredit your skillset, but focus on why you are the best fit for what the task entails. I’ve won clients solely on being empathetic and acknowledging the failures of others before me and where I can help fix the issue. Keep your skills fresh, learn new skills, and adapt to changes in the marketplace.
You Are Expendable
Sadly, many clients will see you as nothing more than an expense. Get used to it.
Freelancing means you are a free agent. They owe you no long-term loyalty, and you must keep that in deep recesses of your mind, regardless of whatever they tell you.
Granted, you will find some clients who truly value you and want a long-term relationship because it is highly beneficial to both parties, and that is great, treasure them. It is essential always to remember that they may often be the exception and not the rule.
A few months back, I took on a client that needed some basic work done — small website, email automation integration, print marketing strategy… straightforward stuff. Once completed and under budget, he raved about everything then asked me to come work full time for him at my hourly rate.
“If I could clone you, I would hire all of you full time!”
Flattering for sure. The client asked me not to take on any more clients and finish up what I was doing for other clients, then devote all my resources in supporting him and his business.
Ok, sure. No problem.
I was on the tail end of projects with two other clients I had, and after about three weeks, we were good to go with more of a full-time marketing role. We begin doing everything under the sun to build his business. We did video marketing, social media, more email marketing automation, seminars, webinars, and almost anything we could do to build exposure. We even put a book together to boost his credibility in the industry.
My ClickUp list was full and busting at the seams.
After months of grinding out everything and even hand-holding him through some regulatory issues while assisting in ways to diversify his income streams, I was getting burnt out. I needed a break. However, I had a wedding to pay for and looked at our honeymoon as my vacation to collect and regroup.
Upon my return after being away for just a week, we had a call to discuss what’s next, at which time the tone changed.
“I hired an assistant at $800 a week, and I am doing a $45,000 kitchen remodel…. I can’t afford to keep you. If you lower your rates or make sales for me, maybe I can consider keeping you on.”
Awesome.
Here I am, fresh off a honeymoon we both scrimped and saved for, and I, like an idiot, basically lost my main stream of revenue.
What’s worse? There was still so much left to do. By the end of the call, we agreed to do a per-project agreement as needed (which is a nice way of breaking up and staying friends) and left it at that. This shift left me scrambling.
Not only had I closed out projects with former clients without doing any follow-ups, but I also began to become complacent in my own marketing. The complete focus on one main client left me without a reliable source of income from freelancing for almost two weeks.
While this may be an extreme example, not having something in the works to fill your pipeline and having all your eggs in one basket is a 100% rookie mistake.
Solution: No matter what, remember that you are often seen as readily disposable. Because of this, having multiple projects is vital and helps protect your income stream. Just because you have a good client now doesn’t mean they will stay that way. Keep your pipeline full and market yourself even when you have plenty of work. You are never guaranteed tomorrow.
Nepotism Is Your Worst Enemy
Probably an odd one to add here, but let me be the first to tell you it is a real issue that pops up at times.
While working with a former client on SEO and content strategy, I was placed in charge of all aspects of marketing for the business. More work for me, which I am totally fine with having.
After about a year, the former client introduces his cousin who was going to help out and support sales and marketing by doing odd jobs we couldn’t get quite get completed. I was okay with it, but I am always leary when new players enter the scene and touch any project I am currently working.
“Don’t worry, Luke… he isn’t here to replace you or take anything over, he just needed a job, and I know the marketing and sales teams need some help with odds and ends…”
I reluctantly lowered my defenses even though my gut was telling me something was up. But after all, what kind of threat could a former lighting manager for a ballet troupe really pose to my marketing and content projects? The client loved me and kept giving me unsolicited increases in project pay. “I had nothing to worry about,” I told myself.
Again, I was wrong.
A few months later, I get called into a meeting with the client. My intuition is rarely wrong, and this was being confirmed.
“Luke… I’m moving you to offsite SEO work and letting JoeBob (not his real name) handle all the onsite stuff from now on. I want you to focus on link building. He’s going to take over the content and all the onsite SEO…”
In an instant, my ten years of insurance experience alongside my pretty successful content marketing experience was replaced by a guy who had never sold a policy, never handled content, never dealt with customers regarding any insurance product, and had spent years in the theater performance industry.
