People who are pompous and arrogant certainly will send me into a fit of temper. These are the folks who think they have the market on righteous indignation cornered. Nothing that is wrong is ever their fault and if you question their “problem” (real or perceived) their answer is to attack you. You know the type:
The bloviating customer 1 – Cheaper is better
Warning: DO NOT write us and BID some big CRAZY price. * All the WORLD is in a recession, BUSINESSES are hurting…so if YOU are *SMART* you will find those GROWING like US and JUMP on board and be THANKFUL just for the opportunity. That is who we LOOK for, people who are “opportunity seekers” not “money grabbers!” like so many lame (name removed) contractors.” (bold mine).
This jerk wants someone who possesses perfect English, a grasp of telemarketing and someone who enjoys working for dimes. ”Opportunity seekers” is their code word for slave labor while their definition of “money grabbers” is someone who wants to work for $1 or less per hour. Of course, anyone who wants to eat or pay rent shouldn’t bother applying because this bloviator will reject your application.
Bloviating client 2 – Not my job
These are the ones who believe that someone else is responsible for their stupidity.
“They started working for us and everything was going smoothly, we were paying them for 20 hours a week of work and they were putting in the time and the results were just what we were looking for. Then we got too trusting and took our eye off of them for a month, when we went to check-up on their work we noticed that while they were charging us for twenty hours the quality-level had dropped considerably. I decided to look at the screen captures to look at what they were doing during the time they were billing us. What I saw was pretty disappointing, our workers was billing us for twenty hours, but most of the time as I could clearly see on the screen captures, they were working on other projects for other clients. Obviously we fired them on the spot.”
Really? You actually didn’t pay attention to someone who you paid for 80 hours of work and took it on faith that they were doing the job you paid them for? Seriously? Now while I don’t believe that any contractor or freelancer has the right to do this to a client, the fact is that IT’S YOUR FAULT that you didn’t manage this project successfully.
Bloviating client 3 – But that’s not fair
You want cheap work and you don’t understand why it’s not fair. Seriously? Get a load of this
” all i want is 3x 30 page ebooks in romance fiction. with book 1 leading to 2 to 3. ……..(some content removed) $90 for the 3 seems fair to me.”
Gee, that’s ALL you want? Really and you think it’s fair! Sure it’s fair if someone is willing to work for $1 an hour. Right on. Let me point you to this post of mine titled You want what? Then I’d like to ask you a couple of questions:
- If someone were to call you and offer you a job paying $1 per hour would you accept it?
- Would you want your partner or child working for this rate?
I didn’t think so. Seriously, whether you believe it or not, freelancers DO have expenses. We have equipment to maintain, we pay for electricity, food, rent or mortgage and shockingly enough – we pay for Internet access too. Wake up and smell the coffee. Freelancers are not here to provide you slave labor, they are here to make a living.
About Doreen Martel
Well-rounded freelance writer who contributes to various blogs, paid to write sites and revenue sharing sites. Doreen is legally blind and has worked at home for more than 10 years. She uses the lessons learned from this experience to enhance her writing and share information with others.
Right on Doreen! I’m just starting out and am heartened to hear someone articulate out loud what I’ve been wondering inside my head.
Mark, good luck! It is a tough road to hoe but it’s worth the sacrifice. Make sure that you check people out thoroughly and don’t get conned into working for next to nothing!
I’d be willing to bet a lot of the people applying to (or ordering)these jobs come from foreign markets. I have nothing against that, but $1/hr, I’m sure, seems a lot more reasonable in, say, India than in Texas.
In the U.S. it is simply unrealistic.
Sadly this is not really always true. I’ve seen US clients begging people to accept assignments at $1 an hour and I’ve seen US freelancers accepting assignments at far less than what anyone considers “minimum” wage.
You know, the best thing with this sort of customers is that the less they pay, the more demanding they are.
#1 deserves an answer such as “Look at the opportunity to help this writer start his career by paying a decent price, and that means you’ll be able to benefit when he/she is still in business when you need more content. Be an opportunity seeker yourself!”.
I missed your blog while on holidays
Welcome home! Yes, some of these guys are incredible. I could write a book about some of the offers I’ve been made. Just yesterday I was offered the “opportunity” to write 114 articles in one week for 4.22 each (400 words) …. not so fast ….
There are many of client #3 out there! You categorize these people well Doreen. Succinct and to the point.
Christy, you are right. They come in all size businesses too. If we could just call them out often enough then maybe they’d get the message. The problem of course is there are still freelancers who think they’ve hit a pot of gold
The cost expectations of some people is incredible. I had a possible client tell me, I’ve got a dozen quotes of 50 cents an article and you want 25 dollars each?
I said, good luck with that then.
Been there done that – I now have a “floor” and I won’t go below it
I cannot get over the people who think ebooks should be so cheap. Ugh. And this blowhard wants a serial???
Red.
Red I agree. I lucked out yesterday and a client hired me for an assignment that LITERALLY took me 5 minutes. Let me put it like this. If I had worked for an hour, I would have handily made triple digits for that hour. Fortunately, they are not all idiots