I suddenly remembered another situation where posting your fees may be useful. Maybe.

A while back I had gone through a long stretch of woeful skunk work. Worse, I could barely get anything approved. Clients attacked my copy with meat hooks. I was revising revisions to revisions that they hated. I was a galley slave.

Then, I got a chance to write a big series of web videos for an insurance client.

They turned out surprisingly well. Rave reviews all around. The pieces were edgy and irreverent, in my trademark way. And emotional and dramatic. The clients really loved those things. I saved all the emails where they called me brilliant.

I figured I had arrived. I had finally broken through. Leaped from the mire.

After all, I had, quote, “a cleverly deft touch and flair” and the scripts “will raise the bar in the industry.”

I was no longer a mere hack.

So the next day, high on my own genius, I went to my web site and declared that my per diem rate was now a hefty $3,500.

I became, in one fell swoop, a world-class $3500-a-day creator of breakthrough content.

It said so, in plain type, right there on the Internet.

Of course, no one gave a damn.

No one acknowledged my sudden elevation to elitehood. No one called saying, “Gee if you charge that much you must be amazing. Let’s talk business.” There were a number of hits on that page, so somebody saw that rate. Maybe there were guffaws. I don’t really know.

One of my regular clients did notice the rate. “Yipe. Is that what you’ve been charging us all this time? That’s crazy.”

“Nah,” I said, “I only say that to keep out the riff-raff.”

After about a week. I quietly took the rate off my site.

Writers who actually get $3,500 a day don’t crow about it.

But actually posting that rate, in public, made a little gear click over in my head. It didn’t look so preposterous. It was a lot more real.

To this day, I still consider myself a $3500-a-day scribe. Only now I keep that to myself.

Although I do discount that rate generously in certain cases, such as, you know, for actual jobs out there in the real world.

Customers queueing up for the irresistible cheeseburgers at the Shake Shack in New York's Madison Square Park. This is what happens when you serve up what people like. We need to be masterfully good at that. But how?

Ponder this:

Over time, which is better for your bank account?  For your freelance career?  For your soul?

Should you aim to produce truly distinctive and authentic and imaginative and impeccably crafted work?

Or . . .

Deliver what clients like?

I’ll spare you the suspense.

The fun, the fame, and the money in freelancing comes from building things that clients really like.

It is one of those Irritating-but-Irrefutable Laws of Freelancing.™

(I figured this cost me about a half-year’s lost income to learn. Actually, way more than that. So listen up, even if you’ve heard this.)

We get paid for placing something delightful and appealing on the client’s desk, something that gets them to say “Holy crap, I love that.”*  

That is where money comes from.

Sure, cultivating a distinctive style is important. So is having a viewpoint, taking a stand, honing your craft, being authentic, using sound principles, owning a niche, breaking the rules, and doing all those things 37 Signals and Seth Godin tell you to do.

That is all swell and necessary. But it’s not the crux of it.

In the end, you have to lay something down in front of the client that they really like.

The finer you hone your knack for serving up work that gets a client’s head nodding and heart beating, the more clients you win, the more money you make. And the more fun you have.

It’s the same pain-in-the-ass reality that bedevils every business, whether you’re making chicken soup or iPhone apps or selling wrought iron weather vanes on etsy.com.

Designer Paul Rand got to be a legend because he was masterful at creating identities that appealed to high-profile clients. Same with Saul Bass, indie video maker Adam Lisagor, cartooner Hugh MacLeod. Or the Shake Shack in NYC, where the line is a quarter mile long. They make what their customers really freakin’ like.

You and me, we need to be uncannily and devilishly good at this. Unfairly skilled at it, even.

When you sit down to work tomorrow morning, this is what you should be shooting for.

Because we are not playing here. This is our living. There is the baby. And the car needs brakes.

–

* Just so we’re clear. I’m using like in the broadest sweep of the word. Of course, there’s like in the aesthetic sense: To give one goosebumps, takes one’s breath away. To make one want to hold it, touch it, play around with it, and keep looking at it. It’s pleasing, appealing, endearing, charming.

I also mean “Yes, hooray, this damn shopping cart actually works now. . . Yes, my boss will drool over this.  Yes, I can get this past the lawywers, no problem. Ho, you make our product sound actually good . . . Yes, I’ll look like a genius with this.” 

