Never NEED another client again...

This is very good insight. At one time I was in the exact same position. Ended up after dealing with serious headache from the client that I ended up out a months worth of payment. You have to make it so that the client sees your value. Otherwise it's just going to be bad.

I too have been in this position. Just like any kind of business, internet marketing requires lessons to be learned; sometimes the hard way. When you're desperate and need some income we all know how hard it is to turn down a client, regardless of how difficult they are.

The one difficult topic here that is not mentioned, is how do you avoid this? Regardless of how desperate someone is, how do you determine if a client is going to be a bad one in the future?

Been there now. Just for the same reasons you spoke about. Things are getting better now but yes, just because a client has money you dont always have to take it!

How to know when a client will be a bad one?

Well, I can't say it's always obvious, but I should have known this one was going to be...

At the last minute this client asked for a big discount. I relented. I was desperate, remember?

And then when she was just about to cut the check, she asks, "can I pay you the other half in a couple of weeks?"

I said, "sure," thinking she just didn't have the funds, yet. I wasn't going to be unreasonable. But when I went to collect 3 weeks later, she insists that I finish everything before she pays more. The agreement had been for 100% up front, and she pulled that sneaky tactic on me.

I was livid, but I had already spent her 50% deposit, so even a partial refund wasn't possible.

Now, in the contract, I said refund was possible less the already worked billable hours, but I should have given myself 30 days for even that much. Had I given myself that much time to refund part of her deposit, I would have walked...

I'm also going to insist on certified funds in the future LOL This same client paid me on Wednesday night and just today said she was going to hold the funds. Unbelievable.

Thankfully, I got it resolved, but man, what a headache!

Never ceases to amaze me the kind of stuff people pull. I do payments up front because of that. I always try to get full payment upfront. If not I do payments so I get something before I do anything. I'll usually do 50% up front and 50% on completion. If ongoing I'll setup the subscription with paypal or with my merchant account.

Cues this prospect is not a good fit for you:

* can't afford your rates (or anyone else's)

* screams at employees on the phone even though they're nice to you (hint question: How do you think they're going to treat you when they're a client?)

* doesn't have an urgent, emotionally-driven need for what you offer.

Keep pushing these people into becoming clients, and you wills screw your business up, fast.

Here are two more tidbits that I learned in dealing with all this:

1) After the contract had been in effect for a while, I had offered to do something else at no charge. I was advised by my lawyer that that item had now become part of the contract, and I was obligated to perform. Now I couldn't hold that item back without frustrating the contract myself.

2) In Ontario Canada (may be different elsewhere), if a client frustrates a contract and refuses to pay per contract terms, your only recourse is Small Claims Court. Small Claims is for claims under $25,000.

Anyway... I spoke with a lawyer friend to get some advice on this and he informed me that Small Claims rarely takes less than a year to complete, and even after that, there's no guarantee or collection. I'm not sure how damaging all this is to a business owner, but it seems they can pretty much ignore your claim until a judgement is filed and I then start a collections process.

In short... it's a whole lotta headache for me, and not much of one for the business owner.

To avoid all of this, you have to be so careful to have control of everything. What I SHOULD have done is kept the website on my servers until I collected payment. Now that it's on their servers, I can't really take it back without hurting any future claim I would want to make.

So here's the short list we have so far:

1) Avoid psychotics
2) Get paid up front
3) Maintain control of everything if you're only collecting 50% up front like I did
4) Never deliver or offer more than what is in the contract. It complicates things to say the least.

A big part of the reason people get into these situations is bad cashflow management.

yes it's not a sexy subject that people like to talk about.

But a tip for people is if you get $1,500 up front, or $5,000 upfront, don't spend all of it. Put some of it away and start building up an emergency fund.

Same with income from your regular job. Setup an automatic debit for the paychecks from work and put a part of it into an emergency fund.

This will give you a cusion of cash should the need arise.

My parents were vacationing in the Arizona and their car broke down. It was going to cost them about $1,800 to make all the repairs including to pay for the labor. Truthfully a bit more than that because I had to take my Canadian money and exchange it for American.

I sent them the money to pay for it all because I can afford it.

and the reason I can afford it is for the past 2.5 years I have been taking 10% from each paycheck and 10% of the income from my internet business and building up my emergency fund.

I do not NEED an offline client. I am not desperate.

all it takes is a little effort and you won't have to be desperate either.

I agree 100%.

I still struggle with this LOL You really do have to treat your business as a business... build up reserves, reinvest in your business, pay yourself (can't forget that).

It isn't a sexy topic, but so important and it really can make the difference between success and failure, enjoying your business, or only having it add to the stress in your life.

You've inspired me to take a hard look at how I handle my own books, thanks.

These might not work for everyone. Works for me, though.

1. Work for free until you get one or few reputable and glowing testimonials.
2. If you found yourself in need of a client, read #1
3. If you get a difficult but FREE client, tell them you can't do this and that for free. Then jack up the price so high, you won't believe anyone would pay such amount.
4. If you get a difficult but PAID client: a) Refund the money, apologize and tell them to go to odesk. or b) Apologize, say you can't do that for that price, and jack up the price so high, you won't believe anyone would pay such amount.

Very good information. I am currently thinking about walking away from my full time job as we speak. And the thoughts of not having enough has been keeping me up late at night.