Please be clear… I’m not knocking theater or performing arts; however, there is a vast difference between lighting a stage and understanding how to generate content that gets put on the front page of a Google search for a highly competitive industry. Furthermore, the only reason he was able even to be considered for the role was because of his familial ties to the owner, not because of any knowledge or experience.
I left the project shortly after as a result of freelancer downsizing across the board. (see previously made point about being expendable) A few months later, I came across their traffic data and became infuriated. The crown jewel, the 300% increase in organic monthly traffic I slaved tirelessly over for 18 months, was gone.
Poof. Gone.
Dozens of articles written that were driving conversions and traffic to the site were deleted. Visitor levels were back to where they were before I even entered the scene.
I wasn’t mad about the shift in the organization structure, that was way outside my scope. I was infuriated over almost two years of hard work gone as though it never existed.
As a freelancer, you will often hear from clients, “Oh… I can get my mother-in-law to do that..” or “My brother’s kid built a website in 8th grade… he can do it..” or a dozen other items where the client thinks a family member is a good fit even if they have never touched the skills you specialize in. Don’t waste your time fighting it; if they are already considering it, then they are pretty much sold on the idea.
Solution: When clients begin trying to cut costs or offload work to family members who don’t have the skillset, start planning an exit strategy. In many of these cases, the clients will think they can be trained, and in some situations, they will want you to train your replacement. Smile, nod, and move on. If you leave on a high note, they may call you back when it all crumbles down around them.
You Are Valuable In The Moment
I’ll admit it, sometimes I feel like a superhero.
During intake calls, I’ll hear clients discuss their goals and their pain points. To them, it is the end of the world sometimes, but to me, it is just another day of weeding through piss poor content, horrible SEO structures, researching recent algorithm changes, or a slew of other things I tackle regularly.
A week or so later, I come back with everything they were worried about all fixed and cleaned up. I send the client the invoice, they champion and praise what I did for them while paying the aforementioned invoice, and we discuss the next steps or project.
It is quite a nice ego boost when someone thinks you do such great work and makes a big production out of it, right? You feel valuable; the client is happy — total win-win.
After a while, this is no longer the case. Even though they assign you tasks and projects to work on, they can become irritable at how much they are paying you and openly question what exactly you do that brings value to the project. While they never have problems with your quality, the “grass is always greener” mentality sets in on the client’s side, and the projects become less and less.
Sadly, freelancing is the workforce version of casual dating. Things are hot and heavy in the beginning, people like each other and enjoy interacting, and both sides are enamored with each other. Then things start to get serious, you are around each other all the time, and one of the parties involved starts to devalue the involvement of the other.
Face it. The gig economy is nothing more than a non-committal way of hiring out jobs to be done without the need to pay employment taxes or provide benefits. It is the booty call of business. If the client wanted a long-term relationship, they would hire an employee.
Solution: Don’t let short-term wins blind you from the more long-term goals you have. You began freelancing for a reason, and people are not always going to value you and what you do. Don’t hitch your wagon to a short-term offer and plan for it to be anything else. If you feel you are not being valued and there have been no doubts about your quality of work, take that as your time to begin looking elsewhere to replace the client. The relationship may have run its course.
You Aren’t Always Perceived To Be The Expert You Are
This is one area that I come across all too often when working with freelance clients. Granted, this issue is mainly a concern when it comes to more operational areas, not so much for those who provide more technical or coding services. It has been my experience that freelancers in this area are given a vast berth and more respect when compared to those who do marketing or operations consulting.
In many cases, the beginning starts fine. After a while, the dynamic shifts when the client or their full-time employees become threatened, which can lead to a paradigm shift about you and your position.
At first, I was concerned that perhaps my quality was slipping, so I would reach out to the client for an informal touch-base to review the work I was doing and determine from their feedback where they stood on the quality I was providing the organization.
In almost every case, the quality wasn’t the issue. Instead, the concern was purely on their side of the table in the form of avoidance of change in process or new ideas that competed against their own ideas.
