Unfortunately, there aren’t many ways to tell a good freelancer apart from a bad one. You don’t really know until you work with them for a good amount of time.
I mean, sure, you can get a list of past clients they’ve worked with and ask them about their experience. But that’s not something you really think about, nor do you have the time to do, when you’re approaching a freelancer with a problem you desperately need to solve.
Take this article I read, for example.
It’s about a man named Nicolas, who founded an Edtech startup. When he first started it, he made a plan of how he wanted his e-learning platform to function. He had a clear vision and left no holes unplugged.
All he needed was a coder to bring his vision to life.
The person Nicolas had his eyes on had an impressive background.
A formal education, a good portfolio, solid work experience. It didn’t take long for Nicolas to hire him and get him started on the project.
Like many work relationships, things were going well in the beginning. The coder delivered tasks on time and the quality of the work was decent, which led Nicolas to believe that he picked the right freelancer.
That is, until he started to show the chinks in his armor, so to speak.
Soon he started delivering work late. It started off with being one day overdue. Then it turned into being one week overdue, then a multiple weeks, and then multiple months. Even his work quality deteriorated.
And for Nicolas, the last straw was when this freelance coder sent an invoice for the changes he requested, but these “changes” were fixes for mistakes that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. He paid the invoice, parted ways with the coder, and spent the next few months cleaning up the mess the coder left.
So how could he have avoided this situation?
It’s hard because things seemed so right in the beginning that he wouldn’t have been able to see this situation coming.
But that doesn’t mean he could’ve done things to protect himself.
Maybe he could’ve negotiated some terms in the contract, or used an escrow service.
Either way, I think this is a good cautionary tale to keep in mind for the future.
Now, moving onto today’s business.
Once in a while, I open up my application for potential clients to work with me and use my email copywriting services, which includes everything from product/service launch email campaigns to cold email campaigns, affiliate campaigns, newsletters (Not the design part), and autoresponder sequences.
Sometimes I get requests to help with other projects too like:
Sales letters
Website copy
Case studies
Search engine optimized blog posts and articles
I don’t mind helping, however, I draw the line at anything social media related.
Here’s the link to learn more.