We all make mistakes during our careers and I recently realized I made a couple of huge ones that has cost me a significant amount of money. As many freelancers know, time is money. Sometimes, when you are starting out you rationalize the idea of helping out a friend or doing a small favor for a client like design their contest print materials when in reality all you were contracted for was to do their website. You tell yourself that there will be a big payoff in the end whether it be more work from that client or that your friend will cover you off the next time. Well I’m here to tell you that doesn’t usually happen. The overall payoff is stress, burn out and the further expectation that you will continue to do free things.

Over the past year, I’ve offered my clients small little extras like free maintenance on their sites when things go wrong based on human error or the addition of revised content when updating the information is outside the clients knowledge scope. These small things always felt like they were part of my overall customer service offering that helped me stand out from the crowd. Lately though, the small things are starting to add up. I’m spending more time dealing with free issues than I am making money. I’ve also ended up back taking on tasks that I don’t have any business doing and don’t like doing, like print work. I’m a web designer and that’s what I love. I’m not a print designer or want to be. I left that world over 8 years ago and I haven’t looked back. To combat this movement into other design disciplines, I’m reaching out to partners that do enjoy doing this type of work and would be willing to join me on a contract basis to help.

Next, I want to talk about doing favors. This seems like a great idea when you’re promised bigger and better things in the long run, but the reality is that rarely happens. Even when you’ve scoped out the project and asked all the right questions the end result changes from what you were initially asked to do. This frustration of mine stems from a project that I started with a friend over a year ago. We were both working for the same company at the time and I was only moonlighting as a freelancer. He had made a deal with the client by bartering services for the client’s product. Unfortunately for my friend, his services were actually his. He’s a talented graphic designer but doesn’t know how to design or code a website, which is what he promised. When he approached me about doing a simple WordPress site that was essentially a brochure site and nothing more. I agreed as I couldn’t stand looking at the client’s current site. Things progressed at a snails pace. I was never given the opportunity to have any discussions with the client about content, strategy, or overall goals for connecting the site to his audience. As content trickled in, I started to see the bigger picture. This site wasn’t going to be a simple brochure, it was moving towards being a full ecommerce build. I attempted to reason with my friend saying the scope had changed and we needed more money to compensate us for the time it would take to implement and test. My friend explained that wasn’t happening and we had to just plow through. As of yesterday, I finally met the client and thank god he loves the site, but he’s talking about further improvements and scaling down the line. In knowing how much time he got for free, I’m now having to push to make sure that every moment onward is billable.

What I want to leave you with is some food for thought. Next time you decide whether or not to take on a project as a favor or because you think you are improving on your customer service, take a step back and weigh the real benefits against the real drawbacks. If you are trying to make a living without the support of a stable income and billable hours or projects are your bread and butter then strongly consider if it’s worth the effort to deal with these requests. Instead either politely decline or offer solutions that can work for both parties like suggesting another designer who enjoys that type of work or hire a contractor to work under your company name to complete the project.

In the end, if you’ve gone down this road already then you will be faced with a lot of pushback when you start putting your foot down on costs and payments. Stay strong and stay consistent to why it’s important for you to get paid for your effort, time and skills.

###Further Reading and Inspiring companies