]]> http://thefreelancery.com/2012/02/where-the-money-is-making-stuff-they-really-like/feed/ 0 http://thefreelancery.com/2012/02/what-to-do-after-they-say-well-call-you/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-to-do-after-they-say-well-call-you http://thefreelancery.com/2012/02/what-to-do-after-they-say-well-call-you/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:38:57 +0000 Walt Kania http://thefreelancery.com/?p=827
This happens a lot.

You finally make contact with a juicy buyer:  a heavy-using dream client who buys loads of what you do, and has a fat budget for freelancers.

You have a pleasant conversation or two. They like your work. Your vibes are aligned. You’re feeling happy.

Then . . . then, they say, “Thanks. We’ll call you when something comes up.”

Been there, heard that, 114 times.

You either think “Hooray, they’ll be calling me this Thursday” . . .  or “Damn, they are blowing me off.”

Actually, it’s neither.

What you’re hearing is inertia. “We’re happy with the freelancers we’re working with. No reason to take a chance on an unknown right now.”

It’s always safer for clients to bring in the guy they know, the designer they used last week.

So when they say “We’ll call you,” it means your task is to wait cheerfully and patiently on the bench with hands folded.

Until one of their regular freelancers screws up.

Maybe one of their designers will blow a deadline or turn a high-profile job into an utter turd. Maybe one will make the client look like an ass in front of her boss. (Man, that was me. Thrice.) Or maybe their skew-haired copywriter is hauled off for thirty days of court-ordered rehab.

Only then do you get your shot at glory.

The hard part is, you may have to wait cheerfully for a week, for sixty-one days, or damn near forever. And chances are, if it’s a truly desirable client, you will be sitting in the lobby with six other eager beavers.

So how to play this while you’re waiting?

First move: Go make contact with another must-have, frequent flyer client in the meantime.

Now back to work on the first one.

Don’t do what the others do

Clients tell me most of us freelancers are hopeless bumblers at ‘keeping in touch’.

We irritate. We nag and interrupt. We call when we have nothing to say. And we talk about ourselves entirely too much. Or, even worse, we melt into a blob of faceless nobodies who all sound the same.

(Listen to Dave Trott, Creative Director at CST The Gate, ranting about how clumsily he is pursued by most freelancers.)

The first rookie mistake, which I once raised to high art, is pestering the hell out of them every six days.

“Hey. We spoke last week about perhaps doing some freelance work. Just wanted to check in and see what you have coming up.”

No. God, no.

That will not speed up the process. It will only train them to nuke your emails and to recognize your number on the caller ID. They will grow weary of blowing you off. You will become a nuisance with no work.

(Fortunately, that perky freelancer to the left of you on the bench, the one who keeps wanting to chat, she will most likely do this.)

Worse, if you are too urgent in your pestering, it will scream “Please, please, I’m really really crazy in need of work right now.”  Which will quickly unfurl the red flags and yellow police tape. It does not inspire confidence.

(The guy down at the end of the bench, the one chewing his nails, he will do this. We will let him.)

Second newbie mistake, which I made for about a year, is to do nothing. I didn’t stoop to grovel, harass, or beg. I was cool. After all, they had seen my remarkably smooth and insightful copy. They would seek me out.

Mostly they didn’t. They got busy with, you know, life and doing their jobs and worrying about their own problems.

After three months of remaining cool and aloof, I would get curious and deign to follow up.

“Walt who?  they‘d say.  ”I’m sorry, who are you again?”

The good part for you:  that freelancer over there, him with his eyes closed and his earphones in, this is exactly what he will do. So he will be gone soon, too.

What about sending the client updates on jobs you’ve done, projects just completed?

I never had a client who cared a lick about the work I was doing for other clients. The girl you are asking out tonight is not interested in who you dated last week. Unless it was someone famous.

How about a newsletter? Less than exciting. It has to be a killer piece — something your prospects would die to read anyway — otherwise it’s a notch above spam. It also says, “I automatically sent this same thing to a bunch of other people who I am also chasing for work.”  

