Articles about Clients for freelancers

Do you have a client who likes to trickle in additional revisions after you’ve already started the changes?
I call this “nibbling”.
The client is not deliberately trying to infuriate you, they just aren’t organized.
But we must draw a line in the sand on what will be included, and what must be billed for as an additional round of revisions.

An analogy for dealing with clients who “dribble” their revisions…

Picture a group of people waiting at the bus stop.
People trickle in at different times, and wait for the bus.
The bus arrives, and everyone gets on, and the bus leaves with everyone together.
The bus may wait a few minutes for a few stragglers,
but once the bus has left, it’s left, it’s not coming back.
Anyone that misses the departure will have to wait for the next bus.

As the client trickles in their revisions, you keep a collated list of all changes,
and let the client know when the changes will be actioned,
and that after that cutoff, any additional changes will be billable under a new round of revisions.

Every project and task has a fixed number of revisions, to prevent scope creep,
and to stop clients from “nibbling” by requesting changes one at a time.

We manage number of revisions by…

A telling the client how many rounds of revisions they have
B Compiling multiple requests for changes into formal “rounds of revisions”

Think of each as a checkpoint in our process.
We use rounds of revisions to “draw a line in the sand” on completed work,
so that the client can’t keep drip-feeding unlimited requests without consequences.
Setting a fixed no of rounds forces the client to collect their thoughts and be more concise⁠.

Power freelancer move:

Take your most disorganized, technophobic client
(“Sorry I’m not good with emails haha”)
make them aware that disorganization will cost more,
watch them magically get organized and learn how to use email!