Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Client Management

Freelancing advice often insists that we should communicate relentlessly. Send an email, follow up, send updates, ask for input, rinse, repeat. But that doesn’t take into consideration the clients that: Have more important things to do. Want to give you free rein and see what you come up with. Simply hate talking. I’ve worked with clients who left me alone for the full duration of ...

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a freelance client back in 2013. We were talking about the software we were developing. He paused for a moment, sighed, and then said: “You developers are full of ideas but I always have to drag them out of you.” That stuck with me. How many opportunities have I missed out on because I kept my mouth shut? How many products could have been ...

Of all the things clients do to freelancers, asking you to lower your rates mid-project might be the most treacherous. It might be worse than being ghosted. When a client disappears, you know where you stand. Being asked to lower your rates after you’ve started work feels demeaning. But, it’s not always an act of malice. Sometimes, it’s a justified business move. It’s happened to me ...

One of the most common questions I get asked is: how do I avoid scams? Beginner freelancers are deathly afraid of being cheated by clients. This fear is often valid. There are malicious clients out there scheming for ways to wrangle free work out of you. Some disappear when you send an invoice. Some try to ...

Most freelancers dread the process of looking for new clients. It can be frustrating and time-consuming. Worse still, it can take away our focus from what matters most: delivering superb results for our existing clients. The first several years of my freelance career were a constant tightrope walk between working and finding more work. However, in the last 3 years, this changed. During this ...

Most of my clients over the last decade have been wonderful and easy to work with. I attribute this partly to luck and partly to my ever-growing standards. However, I’ve had my share of difficult clients, particularly in the first couple of years of my freelance career. Here are five types of freelance clients that are difficult to work with and how to handle each one. How to handle ...

If I have learned something in ten years of freelancing, it is that the best kind of client is a repeat client. The overhead of searching for new projects, applying, interviewing, vetting clients and acquainting yourself with the project is immense. This is why it’s very important to regularly search for opportunities to extend your relationship with your existing clients. The trick is doing it ...