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Frustrated. Need some advice


Stephen Lewis

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I've been working on doing Wordpress sites for my portfolio. I built one for my martial arts instructor. He was pretty easy to work with. He told me what he wanted, I did it, and he liked it.

Next, my parents have a side business selling collectibles and they wanted me to build them a site. I started on it, but they're very indecisive and also have some odd ideas, so we put things on hold. To an extent, I get it, they have a lot going on: they have day jobs, a side business and they're remodeling their house.  So, they're a bit busy and it's understandable the site would take a back seat. They don't really need it at this point. 

For the third site, I have a woman that I work with that's start working as an insurance agent on the side and wanted a website, so I started on that. I created a mock up in XD and got approval. She loved it and was totally excited. I'm almost finished with it, I just need to tweak it for mobile and add her info. Now, it sounds like she might not want to do it anymore. I'm not sure why because she was bouncing off the walls before. 

Is this sort of thing normal or have I just run into a string of bad luck? I'm not whining, I'm gonna find a way to use. I might just use the two sites as example sites in my portfolio or something. Either way I'll keep moving forward, I just wanted to get some feedback from everyone else.

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I am starting up in this freelance game myself...

My experience so far has been similar, flaky clients. My first was an unpaid gig for a local law firm. I literally spent months doing this huge site redo for her, about 90% of the site is done, she was giving me feedback and was "yes-ing" everything I suggested. When it came down to finalizing the design decisions she stopped responding to my emails and calls.

The second client I've been waiting for feedback and content for months now.

These experiences sort of killed my momentum and very demoralizing wasting all this time, I learned a lot I suppose so not 100% waste. I'm going to keep at, you should too, Stef said it'd be rough at first.

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I also tried this at first, and it was almost the same experience, most people don't know what they want, so I mainly use templates, show them, and change things up for them, its troubling when they yes too everything and trying to start from scratch, so by having a "menu" that I can serve to them on a silver platter made the whole processes much simpler.

By that I mean, here are a few Menu - Home Page - Color Pallet Combinations, here are the most popular trending fonts, used in 2018 for clear visuals, and so on. Most people don't pay attention to small details at first but when its all put together, boom

Although I have stopped offering this service, its something that I do believe worth doing, get to learn ALLOT just by trying to solve problems client have. keep it up! and don't give up

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Stephen - I haven't started freelancing yet, although I've been a developer for over 20 years. My take on your parents' situation is that this gives you a great insight into what goes on with clients behind the scenes. You can see how easily they get sidetracked by "life". Now, imagine this happening to clients who aren't family. So, if they don't get back to you right away, don't take it personally. 

As for your third site, did the client pay anything up front? (I believe Stefan recommends 1/3 up front, 1/3 at the first draft, and 1/3 at completion.) If she did, then... well... enjoy your paycheck, put this project on hold, and look for other projects. If she didn't pay anything up front, then lesson learned.

 

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