When it comes down to it, the act of freelancing is simple, my friends. We get work. We do the work. We turn it in and get paid. Want to make it more complicated? You’ve come to the right place! Make your clients run away as fast as their legs can carry them with these surefire tips!

There are a lot of things hard about our chosen profession. Turning leads into prospects into clients can be hard. Writing/designing/creating the ultimate solution that makes clients happy and satisfied can be hard. Revision can be hard. Keeping the pipeline full enough to pay the rent but loose enough to prevent burnout can be hard.

What shouldn’t be hard? Being pleasant to work worth. Being dependable and worth the money. Being a natural choice for repeat business. But some people make it hard. Some freelancers go out of their way to piss people off and place their career in jeopardy. Why? Why is this numnuts our president? Why do people insist on talking about their venereal diseases on the train? Why do women consistently make less than men? It’s a deeply odd world, people.

But here’s the thing - just as we can learn from our excellent and admirable peers in this freelancing gig, we can also learn from the fucktards that make clients distrustful and angry, and our job harder. So here it is, the secret guide to making your clients run far, far away and never look back!

Promise to do things, and don’t do them.
Nothing works better in establishing a relationship than blatantly lying! Promise the world, and do the exact opposite. Miss deadlines. Skip meetings. Make wild excuses, and then forget you’ve already used them the next time. And once you’ve royally effed up the entire working arrangement, be sure and hound the clients until they pay you. Works like a charm.

Be a nag.
You know what clients really dig? More emails and voicemails cluttering their various inboxes. They love constant, excessive, annoying contact from the freelancer that professed to be a low maintenance alternative. They love fielding unceasing questions and queries that cover well trod ground. In short, they love being pestered, poked, prodded, and made inhumanely miserable. And we have the power to do it!

Ignore them.
You know what clients also love? The flip side of that. There’s nothing better than a freelancer that disappears, that can’t be reached by email or phone, that won’t confirm nor deny that they are, in fact, working with that deposit money and not running off to Ireland to get smashed (or, um, an Irish pub in Chicago).

Be a douche.
So they actually expect you to come to their office for an in-person meeting? Those bastards. Take time from your daily regimen of track pants and muscle shirts, and slip on some holey jeans and a torn sweater. You’re creative; they can’t expect you to wear khakis. Oh, and business decorum? Please. You’re a freelancer. You have free reign to be authentic, meaning wildly inappropriate conversation about your hangover, one night stand and burning itch. Other ways to be a douche: unending complaining. Insults. Physical violence. Basically anything that can get you thrown out of a bar at 2 am is not to be incorporated into client interactions.

Well there you have it. “But Amy,” you ask, “do people really do all this? Are there such freelancers that act little better than the feces-flinging monkeys at the zoo?” Yes, kids, there are. I know this by process of elimination. See, use a little common sense, treat clients like actual people, do what you promise, and it will be like the heavens opening up and shining angelic glory down. They’ll love you. Because you’re different than all the freaks they’ve dealt with in the past.

So go forth and be decent, my friends!

Thoughts? Diatribes? Stories? Tell us about it in the comments!

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