Fiverr review and Freelancer Review coming up, so cue the ominous music and get ready to do this:
I love my housemates. They are all really great humans, unlike myself. Kind, generous and talented. For some reason they are not doing as well on Fiverr as I am and were feeling like they had to take an order even if they know it’s wrong.
My post from yesterday, The Tea on Unreasonable Expectations from Clients and Fiverr Customers, is all about knowing when to say “no”. I recounted how my housemate was asked to create (24) 500 word press releases for $72 in 2 days, making them all $3 (making them $1.50 after Fiverr and Paypal get their share). I told my housemate, “Do not do this. Any client who does not value your service now is unreasonable and things will only get worse.” I recounted the Rumpelstiltskin story and then started popping popcorn for RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Well, just call me Miss Cleo because the client kept pestering my housemate to take it and they settled on 11 press 500 word press releases for $3 each. Guess what happens? Go on, guess.
The client hands over a spreadsheet with a list of websites and the kluge-iest group of keywords possible with no further instructions. My housemate nicely, because this person is a real human, asks for topics to write about and explains that the PR release services need actual subjects for releases, not articles and that the information given was not enough to craft press releases from. Rather than come up with 11 titles the buyer tells her to just make it up based off of the website.
Excuse my Russian but this is bullshit. Most of these websites were basic, I mean basic. No About Page, no weekly/monthly specials–nothing.
Now, I have been put in this situation before and come out on top because I was able to engage the client and brainstorm ideas. But my housemate could not do this because she was working with a middle-man.
Back and forth they want, her explaining politely even showing clips from PRWeb’s criteria and all she got back was the same: make something up from the website and–this is the best part–but “…don’t make it fluff.”
Yea gods of writing!
I said, cancel the order. If you have to write 500 words, are only given 5 janky keywords for each press release, no one for quotes, no titles to go from you will end up taking 3 times as long to come up with an article–for what? $2 an hour when all is said and done?
She canceled the order and will no doubt ire the gods of Fiverr, but what else can you do?
I have cultivated the greatest group of clients on Fiverr because I don’t take unreasonable orders even when I am broke and can’t afford lipstick.
Fiverr and Freelancer are two websites that have conditioned buyers to believe that they are owed $25 dollar writing for $1.50 I love to write. I feel blessed that I can do this for a living, but before God I will work at Walmart before I sell my services for $3 an hour. No ma’am. No.
Ghost writing is still writing. Please don’t sell yourselves short. Think of your freelancer or Fiverr career like you do any other relationship. Would you stick with someone who doesn’t appreciate you or who would abuse you? No. You know that there are other fish in the sea. The same is true of clients.
tea time with miss b 