We can do better than ‘paste and send.’ We are only courting a half-dozen people or so. Perhaps ten. This is not mass marketing.

Here is what to do.

(Be forewarned. This approach is a bitch. Which is precisely why it works, and why other freelancers won’t do it. Or can’t. All of which is good for you.)

Oh, and see the huge caveat down at the bottom there.

Make it about them

You want make yourself more familiar. Not just some newbody at the end of an email.

You want step out of that ‘unknown and untested’ category. You want to reinforce that you’re a good match, that you’re looking forward to working with them. That you like them. You’re a pro. That you get them.

The trick is to make every contact welcome, and looked forward to. Make each contact a pleasant micro-event in itself. (That’s the hard part.)

Which means entertaining them somehow or giving them something. Or perhaps talking about them, or making the email about them, or talking about them, or maybe talking about their work, or talking about them. Or best of all talking about them.

Maybe you send along an email with a link:

“Happened to see this article on XXX, and instantly thought about you, especially since they are trying what you have been doing. But I thinking they’re missing part of it . . . .

Or another:

“Not that you asked, but I just posted a piece on my blog that you might find interesting, especially since you were so adamant about. . . [    ]   Well, at least it’s free.”

Maybe you set your alarm and wake up at 12:43 am to leave a voice mail on their number. (You know, so they don’t unexpectedly answer.)

“I just saw that they quoted you on the XYZ blog. No punches pulled at all. Kudos for that.  And I got a double chuckle out that part about ‘anti-social media.’  I just may steal that. Anyway, good quote.”

All month long, the boys in the back of your mind are at work, with eyes and ears open for something about THEM, or their stuff, or their needs that you can talk about. Sort of like setting up a Google Alert for the name of the agency, or the company, or the product.

Your antenna is up and scanning. You’re thinking back to everything you know about the client. What she said in her email, her phone call, her blog.

Maybe you see their product in use at your local coffee shop. Or you spy a competitor’s piece of shit rusting in an alleyway. Or you see a billboard, posters, or ads neatly juxtaposed with. . .  From you, they get an iPhone photo and text:

“Whoa. Is there a headline in this? Or at least a tee-shirt, maybe?”

You are also keeping an eye on their website, blog or newsfeed. For new accounts they won, new products released, new sections of the site. One hour a week is all you need.

“Congrats on winning the LDDN account. Some day, I want to hear how you EVER got the client to approve a headline with the word ‘Weasel’ in it. I’m guessing that’s a first?”

The beauty here is in forcing you to think about why you like this client. Why you want to work with them. How and where your sensitivities are in synch, why you’re not just one of the bunch out in the lobby.

“Quick confession. I was stuck for an idea while working for a client in an altogether different business. I happened to remember that tone you used in the XXXX piece. The content jelled instantly. Client loved it.

“Thanks for the inspiration. I owe you one.”

Ideally, you get a casual email exchange going with the client. You become a colleague, someone they know. You leap past all the crap.

What if you want to send samples of recent work?

The rule of thumb: Only portfolio-grade stuff. And only one image, one identity, one screenshot, one link, one clip at a time. And nothing that requires explanations or setup or a big story.

If you’re selling copy, as I am, don’t send pdfs of some article. At best, a screenshot of the home page, the promo piece. Or a link to something. Make it intelligible at a glance, which is all you get. They will not read other clients’ body copy. (I like what copywriter Laura Silverman does with just headlines.)

And always, always, add a personal note to your email, your postcard.

“Ready when you are, C.B.”

The huge caveat

I can attest that this approach does work.

I have been on the receiving end at least four times, even though I knew and had used it myself. When done well and thoughtfully, it is the most natural thing in the world.

A fellow freelancer used to deride this as ‘marketing by sucking up.’ Until, of course, he realized that this was exactly how he had hired his last intern, and two graphics freelancers.

The key: This is only useful if you are sincere and specific.

“I just love your product. I love your site. Your work is amazing.  I’m a big fan of your agency.”

That’s generic spam. Sounds phony, is phony. That’s sucking up.

If you think of this as a technique, you will kill it.

It’s more of a mindset.  A way of thinking about your relationship with clients.

What’s interesting to them? Who would they want to work with?

####

Let me explain.

