The Joys of Freelancing

When I quit my job back in December I figured I could get by doing freelance web development and maybe a part-time job. I’ve been doing some freelance stuff on the side for a few years now, but I’ve never relied on it as my main source of income. About two months ago I had a pretty big job lined up that would keep me afloat comfortably for 3-4 months. In hindsight, I got lazy and took that for granted, and now the project has been delayed indefinitely. I didn’t start looking for part-time work because I thought that job was a sure thing, so now I’m definitely in the red. Oh well, lesson learned.

As far as frustration goes, that isn’t such a big deal. At least not compared to what happened to me last week. I’ve had a project on the backburner since November. A friend of mine hooked me up with someone he knew who was starting her own business and needed a website. I spoke to her on the phone and I scheduled a meeting in person with her and her partner. I went in to meet them and we had a good discussion, however it was plain to see that they didn’t really know what they were looking for. What they described was simple enough though so I didn’t think it would be a big deal, and I needed to work within their budget so I suggested WordPress as the platform for their site. All they’d need would be their own theme and a couple of custom plugins. I’ve done quite a few jobs like this before and I figured it’d be relatively quick – they wanted to launch it before the end of the month and I thought we’d be able to hit that deadline no problem. I like to work very closely with my clients in order to ensure that they get exactly what they want, and I told them that the success of this project largely hinged on their participation. Without their feedback and other input, it would never work. They enthusiastically agreed with pretty much everything I said.

After that meeting I went home and prepared an estimate which they quickly accepted. Now let’s fast-forward a few weeks – I’ve heard almost nothing from them, nor have they supplied me with the graphics they promised me – in fact, they hadn’t even given me anything with their logo or other branding on it, or anything that would indicate what colours they’d be using. By this time I had already done a considerable amount of work on the backend side of things and was at a point where I needed their input. The end of November was quickly approaching and I told them as nicely as I could that I wouldn’t be able to finish the site within the deadline that they wanted because they hadn’t been participating or providing items that were required (and promised by them).

My plan was to prepare several mockups for the site layout and then have them select whatever they liked. We looked at some sites that they had supplied as examples, but couldn’t do much because they gave comments like “I like this site”, nothing specific enough for me to actually work with. Throughout all this time I had been very gently reminding them that their own deadline was approaching and that we needed to get some work done if they wanted to meet it, and that I needed their input desperately. The typical response from them was that they were really busy but that one of them would call me later that night, which never happened.

I eventually got tired of their flakiness and figured we’d all just meet up in person and discuss things, hopefully coming out of the meeting with something that Donna and I could work with. By this time the November deadline had already passed, which they didn’t seem to care about at all. We finally picked a day to meet and Donna prepared a nice little package with a meeting agenda, screenshots of the sites they had given us as examples and other information. We had a relatively good discussion, and I told them that we would shorten the mockup process since we were already behind schedule. They agreed. We spent the rest of the meeting looking at their example sites, with Donna quickly sketching potential layouts. They seemed very happy with what we’d come up with, so we ran with it and created a tentative theme based on the layout that Donna sketched.

I must’ve waited a few weeks for their feedback. Christmas came and went. I finally heard back from them and was extremely disappointed that all I received was an ambiguous, one line comment but general approval. I replied that I was happy that they liked it but I wanted to make sure that it really met their expectations – were they very happy with it, was there anything they absolutely didn’t like, did they have any ideas or want any changes etc.

Fast-forward another few weeks. Donna and I are becoming increasingly frustrated. At this point I’m also extremely annoyed with the amount of time I’ve wasted waiting for their phone calls that I never actually received, which happened often enough that I was starting to think they were very inconsiderate. By now we had completed a theme, built a couple of custom plugins and did as much as we could do with what we had. I asked them if there was any other content for the layout (graphics, blurbs, etc) that they wanted to include. This request was basically ignored for another few weeks.

I’d already decided that this whole thing was doomed, but we kept trudging on, wanting to get it over with. This was when the whole issue of “content” came up. I normally don’t do content for sites that I build with WordPress. I’m up front about this. Instead, I offer clients free WordPress training, along with support for 6 months after the site launches. I sit down with them and show them how every aspect of their site works, I start adding some content with them and then let them do the rest. The whole “give a man a fish, teach a man to fish” thing makes a lot of sense to me, and this particular client seemed to agree at the beginning. I always offer to do the content for them at an agreed upon hourly wage, just in case.

Neither option seemed suitable for these people. For the duration of this project I felt like I was talking to a brick wall and this sticking point was no different. Towards the end of February they started sending me poorly-formatted, unedited and incomplete “content” that they wanted me to put on the site. This came with no further direction and where it went on the site was largely up to me. It was embarrassing. They ignored my policies on content repeatedly, and it got to the point where I just thought “screw it”, and put up the garbage that they gave me for free. By now I just wanted to finish this project.

Now we’re in the first or second week of March. The site is not polished and the content looks terrible, and it’s not because I’m lazy. These two women essentially ignored the entire project, didn’t provide any feedback/direction/input, they ignored my advice, ignored my policies and disrespected me professionally in ways that I’ve never experienced. Several times I thought about just cutting my losses, but I needed the money so I stuck through with it.

Last week I received and incredibly rude and ignorant e-mail from the partner who I had dealt with the least, or rather, she sent it to her partner who then forwarded it to me. This is stupid on so many levels, not the least of which is that the e-mail was clearly not intended for me and would obviously piss me off. Anyway, the e-mail essentially said that she no longer wanted my services and that she was very upset and frustrated because… well I’m not entirely sure why, the message was pretty incoherent. Something about how she looked up WordPress and it’s free, and that “all” the plugins that I had installed were free and you just “cut and paste them” and that apparently I didn’t even have to code anything (I built 3 custom plugins for them). WordPress is free and open source, something that I mentioned to them right at the beginning of the project. I’m very clear about these things, but if someone refuses to listen or comprehend, and doesn’t ask any questions, then there’s not much I can do to help them out. The bottom line is that they’re paying me for my expertise, for my knowledge, my advice and for the custom work that I do for them. Using WordPress is a bonus because it allows me to cut my costs (and saves them money) and gives them a solid platform for which they can expect support indefinitely.

She also questioned the amount of time that I spent working on the site, suggesting that I hadn’t done any work. Luckily, I had kept a detailed worklog of every single work item that we did for them and how long it took, which I included in my reply. We spent a total of 54 hours dealing with these morons. It should have been much less, and had I been billing them at my regular hourly rate, the site would’ve cost them more than double what I charged them. Speaking of charges, they still owe me quite a bit of money. Every item that was on the estimate has been completed, and the only reason the site is unfinished is because of their lack of participation. So hopefully they’ll pay me, but I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath.

What really bothered me about that e-mail though, was that I’ve barely spoken to this woman. From the very beginning, she has expressed little to no interest in the project, has provided maybe one or two lines of vague feedback, and here she is writing me a scathing, misinformed and rude e-mail attempting to lay some sort of blame on me. Screw that. This was a job that would’ve taken 3 weeks had they participated (and I wasn’t asking them to do much), but instead it ended up taking 4 months of my time and screwing up my schedule in the process.

I’m a reasonable guy. I like to make people happy, but these people were impossible to work with – at least it’s over now and I’m glad for it. From now on I’ll be even more clear about these kinds of concerns and I’m going to see if I can work some sort of clause into my contract to deal with these types of situations. Any thoughts?