I have come across this more in the insurance and financial services niche than any other I have worked in, which is primarily due to the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality that kicks in once someone begins pushing new ideas that go against what all the “gurus” in the industry advocate for.
Fun fact: Some of these success mentors in the insurance niche still advocate for cold calling, even though ten years of data shows that cold calling B2C is one of the least effective ways to generate a lead. Sadly, some older agents still invest in this and have no interest in hearing anything wrong about their one sale in 200 cold calls.
Working with many clients can place you into some sort of quantum paradox of “I hired you to do X because you are the expert, but I like my way better, so I want you to do it my way and make it work…” and when you don’t deliver according to their methodology, you lose clout — classic no-win.
People often dislike change, especially those who are older and used to certain routines and results. At some point, they forget that the world is changing, people are changing, and business methodologies must all change to match current consumer behaviors or get left behind.
“It worked in the 90s… we need to make it work for today…”
One of my more recent clients came to me looking to build his brand. He was tired of paying upwards of $400 per lead and wanted to begin generating his own. Comparing some of the big names in the field, I put forward a lengthy proposal on how to build his brand up from the ground and incrementally recreate him from a simple salesman to a niche leader because he had a powerful message that almost no one is talking about.
At first, things were going well, but eventually, he became uncomfortable with all the changes. Instead of staying the course, he wanted to go back to methods he was more comfortable with and familiar. After four months, he began scrapping everything and pushed that he wanted it done his way. After his adamant demands that we return to what used to work for him over ten years ago, I obliged and began reworking content and websites the way he wanted them done and becoming more of an order taker than what I have initially been hired to do. By the sixth month, any results we were seeing was completely gone.
Then came the attacks.
“I thought you were the marketing guy! Why isn’t this working?”
I had to relay, in as diplomatic a way as possible, that I wasn’t doing anything other than what was instructed by him because all my other strategies were discontinued and any success or failure we are currently seeing was 100% on him because he was the expert in this area, not the person he hired who actually does this type of work for numerous clients.
As a freelancer, you are going to come across many people who aren’t looking for an expert to help them figure out a problem as much as you are going to find someone to act more like an employee with a bit more skills in a particular area. It will be up to you to determine what your boundaries are when to end a working relationship, and what you are willing to do for a client.
Solution: Before taking on clients, set up a list of rules for yourself and follow them. One of the rules that have helped me is “I work with clients, not for them.” Freelancing isn’t an employee-employer relationship, but rather an expert-owner relationship working for a mutual benefit. In the event you are treated as less than the expert in your field that you are, begin looking elsewhere for new opportunities. If working relationships deteriorate to this point, there is little chance it will ever recover.
Niche Cycles Can Be Exhausting And Lead To “Feast Or Famine”
At some point you will hear:
“Man, business is slow, but I don’t want to lose you. I probably won’t have anything for a few weeks.”
I used to hear this and begin freaking out. Now, it is to be expected.
For many of the clients I service in the insurance and investment world, there is an evident market cycle. October is historically one of my slowest months with the remaining months of the year not being all that busy. This doesn’t bode well for a father of four around the holidays, but I’ve adapted.
I would frantically run around, devaluing my services to keep some cash flow coming in to make the mortgage during the downtime and taking jobs that paid in table scraps while working for clients who saw freelancers as merely slave labor. This year I did something different.
I went to Jamaica.
I knew from past clients that the odds of October to December were going to be light in regards to money and work, I planned ahead and saved an extra few months of cash. Not the easiest thing to do, but it made absorbing the impact of a slow down a bit nicer.
I’ve also planned my professional development for this time. While I do have small projects to knock out, I know that being able to charge more for my work depends heavily on the skills I have and are fluent in. I also want to pick up another niche, so I can use these slowdowns in my main niche to expand more into these new areas.
Every niche has some sort of business cycle. With my primary niche, people focus less on their insurance and financial needs as the holidays approach, but kick up again shortly after the new year until about July, where there is a small lull then back to normal until about mid-October.
Learning these cycles and even your own client’s business cycle can help you plan ahead for personal and professional advancement.
