5 Web Clients Who’ll Keep You Up At Night

Is it worth it? Is it really worth it?

At first, when you’re a young and hungry freelancer who needs to build a portfolio, you’ll take just about any assignment that comes along so you can prove yourself. You’ll live on Ramen noodles,  pay the phone bill with the rent check, and kiss every rear end that plants itself in front of your face. You’ll make crazy promises and refuse to sleep until you deliver. Every project, to you, is worth a million dollars in reputation credibility.

But eventually you discover that those relationships can end up costing you more than they’re worth. You begin to understand why contracts are so long and complicated. You begin to develop a hyper-focused radar for potentially troublesome clients that just might qualify you for superhero status.

Following is our short list of 5 Web Clients Who’ll Keep You Up At Night, and how to recognize them. We won’t tell you how to get out of them once you’re in them. That’s for another blog post on another day.

You’ve been forewarned, Grasshopper.

1) The one who says they already “know a little about marketing.”

This is the client who has just enough knowledge to make them a pain in the rear and question everything you suggest. They’ll say things like “so-and-so’s blog said” and “I read on Twitter that.” This kind of knowledge in a client is dangerous to your mental health.  Pass them off to your enemy, if you have one. (Thanks to I{heart}Rhody for this one!)

2) The one who has a great idea for a business but absolutely no money to his name, and just needs someone to believe in him and build him a basic website to get him off the ground.

In return, you’re promised tons of “later work” when the business gets off the ground. You’re energized by his zeal, believe in his idea and really want to help him, so you agree to build the basic site for next to nothing. His deposit check bounces, but his explanation reminds you of when you were young and hungry and just needed someone to believe in you, so you get to work. But not two weeks in, he starts changing the whole scope of the project, saying that “his designer friend said he should do this” and “his programmer friend said he should do that”…and then he wants you to work with his friends on a team.  With meetings. And power point presentations. And by the way, why haven’t you invited him to your office to show him his website “up on the big screen,” anyway? What kind of web business are you?

3) The one who asks you to look over her entire website and give her a list of everything she needs to do to have it revamped and optimized for search engines, plus a quote for how much the new site will cost her — for free.

What? You want to be paid for that? But you haven’t even done any work yet!

4) The one who tells you they’re a multimillion dollar international company with a huge budget, and they just don’t have the time to work with a web designer — that’s why their website sucks. Can you help?

They ask for two quotes: one for a revamp of their present crappy website, and another for a new website with all the bells and whistles, including a content management system. After you draw up the quotes and email ‘em, they ask if you can come in for a meeting to discuss the problems with their present website. You’re seeing dollar signs — until you show up and sit down, and they call in their ON-STAFF WEB DESIGNER to sit in on the meeting.

5) The one who tells you they’ve been “ripped off” by their last two web designers, who won’t return their calls or emails.

They’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars and their budget is shot, and if they could just find someone honest who would get their website up and running for the balance of their budget, they’ll cut them in on a percentage of every sale that comes in. There’s a potential to make hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the business. You’ll have to rebuild the database from scratch, though, and rebuild all the code, because their last designer won’t return their calls or emails anymore.

Oh, we could share so many more. But we want to hear from you — what “red flags” give you a sick feeling in your stomach, or have you checking your pulse to see if it’s reached hummingbird-rate?

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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.