Freelance Designers: Whats your biggest client related challenge there days?

Buttercake

I am looking for feedback from Freelancer/Small Business Web or Graphic Designers

What is your biggest challenge these days when dealing with clients?

The freelance industry has changed rapidly over the past 10 years, websites are easier to build, everyone has a copy of Photoshop lol, saturated market and low cost overseas competitors.

1. Getting Paid?
2. Getting Paid for small jobs i.e "Can you do this very quick change?!"
3. Chasing payment
4. Not enough time to spend with my clients?
5. Breakdown in communications?
6. Other...

banquo

Probably getting paid. Know a lad who's owed over 10k for many bits of work from before Hallowe'en - this from a reputable company you've heard of.

For me, getting paid by Paypal! "Well we pay within 30 days, usually, and by cheque."

Online everyone pays pretty much instantly, but older Irish customers take forever. Invoice has to be passed from agent to accountant / money person, then they've to process it, then eventually on cheque day they make out the cheque, then it gets posted, then I've to find time to lodge it, then it has to clear.

Online: Hang on now and I'll pay you. Ok, you've been paid.

Just yesterday I got an email from the printers saying they had a cheque ready for me, and where to send it. I replied, but my email bounced because their - wait for it - IOL email inbox was full. Despairing stuff!

The other hard part for me is trying to help clients make the right decision. No, you really don't want all the body text in your magazine to have a drop shadow, trust me. "But that's our style, it's vital to our brand!"

Websites for the construction industry must be the worst. Just awful. Rather than look at websites in general for inspiration, they look only at sites from the same industry, most of which are just terrible.

Buttercake

Great feedback there, as someone who has worked as a freelancer based in the UK for years and in Ireland for the past 5 years, I always wondered were the challenges when dealing with clients global or just in one country.

Getting paid will be a huge challenge but what i find is when you do a job/project for someone, invoice, get paid and then a phone call or text to say can you change this or that, minor changes.

I know it will only take me less than 2minutes to do it, the client knows it can be done quickly and then having to invoice for 30mins or 1 hours work? waiting another month or 2 and the rigmarole of getting the cheque sent out for €40 or €50 OR as I have done in the past, done it for free and then the client can call you for these minor jobs "ah he wont charge me"

The days of having support or maintenance contracts are gone as its easier for the client to manage a website and hard for a freelancer to charge maintenance when they can do it themselves with a CMS, For graphic designers theres no warranty in place after a job is done.

banquo

There's also a whole sea of pretenders out there who will send a poster to print with no baseline grid for text, etc. But they charge little and the client just sees two people ostensibly doing the same job, but one for far less.

ladiesman217

Hi buttercake.
As a freelance designer, my only problem is getting the clients, I'm qualified to the gils, and a number of years experience, and have been trading as a sole trader for about 6months, there is work out there for good graphic designers like ourselves. A good graphic designer who is able to create a unique brand identity for a client will always win over the pretenders. Learning programs within the Adobe suite can be done quite easy. Articulating the value of good design and benefits of a strong brand identity cannot be done so easily.

Companies that use design in its various manifestations will create a competitive advantage for themselves. There is allot more to us designers then just being brought in at the end of a project to make things pretty. If a client feels they can get better value on fiverr.com come, for say a logo, I will always show them a website that collects logo's that have been ripped off, and the offending company was reprimanded for trademark infringement. This soon changes their mined.:)

Buttercake

Hi ladiesman217,

sure getting work is the biggest challenge and up against webistes with stock logos/artwork is always going to be tough

My point was more relating to the client themselves and what challenges freelancers face when dealing with them. having client trust a designer's judgement in taking the correct steps to market their business and or the know it all clients who think they know how to be a graphic designer.

or does it all boil down to getting paid for all the work that you do, speaking about web and graphic

halfmoon

Getting work is very hard.

banquo

JobBridge devastated the low end of the industry.

Another hard part is explaining to a client the importance of having a professional do it, even though another hack may be able to do it cheaper "on paper." This is how I explain it.

You hire someone to mind your dog while you're on holiday. You have CCTV to make sure they do it.

Freelancer 1 comes back to your house, feeds dog, makes a cup of tea, brushes teeth, goes to bed.

Freelancer 2 does all the same stuff.

In real life, Freelancer 2 is drunk and you can see him stumbling all over the place on the CCTV - but on paper, they technically did the same job. Hire Freelancer 1.

sarkozy

Rubbish budgets and expecting the world for it. Clients not understanding what they get for their paltry monies when you take on the job on that basis.

halfmoon

banquo wrote: »

JobBridge devastated the low end of the industry.

Another hard part is explaining to a client the importance of having a professional do it, even though another hack may be able to do it cheaper "on paper." This is how I explain it.

You hire someone to mind your dog while you're on holiday. You have CCTV to make sure they do it.

Freelancer 1 comes back to your house, feeds dog, makes a cup of tea, brushes teeth, goes to bed.

Freelancer 2 does all the same stuff.

In real life, Freelancer 2 is drunk and you can see him stumbling all over the place on the CCTV - but on paper, they technically did the same job. Hire Freelancer 1.

Would you not just go with 2. Sure everybody is drunk these days, even freelancer 1 would take a drink. If freelancer 2 gets the job done for less money who cares??

banquo

Ha!

Really it's about the quality of the job done. A genuinely effective piece of work goes through iteration after iteration after iteration. I'm talking about some brochures by hacks that don't even have a baseline grid, where they do multiple page documents in Photoshop, and the text is just awful.

Often two projects have the same boxes ticked on paper, but in reality the impact of a professionally done piece of work is far higher. Down to kerning, using quality typefaces, optimising images for newsprint through an Agfa machine (I'm lucky enough to have a contact that does that for me for a few pints!)