We freelancers must occasionally endure a lot of crap that never besets our properly-employed bretheren.

Such as the client who doesn’t send the damn check. Clients who can’t make up their minds.

Clients who themselves can’t design a whit, but tell us to shave two pixels off the height of the navbar. The client who says “I can get it cheaper.”

Clients who want eleventeen pounds of work for six dollars. The client who doesn’t send the damn check.

Okay, so that is sometimes our lot. But we do not whine and whimper.

As the aging mobster Hyman Roth reminds Michael Corleone in Godfather II: “This . . . is the business we’ve chosen.”

In return, however, we are granted a saving grace.

We have, always within reach, the ultimate pressure-relief valve, a soul-satisfying way to preserve sanity, dignity and bank account.

The freelancer’s right to bail.™

This is your irrevocable right to beg off, turn down, or walk away from any client, any project, any situation that threatens to maim the wallet, taint the soul, or turn one into a shameless hooker.

Unlike the hapless salaried employee, who is obliged to eat whatever the boss ladles onto his plate, we are always free to say, “No thanks.”

“I’ll pass.”  “This isn’t a good fit.”  “You’d be better off with a different writer.”  “Find yourself a new sap.”

No, this is not about being a quitter, a scaredy-cat candy-ass who can’t take the heat. It’s not about being a prima donna who won’t soil her hands in a little skunk work now and then. It’s not about leaving a client hanging because “I’m just not, you know, sort of feeling it right now.”

(We are pros, after all. Incorrigible renegades, maybe. But still pros.)

The right to bail™ is about deciding, day by day, project by project, client by client, what we will do, and what we won’t do. Whom we will work with, and whom we will not. Based on whatever our mission is at the time.

I know. In “an economy like this” walking away from work sounds like the most foolish kind of heresy.

But understand:  You will not invoke this right often. You will not invoke this lightly.  (And you will never invoke this right in a fit of anger, or after way too many beers, he said from experience. Wait until morning.)

Indeed, the beauty is, you need never actually use this right at all.

For most of us, just knowing we are not permanently shackled to this client, or to this sinking ship of a project is enough to keep our spirits up, our heads on straight.

It’s comforting just to reach over and finger that ripcord on your vest, even if you never actually pull the damn thing.

Ah. And if you ever do invoke the right to bail™, the effect is usually profound.

Some clients will be incensed, insulted. (What? You refuse me?). That’s okay. Not every client is worth having.

Others will be brought up short. Your status rises. They will look at you anew. (Hey, maybe we can talk about this.)  That may lead to good things. These are your best clients.

Some clients, of course, won’t give a shit. Which is okay.  Not every client is worth having.

Sad to say, but some of the most satisfying moments I’ve had as a freelancer weren’t always the huge wins, but the times when I said, “No thanks.” When I asserted my sovereignty. (Like last week, for example.)

The jobs and clients you don’t take will shape your fortunes just as much as the jobs you do accept.

Yeah, and there’s this.

We’re the ones who usually hear the ‘no.’  (“No, we don’t need any help right now.  No, we like the freelancers we have.  No, we won’t pay that.  No, we’re not going ahead with that project.”)

So every once in a while, every now and then, it feels good to turn the tables.

Yeah, it’s childish. Yeah, it may not always be bean-counter logical.

But sometimes, it just freakin’ feels good to say, “No thanks.”

We need that, every now and then.

Especially on those days when you feel bullied about by some intimidating client.

Or when you have to endure the friend who endlessly raves about her swell new job at this cool company where everybody makes a lot of money and they all get dental and there’s free sushi in the company lunchroom.

Consider this: They can’t do what you are doing right now.

I’m not talking about being able to draw or write killer content, or wrangle PHP.  I’m talking about being able to carve out a living on their own, on their own terms.

The vast majority of the working population doesn’t have the desire, the huevos, or the smarts to pull it off.  They simply can’t do it. Most don’t even want to.

What you are doing right now, this afternoon, even if you’re flailing and wobbling a bit at the moment, they cannot do.

I’ve seen this more times than I can count. (And, yes, shoot me, I take something of a perverse satisfaction in this. But that is just between you and me, of course.)

Example.

