Freelance writing can be a tough gig sometimes. Aside from the way your skin starts to glow in the darkness because you haven’t left your cave-like office in months, or the way you start to refer to everything as your Precious, there’s the uncertainty and instability of your income. There’s a lot of feast and famine in freelancing in general, and the fact that you don’t have a boss or a job is both powerful and terrifying. In theory, after all, you can easily tell crazy clients to go fuck themselves. In practice, of course, the idea of telling a paying client to take their money elsewhere often seems insane. What if you can’t make up the difference? What if you wind up living on the street—or, worse, forced to drink well whiskey—all because you decided that you didn’t want this money?
Here’s the thing, though, sometimes getting rid of a client actually results in more money.
Less is More
Not all freelance jobs are the same. Some require a lot of effort for modest pay, some pay you exceptionally well for something you can can up with in your spare time with, like zero effort. And most of us freelancers have a client list that’s made up of a range between those two extremes.
I had a small client. It wasn’t the hardest work in the world, and it didn’t pay very well, but for a long time I was loathe to ditch them. The work wasn’t hard, but it was time consuming the way all work is—it took hours away from my other work. So, I eventually fired the client—in a nice way.
And something weird happened: I made more money. I had more time to devote to other clients—better-paying clients—and not only did I not miss the client I ditched, I prospered. And sometimes that’s the lesson. Be willing to trim back the bad jobs. If you have an old client that’s paying you your rate from 3 years ago and isn’t willing to give you a raise, don’t convince yourself that you can’t get rid of a paying client. Take a chance and I’ll bet you wind up doing better.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you fire every client. Or even several. Just concentrate on the outliers, the small accounts that stand out due to their low rates. And if you don’t have any such clients, just keep in mind the ultimate lesson here: Freelancing is all about selling time, and sometimes getting time back from a client is the smart thing to do.
Another smart thing to do? Buying Apple stock in 1995, or mining Bitcoin in 2011. Dammit.