But I will have to keep what you said in mind. As I decide whats my best course of action. "A part time business you enjoy is much better than a full time headache."

It's a big decision. There are those that walk away from the full time job and say they are glad they did it... me... I did that exact thing at the end of 2010, and it has been way too stressful since then. Fortunately, I found offline consulting earlier this year, so I've been doing much better, but you never know what life will throw at you, and I was in no position to weather any storm.

I really really regret doing it.

You could argue that had I not left the job, I wouldn't have found offline consulting, blah blah blah, and yes, I'm pleased with how things are going now. God has blessed my family beyond measure, but the turmoil we went through to get here...

if I could do it all over again, I would have worked my 9-5, spent my lunch breaks researching, building my business, spent my evenings and weekends doing the same, being careful to spend time with family. After all, what does success matter if you lose the most important things in the process?

It will be frustrating, because you'll feel that if you had the time, you could explode the business in a matter of weeks. I wish I had resisted that temptation, because things just don't work out that way for most people. There are so many things to learn when you first get started, it will help you immensely if you don't pile money worries on top of all that stress.

You've already found the WF. You've already found offline consulting. You CAN explode this business in just a few hours a day. There's little to be gained by jumping in full time.

That's my 2 cents.

I don't know how rational your OP is because you're basing your entire experience with quitting your job on **ONE** client.

Furthermore, some clients display NO warning signs at all so what most people need more than anything imho, is to learn how to communicate with people in general. I just feel like your experience wreaks with pessimism and a lack of proper planning/execution.

Whats further worrying to me is this attitude going around WF like we need to conduct personality assessments on our clients. The problem is, a client you have that YOU find "difficult".. well there is always another web designer out there who will be capable of dealing with them perfectly fine. I've been in sales for 8 years so I've seen it in other industries too.

Certain salesmen do not sell themselves well, or they're too shy, they don't open their mouths and respond to things when they need to. It creates a miscommunication between the client/salesperson which tends to escalate and get worse. But I've seen MANY situations in life where its been more the salesmans fault than the client. I get to see this because my brother trains salesmen for a living. You would be amazed to see how often a COMPETENT salesman complains, so just imagine how much a newbie salesman is going to complain... they all do it imo.

Then I see salesmen who are able to deal with almost anyone. They are usually very clear communicators, they know how to set boundaries immediately, they know how to sell the shit out of whatever they're selling, how to build rapport, how to handle objections from the client w/out making them insecure towards your abilities. All this stuff counts a lot in the real world and if your some average joe trying to sell your first website... no wonder you ran into problems.

HOWEVER, my question is why you gave up after client #1?

My question is WHAT were you doing to market yourself immediately after finishing that first job? Something tells me your pessimism took over and you didn't really invest your time in lead gen like you should have. Making bad/desperate decisions is obviously not a good thing, but there are people on here who quit their jobs and LOVE what they're doing now.

Maybe its different because I don't have a family. I have a house to myself so I can usually concentrate pretty easily. Either way thats not the point. The point is my mind was blown when I read you were only able to get one client and that one client turned out to be nightmare. Then after that you lost all your drive/motivation to persist forward... you just gave up then rationalized it on WF some time later. It is THAT kind of behavoir I find worrysome. A bad client is a bad client. A decision to give up based on one experience... what can I really say? It is what it is.

With my first client I had to stay up for 48 hours straight working on their site that final day just to meet the deadline. I took on more work than I should have, I got paid less than I should have, but I KNEW in the back of my mind I was investing in a skill. I knew that skill would become more and more valuable every day I persisted to develop it. & Ironically enough that is exactly what happened. I became better at finding clients, better at picking clients, better at dealing with them, better at learning my craft... better at making money. I never expected everything to run perfectly from day 1.

At this point, I couldn't be any happier I decided to go with webdesign. I make better $ than I ever have in my life, I work at home... and there is very little that I don't like about it. If I gave up after my first client, I would have felt like a quitter. It wasn't easy finding clients in the begining but getting on the phone and calling people is not hard to do. Networking with friends and family is not hard to do. Then eventually learning how to write good copy and get leads off CL wasn't that hard to do either. It all takes patience, persistence, and planning for the future.

-Red

Hmmm all I can say is, you're putting an awful lot of words in my mouth, and you're completely mis-representing my position, my experience and my attitude towards offline consulting in general.

Here's my position:

- I wish I had started offline consulting part time and built the business until I was financially secure enough to go full time. Had I done that, I would have never needed a sale bad enough to take on a bad client, I would have avoided a lot of financial stress, and I would have had a much more pleasant time these last 8 months.

By nature, most people here are an enthusiastic bunch that love to grab life by the horns and take what we want. I dare say we're all big dreamers here, and want the best that life has to offer. I started this thread to perhaps encourage a few of the more enthusiastic types to plan a little better and not foolishly get themselves into a position where things are more stressful than they need to be.

I'm not going to comment further because I absolutely refuse to waste time arguing with people.

hmmm....been at the exact same position 3 years ago. I hated the job as an accountant, while back then, I assume there should be a better way of "living life" rather than a fix 9 to 5 Good that I met some of the best marketers/programmers...

All in all, business = trust, it is better off to advertise your service via word per mouth. If you deliver high quality products per whats written in the contract :p