Freelance Clients Red flags

Greetings, I know I haven't posted in a while but I'll try to post more these days since I have some free time.

This post is massively inspired by a video from "The Video Shop", his video is a more polished version of this and more entertaining.

Regardless, I will be splitting the flags into steps corresponding to different steps of a project (just like in his video), though consider this, a client showing these red flags doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad clients, sometimes the client is new and doesn't know how the party on the other end (the freelancer) feels.

Before we proceed to the article, just a quick reminder to not forget what's happening in Ga_za, their suffering is getting worse and worse, and with no end to these crimes in sight, the best we can do is pray for them and for the fortunate of us to donate as much as we can.

Before The Start Of The Project:

1. Unclear Project Description: one of the most common red flags is the lack of any information about the project, if you can't deduct the required work then don't even bother, descriptions like "I need a website" or "need a web developer for a website" have become the gateway to development hell from my experience.
2. Too Much Detail: sometimes the client wants to give the full details about the project, but at other times, you find the text to be a useless enumeration of different technologies that have no relation to each other.
3. High Expectations with Low Pay.
4. No Budget Transparency: the client doesn't have a fixed budget until you send your price then he says it's too high, then you ask him to tell you the budget and he tells you it's not a fixed budget.
5. Deciding The Timeline: "This shouldn't take more than a day", well then do it yourself -_-
6. Unrealistic Deadline: "I want the website delivered in the next 30 seconds"
7. Excessive Negotiation: once the client starts negotiating a price that you feel is already low compared to the quality provided, you know the client wants something cheap and not of quality.
8. Bad Communication: if you haven't even started working and they are already leaving you on "read", or wasting your time and not answering questions about the project.
9. No Upfront Payment: if the client doesn't want to pay upfront for part of the work (if the work is fixed price) then you know he either isn't knowledgeable on how things work or wants to get a freebie.
10. Free Work: he wants you to do the first quick task for free to assess your skills.
11. Super Long Contract And/or An NDA: Non-disclosure agreements aren't new but super long contracts for freelance work combined with an NDA are a massive red flag.
12. Poorly Written Contracts Or AI Written Contracts: As said a contract isn't something necessary when freelancing but having one written poorly or with AI is worse than having none.
13. No Feedback Process: Doesn't say that he'll provide feedback or oblige you not to post the work as a portfolio item.
14. Undefined Milestones.

Working On the Project

1. Micromanagement: excessive control over every detail of your work.
2. Unrealistic Workload: Have you ever worked with a client who wanted you to be a mobile developer, a web developer, a DevOps engineer, and a system admin all at ones, no? I hope you don't have to experience what that feels like because it's neither good for your health nor your pocket.
3. Frequent Scope Changes: It will slow the pace of the project especially once they start switching milestones and adding new ones randomly.
4. Constant Urgency: Requiring the work to be done faster while not understanding how your work is done.
5. Bad/Lack of Communication: it takes too long to get a response to a question about the work.
6. Overly Critical: especially when it comes to small details such as grammar, font size, font weights ... etc while overlooking important details
7. Too Many Decision Makers And/or Poor Project Management: it's one thing to get micromanaged but a whole other level when the project is poorly managed.
8. Frequent Last-minute Changes.
9. Lots of Additions To The Milestones without Proper Compensation: It's all about ROI in these projects, depending on what has the most return but sometimes projects just aren't interesting enough and the only part that you want back is the money.
10. Late Payments Or Partial Payments To Work Already Done: if you see the client slowing down with the payments, the delivery has to become slower as well, that's why most freelancing platforms work with payment in advance so that the freelancer is always compensated for his work.
11. Too Many Meetings: If this project doesn't require a deliverable every week then there is no reason to have such meetings.

Finalizing The Project

Well at this point the project is already finished so if you don't see any problems and once this client needs more work you can always have confidence that he isn't a bad client.

But still, if he shows some of these flags you know your relationship won't last long.

1. Inconsistent Payments: These are the biggest indication of a bad client, let's be clear here, sometimes you lower the rates for gains in other aspects, especially if the project has a promising future, maybe some stock maybe a percentage of the profits, but most of the time, if the client is bad at paying his bills even if you deliver in-time or ahead of time then you know this will translate to other things: late to meetings, bad management ... etc.
2. No Feedback Process: You ask for a review and he doesn't give you one.
3. Saying This First Project Will Be The First Of Many After You Have Done The Work For Free (if you did): or if you lowered the price to a point where you could have just done it for free. Also, you will never see this client again.

Finishing Story

It was the summer of 2022, and I hadn't been freelancing for a while at that point for study reasons, once I wanted to make my comeback, I was struck by how much the competition had increased in Upwork, well this was due to the removal of the profile approval step at the start of the account creation, so now everyone can create an account and get in and start sending proposals.

I applied to a simple job of some random Indian dude who wanted someone to apply an algorithm written in a paper using C#, it seemed like an interesting opportunity because of the budget which was 100$ and after seeing the paper I knew It wouldn't take more than a day or two, but more interestingly after negotiations with the client, I've discovered the real budget that was 30$.

Still, I thought It was a quick 1-2 hours of work to get this done, and I agreed, I was also attracted by the "this will be the start of many other jobs" flag. After starting the project things went downhill fast as the algorithm was a little more complicated to implement. I spent two days to fully finish the implementation and I even added a GUI for goodwill.

The client was happy and was interested in me doing another project that he sent me the PDF of, once I saw it was a desktop app development job I estimated the project cost to be around 300$ and I even sent a scope of work.

The Client took that price and put up a listing in Upwork with my scope of work to see if people could give him a lower price, I discovered this while looking for other jobs and confronted him instantly on using my scope of work to get a low price. I mean it was fair game to use the price I gave him to put up a listing, but using the scope of work that contained way more info about how I would deliver the work was crossing the line.

From this incident, I learned quite a few things:

• Don't take into consideration that the client will work with you in the future, a lot of those who say these things are only looking to get a lower price.
• Focus on the quality of your work and not on future work you are not sure if you will get or not and never lower your prices unless necessary.

Final Thoughts

As stated before, a lot of clients are either stressed about the project so they show a lot of flags, some are just new and don't understand how freelancing works, and some of them are straight-up bad clients that should be avoided.

Here's a funny thing that the "The Video Shop" guy said and that is increasing your price by 5% for every red flag you see, at least you work for more, and sometimes this will land you with a client that is new and wants to learn.