Why You Should Fire Bad Clients as a Freelancer

We’ve all had them or at least heard the horror stories about them – bad clients.

They don’t pay on time, they don’t explain what they want, they ask for endless changes, and generally, give you a pain in the neck. These people make you question the reason you decided to become a creative freelancer in the first place.

Say no to bad clients

But why is it that creative freelancers often keep these bad clients on their books, accepting work from them time and again?

When what they really want to do is tell them, in no uncertain terms, to take a long hike.

Freelancing can be a precarious existence. So, when an elusive client pops up, freelancers tend to do all they can to hold onto that source of money – even if that client turns out to be a client from hell.

It’s understandable. It’s hard to say no to that money when you have bills to pay. But, as Addison Duvall explains in her article Why you should fire your worst freelance design clients, keeping hold of those bad clients could be doing you more harm than good:

Every crap job you take puts you that much further away from your true goal of doing work you love and are proud to display to others

What if it’s the bad work that’s keeping you from progressing further in your freelance career?

The work you do for bad clients tends to be of poor quality, and often can’t be shown in your portfolio because the client has destroyed it with their overbearing ‘creative vision’.

Ask yourself this: is it ever something you’re proud of? If the answer is no, you should seriously think about ditching that client.

Don’t hold onto the notion that eventually, your bad client will change. As Addison states:

A bad client will never, ever, ever, ever change into a good one

Why should they change their ways? You’re letting them get away with treating freelancers however they want – they’ve got it good! Plus, a bad client probably wouldn’t recognize quality work if it hit them in the face...

But what about the money? If a steady income is all you want, perhaps freelancing isn’t for you. With freelancing, you need to take some risks in order to reap the rewards, which might seem scary, but in the end, it’s been worth it for a multitude of people (take our 410,000+ creative professionals who have chosen to freelance, for example!)

If you make sure you’ve got a financial safety net in place, it’ll be easier to fire those bad clients and start seeking out good ones.

Is the money from your bad clients even that great?

If you take a good look at how long you spend working on their projects, and the amount of work they ask you to do, they could actually turn out to be poor value for money.

Bad clients can take up a lot of your ‘un-billable hours’, such as pestering you with multiple phone calls, texts, and emails. Plus, there are the numerous change requests they send when the project should have been finished and put to bed long ago.

If any of your bad clients exhibit this behavior, it’s time to swap them for better ones.

Let’s wrap it up

At the end of the day, confidence and experience will help you wake up from your bad client nightmare.

New and inexperienced freelancers will often take on bad clients and then end up keeping them for life because they feel like they can’t fire them. The freelancer-client relationship is a two-way street.

You’re hiring your client as much as they’re hiring you, and if it isn’t working out, firing them will set you free.

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Ready to get hired? At Twine, we have dozens of top-quality jobs being posted each and every day. From design to marketing, development to copywriting – there’s a job ready for your skills. Join the marketplace of creative talent here.