Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #8, I explain what you owe your copywriting clients and, perhaps more importantly, what you DON’T owe them.

 

 

Transcript: What Do You Owe Your Copywriting Clients?

Hi guys. Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

So today, I want to answer the question, “What do you owe your clients?” and perhaps more importantly, “What don’t you owe your clients?”

This is one of those things where beginners come in with a wide variety of misconceptions, and depending on how much interaction you have with other freelancers, how much you’re in communication with other people in this business, you might carry some of those misconceptions pretty deep into your career.

And on a topic like this, there are some shades of gray. This is my arbitrary opinion, but I just want to dive into this and paint a little bit clearer of a picture of what to expect when you’re interacting with clients—what you owe them…what you don’t owe them.

Let’s start with what you owe them:

You owe them the deliverables agreed upon in your initial contract.

That’s it. That is the full list of what you owe them.

So, if you tell them, “I’m going to give you A, B and C,” deliver A, B and C.

If you say, “I’m going to do it for this price within this timeline,” do it for that price within that timeline.

If you say, “I’m also going to do this,” do that.

Pretty straightforward. You may find that there are certain elements to those deliverables that you forget to discuss with the client, for example, you may forget to specify that you need certain materials or assets or information from the client in order to provide the deliverable that you promised.

You’ll develop that skill over time, getting that initial contract down more tightly. And by contract, I just mean the agreement. I personally don’t use actual contracts. I just make sure to have one email than incorporates all the details. And I sort of use that as my reference point. But all that to say: What you specify in the agreement that kickstarts the freelancing relationship is what you owe them. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Supplemental to that: Obviously, you want to be a polite and respectful individual. You want to interact in a way that puts a positive light on your brand. But that’s just kind of basic stuff. That’s not specific to what you owe as a freelancer.

So that’s it.

And to dive into where I see freelancers failing here:

One of the big ones is timeline—providing the deliverables within the agreed upon date.

And I just want to say, I’ve been guilty of this in the past as well. I’m not saying this to be preachy, but it is a reality that freelancers can be bad with due dates. In the same way that you wouldn’t want to take a job without locking down what you’re getting paid for that job, you also don’t want to take a gig without locking down what the timeline is going to be for that gig.

Just be aware of that. I think one of the struggles that a lot of newer freelancers make is they don’t specify—or they try to overshoot—their timeline to have a more attractive offer, and that can cause issues. At the same time, I’ve hired many freelancers—I spent about a year building a content marketing agency that ran off of freelancers—and freelancers can just be very fickle when it comes to timelines and promised deliverables.

I don’t 100% know why that is. Again, I’ve been guilty of that myself. But it just seems to be a common thing. So,