After the last article about my one-year anniversary on Twitter, I recalled something that’s worth mentioning.

As a freelance designer on Twitter, are you just talking about design (something cool in Photoshop, something you learned in InDesign, etc.) in the hope that clients will see what you have to say on the subject and hire you because you know your design tools?

If so, that could be a mistake.

Now if you just want to talk about design and primarily connect with other designers on Twitter, that’s fine.

But clients don’t really care about the nuts and bolts of design. That’s why they hire you so you can care about it for them.

So what do clients care about? Great question! I’m going to let you mull that one over yourself.

If you don’t have enough clients right now, I’d be willing to bet you don’t have a really good answer to that question. Or if you do, you haven’t done a good enough job of showing prospects that you know the answer.

If you’re using Twitter to attract clients, talk about what’s really important to them.

I believe people when they say they find Twitter valuable for connecting with clients. Personally, I haven’t seen it yet, but I still believe them.

What I do see is lots of people repeating inspiring quotes, or passing along links they find interesting. And some folks do a good job of carrying on some sort of conversation given the 140 character limit. Conversations equal stronger connections and stronger connections can equal future clients.

One thing I have found is that a link included in a tweet is an easy way to get search engines to your site. And that’s a great thing.

Let me explain…

When I post an article on one of my blogs, I usually promote it on Twitter. Almost instantly, I can see via my website stats that the blog article is getting hit by all kinds of search bots.

You might recall in a prior blog post where I said that most hits to my blog come from search results on sites like Google. That’s a great thing because then I’m getting hits to my site that I probably wouldn’t otherwise have. That exposes me to more potential clients. For a freelancer, free exposure is as good as gold.

It almost doesn’t even matter whether any of my Twitter followers read the article (although I hope they will.) The real value is ensuring that the tweet is allowing me to get “scanned” almost immediately and placed into relevant search results. That’s a lot of fantastic promotional heavy lifting for 140 characters worth of info.

While I’m here, let me mention someone worth following: twitter.com/DesignNewz

It’s not often I click on links in tweets. If I did, I wouldn’t have time for client projects. But I find myself clicking on links from DesignNewz more than any other person or group I follow.

Some time back, I met a person through a forum who liked what I had to say on some topic. Turns out she needed a graphic designer for an upcoming project. Since she liked my attitude, she wanted to give me the job.

(For the record, I would hope she actually looked at my samples. I’m flattered that someone might hire me on personality alone, but that’s a dangerous way to make decisions about freelancers. Anyway, back to our story…)

Just one thing… she had already chosen a designer for the job. But if I could beat his price by, literally, just a few dollars, I could have the job and she’d yank it from the other guy. (I’m not kidding… I think I just needed to beat the price by $5.)

The price the other designer had quoted was pretty low to begin with. But I declined the job for a number of reasons. Those reasons led me to keep handy an explanation that I can give when someone asks me for a low price, to compete against another quote they’ve already received, or when I get asked to lower the price after they see my quote.

I can cut and paste as required for the situation.

I’m going to share that with you now. If it’s something you want to adapt for yourself, go right ahead.

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I respect your desire to get the best price possible. However, I will not be able to match/beat a lower price from another designer for the following reasons:

1. I don’t compete for projects based on price. If you look hard enough, you’ll eventually find someone to do your project for free. There are plenty of designers who are just starting out. For them, a portfolio piece is more important than being paid. I’d go out of business quickly if I were bidding just on price considerations.

2. While I could probably undercut any other designer just to get a project, ethically speaking, I don’t feel that’s the right thing for me to do. While the the quality of work I do is extremely important, it’s equally important to me that my business maintain the highest ethical standards possible. Taking a job away from another qualified designer simply by under-cutting his or her price by a few dollars does not meet those standards.

3. Because of the standards I just mentioned, it’s important to me to develop a trusting relationship with clients. I never view my clients as “disposable”… hopefully a first project is the start of many projects in the future. Over time, I want to know your business well enough to provide useful opinions that will help you reach your goals. But if I give you what I feel is a fair price for the work you need done, and then lower the price if I find resistance, we have eroded a certain level of trust before the project even begins.

4. Finally, a general thought about design. Quality design, like anything else of quality, takes time. And the tools used to create these projects – such as InDesign, QuarkXPress or Photoshop – require a skill level that many clients don’t have. If they did, they’d simply do it themselves. Understanding design considerations like kerning, leading and tracking and host of other things come with time and experience. Since I do have that experience, I’m very comfortable with the rates I charge.

Having said all that, let me say again that I fully respect your desire to consider all your options. I would be thrilled to work with you on this project. But if it doesn’t work out this time, hopefully we can work together on a project in the future.