Once, on a freelance gig for a unit of Ogilvy, mega-conglomerate agency in New York, I wrote copy for a Creative Director who had apparently been anointed a genius. He was quoted in Ad Age.  He wore red high-top sneakers. He terrorized his copywriters and designers. He supposedly oozed conceptual brilliance.  (Although, after 2 pm, what he was oozing was 80-proof tequila fumes, I think.) I actually liked the guy, even though he hacked at my copy with a machete.

One afternoon, he quit the agency in a huff, tired of the petty politics and creative constraints, he said. He was going freelance, to offer his brand of brilliance direct and unencumbered.  This was announced with great fanfare.

Three months later, he was quietly back in an agency job.  On staff.  On salary.  A company guy again.  He couldn’t do it.

Another example.

Whenever one of my tech-company clients would go through a downsizing, I got calls and emails from the staffers who had been sent away with some goodbye money.  “Free at last,” they’d say.  “I’m going to do consulting, build web apps, open an omelette shop, write for the trade press. Let’s talk.”  We would kick some ideas around, brainstorm some things.  They got excited. They tried some things.

And one by one, they always ended up back in corporate jobs.  They couldn’t do it.

Latest example.  (Skip on down if you get the gist aready.)

One of the smartest clients I ever worked for.  She was VP of Communications for a Fortune 500 company.  Ran national campaigns.  Orchestrated the Annual Report.  Sponsored PBS series.  A savvy writer.  A list of credentials up one arm and down the other.

She left to form her own communications business. We exchanged a bunch of emails on pricing ideas, web sites, business cards, the usual.  She was psyched.

Then there was a long lull.  Until she sent an email asking for help updating her resume.  There were some jobs she wanted to apply for.

Here’s the nub of it, I think.

What my VP friend and the others discovered was that they couldn’t really function unless plugged into the company machinery.  Where someone else brings in the business, a boss puts assignments on their desks, somebody else pay the bills, and there is a budget and a staff to send scurrying.  Without all that infrastructure, they’re uneasy, ineffective.

But you and me, all it takes is a Mac and phone.  Or a potters wheel, or a camera or two, or easel and brushes, or even a Bic pen and legal pad, and you can put food on the table.  And even do some damn good work now and then.

Don’t get me wrong. I like people with jobs just fine.  I respect what they do.  (And they often have to eat more crap than I could ever stomach.)

But they can’t do what you’re doing.

What is it like to work with you on a project?

Marketing people call that the customer experience.  It’s the term for what it feels like to shop at a particular shoe store. How delightful it is to play with your new iPad. That feeling you have after the last scene of the movie.  How irritating it is to use your software.

I’m coming to think, as a freelancer, the client experience you deliver is pretty much everything. Your dazzling creativity may or may not be the deciding factor.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

I know, I know, that sounds like a lot of huggy-kissy psycho-foof. “Kum-ba-ya” customer relations. But ask anyone, I am not known for endlessly pondering my feelings, or anyone else’s.  I’m very guy-like that way.

I would much prefer to think that my ingenious copy, my insightful solution to the problem is what matters most. But after re-examining my countless screw-ups, lost clients, missed opportunities and blown projects, I have to come to realize that the client experience is pretty much all there is.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

Man, if I could rewind a huge segment of my freelancing adventures, that is one thing I would erase and do over.

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Dumb simple.  Deceptively dumb simple. And not at all easy to do.  But that’s about all there is to client handling. There is no number two.

There are a thousand permutations and variations and nuances to it. But the rule is simple:

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Do that, and you will win 6.2 times as many clients as any other freelancer.

I first heard this idea years back, from a guy who was five-star master at this.

He ran a small ad agency here in Jersey.  A good client of mine.  One afternoon, we’re in his office chatting.  He was interrupted by client calls four or five times. Once, a big client called to bitch about a blown deadline.  Another called about a toothache of a rush project.  Another griped about her boss.  One even called to fire him, sort of.

But each time, by the end of the call, everything was cheerful, settled, assuaged. Sometimes it was a matter of being contrite. Sometimes just listening. Sometimes he confidently steered a client to a logical fix. Sometimes he simply commiserated. “Geez, I don’t know how you do it.”

It was difficult work. It took time and patience. But they always hung up laughing.