Solution: Be prepared for changes in a niche’s cycle that are beyond your control. Once you are established in a niche and have a good idea of the ups and downs, begin planning ahead of time on how you are going to make yourself ready for any potential slowdowns. Research new skills that businesses may be needing to add to your toolbox of knowledge and set aside funding to help get you through the slower times. Don’t be scared to explore new niches that interest you and unique skill sets that make you stand out from the competition during the famine.
Marketplaces: Great Place To Start, But Not A Long-Term Solution
I got my start on Upwork (actually Odesk at the time) and have done great with it. I’ve recently joined Freelancer to pick up a few small projects, and while not overly impressed, you can make some money there as well.
The biggest issue I have seen with Upwork is the recent changes to how they treat their freelancers. Not only are they charging an astronomically high fee for freelancers (20% of your work for newbies, but only 5% if you’ve earned over $10k working with the same client) and for those hiring freelancers, as they get a piece of the action on either side, they’ve also been pushing freelancers into either signing up for a paid subscription or unlisting freelancers.
What was once a paradise for the aspiring freelancer has now become yet another quagmire of sending proposals into the netherworld; however, they now penalize you for sending too many proposals that don’t result with a hire by suspending your account according to a few freelancers who use Upwork’s platform as their primary source of obtaining new clients.
Since this significant change, I’ve noticed more of the higher quality jobs have seemed to shift away, and more freelancers are walking away from Upwork’s money grab. It would seem that freelancers leaving would thin out the amount of competition, but if the paying clients leave… then it becomes a real problem.
Even if this isn’t the case, my account is locked as “private” because I haven’t earned enough money for Upwork in the past few months, even after the tens of thousands of dollars I earned for them over the past few years. Customer service is no longer accepting my requests to unlock my account, so I can make the money they want me to, which isn’t the end of the world. Instead, it shows that Upwork leadership has no interest in genuinely supporting the freelance community as their marketing claims to advertise.
Freelancer is their biggest competitor and isn’t much better, but I haven’t come across much of an issue with price gouging as you see at Upwork. The biggest downside I have noticed on the Freelancer platform is the number of scammers that reside there. One scammer out of China reached out to me on Freelancer and offered to rent my Upwork account (while also remoting into my computer to work through that account) for almost $300 each month.
Hard pass, but thanks for the offer.
These marketplaces are a great springboard into bigger and better things but don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to building your business. You may still be able to get decent work in these places, but long-term growth using these marketplaces may not be as viable as they once were.
Solution: Use these marketplaces as a way to get low-level work and build out a portfolio of your skills to show other potential clients. If you are branching into a new niche or skill, these marketplaces may provide an excellent way to get moving quickly, but it will come at a significant cost. As you grow, build in time for marketing yourself to other players in the niche you are seeking work inside. Set up boundaries as far as what your time is worth and stick to it. Don’t devalue your skills based on fear. You should have an exit strategy to prevent being stuck in a vicious cycle of relying on these marketplaces as your sole source of client networking.
In Summary
Honestly, I love what I do. I love helping businesses grow, and I enjoy contributing any possible way I can to help the customer feel valued in every interaction with the businesses I support.
I love being my own boss. I love sitting in my moose adorned comfy pants and Deadpool hoodie while analyzing data, reviewing trends, and piecing together strategy that can make just one person’s day brighter and increase sales for small businesses. I love not having to get dressed up to impress a room full of people who, in all honesty, don’t care what I am wearing.
I love not asking for permission.
However, freelancing as a consultant does have its own unique issues when you sacrifice security for liberty that no one made me aware of before walking down this path. It is by far not a proverbial “walk in the park” as some may think. Once you are made aware of some of the common issues and pitfalls you may face, it is much easier to plan ahead and be prepared for what may lay ahead.
Not everyone goes through the same hiccups while building their freelance career, but it always helps to know what others have gone through as they get to where they are. If you are lucky, you’ll never have to worry and your path will be filled with rampant success. Or, if you are like the rest of us, you will come across client challenges and want to pass your newly learned insights on to the rest of the world.
Either way, freelancing is a great experience to begin making serious changes to your life.