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Let me be clear on a few points:

I’m not opposed to a true bidding process, and may the best designer win. I am opposed to playing the game where one person is pitted against another to whittle down the price. Some clients like to play that game, and that’s fine. It’s just not for me.

In fact, it’s rare I even bid on projects if I know lots of other designers are also bidding. Nothing wrong with joining a bidding party, it’s just not my thing.

I’m also not opposed to lowering my price if the client lowers the scope of the project. That happens when clients aren’t initially realistic about what’s involved. If they’re willing to rethink the project, I’m willing to update my price based on that.

If you’re just starting out and need work, you may question the wisdom of taking any sort of stand that might chase away a paying project. I understand and respect that. Always do what’s best for you and your situation.

I simply share my opinions and hopefully give you some things to consider before you find yourself in similar situations. I can tell you there are clients out there willing to pay a fair price to a solid designer. You don’t have to work for peanuts.

My “canned response” is really targeted toward the clients who are looking to play people off each other for the lowest price. That is the client’s right, so I’m not complaining about it. Just explaining how I deal with it.

As is the case with just about everything I write, my advice today needs to be filtered through your own experiences, how comfortable you are dealing with client problems, and your specific needs when it comes to being paid on time. What works for me might not work for you and your situation.

One of my goals for this blog is to give you something to think about if you haven’t experienced certain aspects of freelancing yet. Or to give you a different spin on something that you previously thought about in another way.

Today’s topic fits into that mission.

It doesn’t take long as a freelancer to run into some sort of payment issue with a client. Sometimes the client is being dishonest, but more often than not I’ve found that these issues occurred because of circumstances the client never intended to be in. Unfortunately, that can still be a problem for you.

I’m really only interested in “late-paying” here… “non-paying” is a more serious matter and an entirely different topic. (And, frankly, one that’s probably better to discuss with a lawyer.)

And to fine-tune it further, let’s say “chronic late-paying.” Every client is going to have issues from time to time where payment is late. Try to give them some slack because chances are you’re going to need some slack at some point when a project ends up a little late or you make a mistake that causes the client a little pain.

We all make mistakes and we all have bad days. You want to look at the big picture with the client. Solid clients are worth keeping and they’re worth the benefit of the doubt when problems creep up from time to time.

However, when those problems seem to be the norm and not the exception…

1. Discuss the problem

I always like to assume the best. As I mentioned, this problem could be occurring because of things the client can’t control. But it’s still worthwhile to explain your position.

Sometimes, I’ll address the issue like this: “I’ve noticed that recent payments are coming later than expected. I know you’re slammed on your end, but is there anything I can do to help make the process a little easier for both of us? Like you, I’ve got financial obligations on my end and once I get the final project into your hands, I’d like to clear the account so we can move on to the next project and keep things rolling efficiently.”

OK… you come up with something similar in your own words. My point here is to keep things positive and try to be helpful. And I’m hoping you actually have payment terms outlined in your client agreement or at least on your invoice. That prevents the client from saying, “Oh… I didn’t know I had to get payment to you by _________.”

2. Charge a late fee

I know late fees are common, but I hate them and never do it. It’s probably just me, but my feeling is that if the client doesn’t respect your “payment due” date on a regular basis, how likely are they to respect the late fee? And if you’re having to charge the late fee on a regular basis, maybe you don’t want them as a client.

I’m not convinced a late fee is worth the stress of having to confront the client over it and waste more of your time to collect. Again, that’s just me.

3. Require full-payment upfront

I’ve had clients who started out as “prompt payers”, then started getting a bit lazy. For some, I had not been requiring a partial payment up-front, so late-payment on top of that wasn’t sitting well with me. I was feeling a bit taken-advantage of after being the nice guy and not requiring the partial up-front payment. (This issue of not requiring a partial up-front payment is something I’ll tackle on its own another time.)

If ideas #1 and #2 don’t work for you, consider requiring full payment up-front. The risk? Losing the client.

But I didn’t care if I lost the client. You might not be in that position, so take this step after considering the worst-case scenario.

Believe it or not, some clients don’t mind paying up-front. They know they have a habit of not doing things on time and feel bad about it. So not starting their project until you get paid is something they can understand.

4. Fire the client

Despite your best efforts to solve the problem and give the client all the help you can, nothing changes… payments are going to be late. There are two things you can do and the first is to simply part company with the client.

You don’t have to be mean about it. When the next project comes in, say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to work on your projects any longer. Like you and your business, I need to be paid promptly for my services and that hasn’t been happening. I enjoy working with you on your projects, but I need to put my time into projects where I’m being paid promptly.”

Hopefully, the client snaps out of it and starts paying you on time. In the worst-case scenario, you get cussed out and the client tells everyone he knows that you’re a dishonest business person. Hey, it’s rare, but it happens.

What might happen, instead, is that the client is ticked off, but moves on to some other unsuspecting freelancer and treats him/her the same way. But at least he’s out of your life.