And, he made a lot more money than I did.  So I took notice.

“Aways leave them happier than you found them,” he said.  “Then they keep calling.”

(I realized, months later, that he had done the exact same thing to me. There were times, in the odd afternoon, I’d call him just because, well, it would be an uplifting five minutes or so.  Or, when he called me, and I’d see his name come up on the caller ID, I knew it would mean something good. Maybe som new work.  A rave review from a client.  Something good.  I always picked up.)

I cringe when I wonder what my clients thought when they saw my name come up on the caller ID.  “Oh crap, more bitching about the changes. Pestering me again for background material? Another delay?  More arguing about strategy?”

Another lesson.  Years back, my wife was told she needed some scary surgery. Our health insurer required us to see a bunch of other specialists, whom we visited one after the other.

Each time, we left the office confused, or dismayed, or feeling like clueless dumbasses.  Or, we’d drive home feeling like we had just heard the standard approved patient speech for diagnosis code 234.1.  We felt worse after every visit.

That is, until we saw Elliot Stein.

He didn’t spend any more time with us than the other guys. And he gave us essentially the same advice. (“Yeah, you need the surgery, and yes, it’s scary, and yes, you’ll feel like hell for a while after.)

But for the first time, we left his office feeling better. “Yes, we’re doing the right thing.  Hundreds of people have been through this. Let’s do it.”  We were committed, confident. A great weight had been lifted.

What did Elliot do differently? We felt like he gave a damn. The meeting was about us. Not about his credentials or the outcome statistics or that plastic model of the heart sh0wing the valves and chambers.  It was all about us and what we were worried about. Here was one guy, one doctor, on our side for once.

My wife still sees Elliot Stein to this day.  Are his credentials and qualifications any better than than other guys’?  I have no idea. All I know is, when she sees him, she always feels better after.  No matter what.

Those other docs?  Don’t even remember their names.  They get none of her business.

I know this sounds like so much airy nonsense. But it’s precisely why I choose Gelormini’s auto repair over the four other guys I could call. Why a hard-assed project manager calls one programmer versus another. (“That other coder makes me nervous.”)

So try this for one month.  The next thirty days.

(Okay, I know you won’t do this. Nobody does that 30-day trial stuff, including me.  It’s just for emphasis.)

What if, what if you worked it so every client, every prospect, every referral, every person who contacted you felt better after talking to you?  For real.

What if they felt more confident?  More convinced they had found the right guy.  Satisfied that they were doing the right thing?  Glad to find they could do this for less than they had planned?  What if they saw that there were at least nine ways to fix this, and all would be well?

Or what if, simply, you made them feel you were really glad they called?

What if they were excited to see your name come up in the email.  Or in the caller ID?

How much better would you be doing?

“Once I get more experience with ‘x’ and build up the portfolio, I’ll be able to charge more.”

“As soon as a get a better feel for what clients like, I can get higher fees.”

“When I sharpen my design philosophy a little, I can bump up my prices.”

First you hone your abilities, then you get to charge more.

But in reality, it also works the other way ’round.

Crank up your rates, and your chops will rise to meet them.  You will get a lot better, very fast.

I know that sounds bass-ackwards. But I see this happen all the time. With me, and with every other freelancer I know. And I suspect it is always thus.

It starts in your head

Try this.

Let’s say you have been getting $1000 to create a custom WordPress theme.  Or to design an identity for a product line. Or to write some product copy. Whatever.

What if, tomorrow morning, you decreed that as of 9 am sharp, that fee is now double.  $2000.  Boom, just like that.

I know, I know.  There are 94 reasons why that’s crazy and stupid and you can’t possibly do that. Bear with me a minute.

Making that purely arbitrary, audacious, utterly impractical rate hike will do wonders for your head. Which will do wonders for your business.

You will start thinking:  Holy crap, what can I possibly do to make this worth twice as much?  Push the envelope a bit?  Try a few more iterations?  Learn more tricks?  Break some new ground? A little more research?  Focus intently on what this client wants? What his problem is?  Push two steps beyond the obvious?  Or maybe, maybe I can figure out a way to make working with me the most satisfying experience ever?

That’s the kind of thinking that gets you out of the minor leagues.