5. Choose not to worry about it

This is the other side of the coin to idea #4.

There are some clients who will never be on time or prompt about anything. Why they are that way is a mystery. But I have had clients who see the “payment due” date on the invoice as unintelligible black ink and pay you when they get to it… usually about a month after you were expecting it.

These people are often solo operations where they’re doing everything that should probably be done by a team of people. It’s not that he wants to cause you stress, it’s just the world he’s in day in and day out.

If you eventually get paid for your projects, you enjoy the work, and the slow payment isn’t causing you financial stress, you might simply decide not to worry about it as long as the check eventually gets to you.

To be honest, I can’t say I recommend that. You deserve to be treated with respect and prompt payment is part of that. But it’s a valid way to deal with the problem. If you’re the non-confrontational type, this is something that probably appeals to you.

We could brainstorm and come up with more than five methods for dealing with this issue. But this is enough for now.

The main thing I don’t want you to do is to get stressed when this happens. It’s really easy to run it over and over in your mind, getting more and more worked up, but not taking any concrete, thoughtful steps to solve the problem. This is especially true with beginning freelancers who are hesitant to rock the boat and potentially lose a client.

But if you let clients take advantage of you, you suddenly find yourself with a calendar full of clients like that. It’s just not worth the aggravation. Coming to some sort of final resolution, whatever it might be, allows you to move on and focus on building a successful career with high-quality clients.

The freelancer’s life is a great thing. It’s not that you’re totally free of problems, but compared to the typical employee’s work, the average freelancer does enjoy many more benefits.

But just a word of caution for those thinking of becoming freelancers: You are never simply “working for yourself.”

Sure, you have more control over how you structure your time and career. But unless someone is hiring you, you’re not exactly working, much less working for yourself.

So, obviously, freelancers do answer to “bosses”, known as “clients” in this case.

In fact, one could argue that traditional employees have things a little easier if they’re just having to answer to one person at work. A successful freelancer is answering to multiple bosses, all of whom have little interest in what your other bosses want or need at any given moment.

That can create some stress on your part as you try to juggle multiple projects. I experienced that first-hand late last year when I had about nine projects going at once. While it’s nice for any freelancer to be that busy and in demand, you certainly come to a clear understanding that you are working for other people.

If you want to stay a successful freelancer, you’d better know how to keep all those bosses happy. And just to keep things interesting, each boss may define “happy” a little differently.

See what I’m getting at? You’re not exactly “working for yourself” the way people think of it when say the word freelancing… you’re still working for other people.

That comes as a shock to some people who go into freelancing thinking they can do things exactly how they want without taking into account the needs and expectations of clients.

Like I said, the freelancer’s life is a great thing. Just be aware that you’re still working for other people. And those people play a big part in whether you’re successful or not.

I just got Peter Bowerman’s excellent Well-Fed ePub in my inbox. I’ve mentioned Peter before on this blog. While he mainly deals with freelance copywriting, so much of what he says applies to freelance design.

He was talking about using some common sense when in doubt about your freelance business. From personal experience, I know how easy it is to either get overwhelmed when you’re just getting started, or to over-think things.

One of the issues you’ll face is figuring out what clients want or need so that you can market to them properly and deliver what they want if they hire you. It’s always a good idea to dig deep and figure out what is motivating the client and every last detail about what they want design-wise.

But there’s also a level at which you need to keep things simple and not be overwhelmed by deciphering the mind of the client. As Peter said,

“Clients want what anyone who hires someone wants: to simplify their life, spend less time doing that task, and have the desired end result when promised and for the fee promised.”

If you know nothing else about what clients want, the previous sentence, in all its simplicity, is a great starting point. Even after you know the gory details about a project, it still comes down to making life easy for the client and doing what you’ll say you’ll do.

By all means, continue to probe and get details about clients and their projects. But when a client believes that you understand that one of your main jobs is to simply make his or her life easier, you’re a lot further along than a designer who comes across as only thinking about himself/herself and cashing that check.

One of the reasons I comment so much about websites is because, for freelancers, a website is usually your main, 24-hour-a-day marketing tool. It’s also the first impression many potential clients will get about you.

So here’s another one of my “DON’T DO THAT!” ideas.

Have you ever visited a site and, as you’re clicking on the links, hit one of those “Under Construction” or “Check Back Soon” messages? Or even worse, you get one of those helpful icons that show a construction work busily working away in case you’re not bright enough to figure out what the words “Under Construction” mean.

Ok…we get it…your site isn’t done. But here are the problems that go along with pointing it out to people. (And by people, I mean clients and potential clients.)

1. By having links that lead to an unfinished page, you’re wasting other people’s time. Don’t do that. Respect the fact that clients and potential clients visiting your site don’t have time to waste.

If you’re fearful that someone will think you’re forgetful by not including pages that you simply haven’t had time for, put a small note at the bottom of your landing page that says something like, “This site is currently undergoing an upgrade. If you don’t see a particular bit of information you’re looking for, feel free to contact me at _______.”

2. At least in the cases I’ve seen where there was a page with “Check Back Soon”, the word “soon” seemed to have a very broad definition. What does “soon” mean to you? Should I check back next week? Next Month? I can think of one case where a year later the site owner was still telling visitors to check back “soon”.

If people actually take you up on your offer to waste more of their time by continually checking in with you, you look bad when days turn into weeks and months, and you’re still saying “soon” or “later”. The fact is, despite our best intentions, if we didn’t get those pages done in the beginning, it gets easier and easier to keep putting them off as we’re off doing other higher-priority tasks.

Remember, your website is supposed to do everything it can to convince a potential client to either hire you or at least make contact with you. Get rid of anything that doesn’t help you with that goal, including those “I’m not finished yet!” pages.

I’m pretty firm in my belief that if it’s not helping you, it’s hurting you…there’s no middle ground.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at websites of freelancers…not just freelance designers and copywriters, but freelancers of all types.

Over time, I’ll share various thoughts, but I’ll just focus on one area today. This one is kind of specific to designers and copywriters. It may be a bit controversial, but just take it as one person’s opinion. (I guess it’s only controversial if you disagree with me.)

It’s not uncommon for a freelancer to list clients he or she has worked for. I don’t, for no reason in particular. But I have nothing against other people listing their clients on their website.

But that’s where we run into potential problems. How do you define a client? You’d think that would be easy enough, but not quite.

I’ve seen some beginners list companies they’ve done spec assignments for as clients. This is a gray area, but I don’t believe that just because you did a spec assignment for someone, that qualifies them as a client.

If that were the case, and I wanted to create an impressive list of “clients”, I could do a bunch of unsolicited spec assignments for Microsoft, Boeing, Ford and any other well-known name you could think of. I could even send my work off to those companies. Whether or not I got a job from them, or even a response, wouldn’t matter much because my main goal would be to list them as “clients.”

Does it make a difference if the company was actively soliciting for spec assignments? In my mind, it doesn’t.

Here’s how I define a client for my business: An individual or company that uses a design or layout I have created.

Notice there’s nothing in there about being paid. Although all my jobs are paid, my only criteria for being considered a client is if they used something I created based on their request for my services.

So what’s the big deal of listing spec work as “client” work? To me, it’s an issue of trust. As I’ve said before, the difference between you getting a job and not getting a job is often due to very minor, subtle things. And part of your job is to eliminate as many “red flag” items as possible.

I think, and this is just my opinion, that most potential clients interpret client lists as people you’ve done actual work for and that the work has been used.

If they ask you to provide details about your relationship with the clients on your list or about the projects you worked on for them (perhaps the potential client knows some of the people you’ve listed), you might find yourself in an uncomfortable position having to explain the true nature of your relationship with the names on your client list.

That could be enough to send the potential client to someone else. Never underestimate the importance of clients feeling they can trust what you say and do. Those initial feelings they get about you often seal the deal, for better or worse.

You might be asking, “So how do I catch someone’s eye if I’m not using recognizable names?” Simple…stick with samples that show the quality of your work. Highlight the fact that you know how to use your design tools by showing samples that make it clear. Focus your attention on a compelling message on your homepage that helps convince people to at least contact you for more information or to look at your samples.

While I’m against listing spec jobs as “clients”, I think it’s fine to show on your website the work you did on spec or the work you’ve made up. (As long as your samples page doesn’t say “This is work I’ve done for clients.”) That’s because you used your tools and skills to create it, whether anyone used it or not. And that’s the main thing clients want to know…whether you have the skills to do the job.

If you get asked about whether your samples are made-up or spec, or if they were for jobs in which you got paid, be honest and tell them. That helps you build trust.

I think the bottom line to all this is that you seriously consider the impression you’re giving people when they visit your website. You need to question how you phrase everything you say on your site and whether what you’ve included on your site is helping or hurting you.

You want to be completely confident that your site is the truest representation of you, your skills, and the way you do business.

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Forgot to mention that the first issue of the new Adobe Magazine is out. (It’s a free digital magazine.) Boy, was I disappointed! I was hoping that the magazine would be full of great tips on how to use Adobe software like InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. After all, who better than Adobe would know how to squeeze the most out of their software?

No such luck. There are some tips, but it feels more like a bunch of stories about companies and people who use Adobe software…almost like case studies. The magazine is free, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain, but I was so disappointed. For tips about getting the most out of Adobe software, stick with Layers Magazine or some publication that is specific to the Adobe software you use.