Making that mental rate hike also changes your mindset, your attitude. You sit down to work that day thinking, “Okay, now I’m a $800-a-day copywriter.  Or, I get $4000 for an identity.  How would a 4K designer hit this job?  This proposal?  What would Coudal Partners do here?”

Maybe you won’t get that rate right away, or every day. But something has changed in your head.  You’ve turned pro, moved up a notch.

A photographer friend remembers when she first got the guts to quote something like $1500 for a day’s shoot.

“That day, for the first time, I felt like a photographer.  Not some scared-ass pretender newbie scratching around for a job. No, I didn’t get that gig, or the next. But my work instantly improved. I walked into a shoot and man, I just knew how to nail these shots. Hell, I was a 1500-a-day shooter.”

Time to move on?

I know what you’re thinking.  Your clients would never pay double.  Or even 33% more.  They beat you up over the price as it is. They want everything for six dollars.

Chances are, you’ll realize it would be hard to raise your game with the clients you’re working with.  They are always short of money.  Or their business doesn’t live or die on what you do. You like working with start-up restaurants, but they have peppercorn budgets, and their website is, well, not everything to them. The struggling band loves your logo and cover art, but well, they can’t pay right now.

You want clients who need your creativity, your code, your copy like they need oxygen. They need a lot of it.

So maybe it’s not about getting your current clients to pay more (which never, ever works) but finding the guys who already pay more.

—

Adapted from ‘Talking Money’.  Coming soon from The Freelancery.

2.  We’re afraid of being laughed at.  “How much?  For that?  Are you serious?  Wow, you are way out of line here.”

3.  We’re afraid the client will say yes to that big juicy fee, and holy crap we’ll actually have to deliver something that justifies all that money which will be hard because the client will be expecting to be blown away and we might not be able to pull that off which would be hugely humiliating especially if the client wants the money back.

Or the work that makes your skull ache is precisely the work clients love you for.

A programmer friend of mine moans that he could spend six months a year collecting $10,000 checks for untangling hairballs of code for big enterprise applications. He’s supremely good at the work, but can’t stand the pain of doing it.

Meanwhile, he’s itching to program some kick-ass photo manipulation software for a startup. But that gig pays only in Cheetos. The small bags.

Me, I have a client who will pay me $2,400, over and over again, to write the same happy customer story, over and over again, all year long. Same word count, same format, same subheads each time. I have to duct-tape myself to the chair to get these done.

But the client loves them. And wants ever more.

It is thus for all freelancers at times.  For all artists.  Even for companies.

The work that pays the bills, feeds your young, and keeps you out of the cubicle ain’t always the most enchanting.

The ratio of glamor to slog work will ebb and flow with the economy and the sunspot cycles. And over time, you can finagle more and more of the assignments that get you jazzed.

But nobody escapes the skunk work entirely.  Ever.

You think legendary photographer Ansel Adams supported himself taking pictures of Yosemite? Nope. He paid the rent almost his entire career with everyday client work. (More about that in a second.)

Designer Paula Scher of Pentagram designs retail packaging for arch supports and foot powders sold in chain stores, in between her work for Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic.

Nobel novelist William Faulkner made more money concocting screenplays and treatments in Hollywood (work he grew to despise) than he made from his novels.

So what hope is there for us workaday stiffs?

The trick to staying sane, and staying off the Jack Daniels, is in how you approach your skunk work.

As a freelancer, you have options.

Kiss it off

If something way too ghastly lands on your desk, you can always turn it down, which you can’t do in staff job. It is therapeutic to do this periodically, to reaffirm your independence.

Naturally, this option only applies when there is food in the fridge and the electric company is paid.

Hone, refine, explore

Or you can adopt the attitude of a potter I talked with ages ago. He ran a pottery shop in one of these touristy country villages, where he worked all day at a potter’s wheel in his front window.

Although his store was filled with imaginative and exotic work (with huge price tags), what customers bought, by the ton, were a particular set of nested bowls and one swoopy-looking vase. He had to turn out racks and racks of these same pieces week after week.

I asked him if the repetition didn’t make him goofy.

“At first,” he said. “But what I do now is focus on perfecting and honing the process. Finding a way to create that ideal arc each time, in one unbroken draw of the clay. Learning to get the surface right with the least amount of re-work. Or seeing how working to music changes my rhythm and pace.

“Sometimes I’ll work three, four, five pieces with my eyes closed, just to see how precise I can get just by feel. Or I’ll find a way to put a little flourish on the lip with my thumbnail. I’m tinkering and exploring all day. Each piece is actually slightly different. Customers never notice. But I do.  I’m learning technique and attitudes I can use on my fun work.”

“And,” he said, “I remind myself I’m making a living with my hands on clay. Not talking on the phone in an insurance office. That would make me batshit crazy.”

Do it well anyway

In one of his classic books on photography, Ansel Adams describes a technique he calls “painting with light”, which involves moving a photo light around a scene during a long exposure. It’s tricky and requires a fair bit of experimentation.

What did he use as an example? A shot of a motel cocktail lounge from one of his commercial client jobs. He had used the technique to add highlights to the vinyl tufting on the bar. (A tacky-looking bar, at that.)

This passionate nature photographer is stuck shooting a throwaway brochure for some roadside motel, for a client who was probably griping about the price, and he’s still finessing the highlights on the imitation naugahyde.

Adams shot motels, too

Sure, maybe Adams was foolish to waste time tweaking a low-budget shot for a client who wouldn’t know the difference.  Maybe he should have just buzzed through the shoot, sent his bill, and headed out to Half Dome while the light was still good.

But I’m guessing he couldn’t help himself. I suspect it was his way of using the work to learn something, to practice something, to glean a little insight from a mundane task he had to do anyway.

Or maybe it was just Adams’s way of pleasing the soul, for a moment, just for himself, whether the client gave a damn or not.

Elevate the junk

Okay.  So maybe you’re stuck architecting the CMS for an online retailer of auto parts.  Or doing 397 product shots for a company that makes wing nuts, stove bolts, lock washers and other fasteners.

Is there a software thing in here somewhere?  Maybe a process you could develop to take the pain out of this?  Maybe something you could build and sell over and over again, as a side project?  A way to get this all done — brilliantly well — in 62% less time?

Or maybe a company keeps calling you to write the user instruction for cell phones, home security systems, or industrial power washers.

Is there a way to transform that shop-floor grunt work into something dramatically new and better?  Something that literally changes the value of the product? Something that gives users goose bumps? Ready Kathy Sierra.  Or 37 Signals.  Or Jakob Nielsen.

Why not find a way to change the game entirely?  Make it simpler, faster, not so sucky?

Could you be the best designer/writer on the planet for user training?  And find a way to write that stuff so people actually applaud?

Could you somehow raise this crap work to high art? To something others will actually aspire too? Why the hell not, if there are clients who want it?

Who says intranet sites have to be dog-ugly?  Who says corporate profiles must always be dead-lame drivel?  Is writing white papers torture? Apparently not for this guy.

Subsidize your fun work

Okay. Maybe that’s all too Pollyanna.

Sometimes, skunk work is just that. There is no cinnamon-scented prize in there. Clients don’t always want new paradigms, or want you to elevate it to art, or change the game.  They want the thing done.  Just like last time.  Don’t screw with it.

And if they’re paying well, the smart thing to do is to shut up, do it, and take the money.

Think of it as subsidizing your fun work.  Or your side project.

Hold your nose and grind through a half-dozen dull-as-dirt case studies, and you can take a week off to work your book, your web project, or your animation video.

Do those 367 product shots, then buy a new camera.

This is not whoring or selling out.  This is what businesses and artists have always done.  The money the network makes from “The Biggest Loser” and “America Idol” pays for a whole lot of “Meet the Press” and experimenting with new pilots.

Cash cows pay for pet projects.  Always have, always will.

I’m guessing that when Picasso felt the pinch of cash flow, he dashed out a spate of easy-paying stuff, just to get the bank account up enough to let him paint what he wanted.

So when clients throw money at you for ugly work, put a bag over it and just do it.

You’ll have company.  And some coin to show for it.

• You’re making a good pile of money.
• You’ll have a lot of fun doing it.
• You’ll be doing good for a bunch of people.

None of the above?

Pass.