When Missing a Deadline is Unavoidable

For a freelance writer, or any freelancer for that matter, missing deadlines reflects badly. Miss too many and you get a reputation for being unreliable. However, there are times when missing a deadline is unavoidable due to circumstances beyond your control. How you handle these situations can go a long way in the client's impression of you.

Murphy's Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will. Maybe you or someone in your family gets sick or hurt. Perhaps your computer crashes. Or maybe a storm knocks out your power. You never know when something might happen so planning for the eventuality is difficult.

This week was the first time ever when I knew I was going to miss a deadline. My husband had to be hospitalized unexpectedly. Then my daughter got sick and finally I got sick. Needless to say, it's been a rough week.

There are a few ways you can handle a situation like this. Not all of them are right. Some freelancers make the mistake of not contacting the client and just submitting the work when it is ready. Others may just blow off the client entirely, not even bothering to complete the job. Both of these are wrong ways to handle the situation. They leave the client in the dark. Even with the first option when the work is completed, the lack of communication will probably leave the client with a poor impression of you.

Better ways to handle the situation would be to contact the client to advise them of the problem and either request more time or suggest another writer. While suggesting another writer may seem like you're working against yourself, it actually benefits you in two ways. One, it lets the client know you care about the satisfaction of your clients. Two, by sending business to a fellow writer, you increase the chance that they'll refer business your way.

When handled correctly, a missed deadline can work to your benefit. However, keep in mind that a habit of missing deadlines, no matter how well you handle it, will not do your freelance writing reputation any good.

*Photo by Paavo Leinonen.

The Weekly Resource RoundUp

This week's roundup will focus on running your freelance business. No matter how good a freelance writer you are, you will need some business skills to survive as a freelancer.

To start, we should know what not to do when starting out as a freelancer.

If you are considering leaving your 9-5 for a freelance career, check out the get started now guide to becoming self employed at Zen Habits. If you have time, take a look at the comments too to pick up some more great tips.

Before you rush out to purchase a bunch of software or other tools for your new business, take a look at 10 awesome online tools your business should be using. Some are even free!

Deb Ng asks (and answers) the question "Do freelancer writers need business cards?" To be honest, I never really thought about it until reading her post. Now I'm thinking about potential designs.

Freelance Progress Report: August 2009

August was my best month to date. Early in the month I set an ambitious goal of $400 in income from freelance writing. I'm thrilled to say I did reach that goal and even passed it by a few dollars. The new system of scheduling writing jobs is definitely paying off.

In last month's progress report, I mentioned that I had picked up two new freelance writing gigs and would discuss them more once I had a chance to get used to them. The two sites were Ecopywriters and NAA.

I've decided Ecopywriters probably isn't going to work for me. While I like the idea of a system similar to Textbroker, their payment policy is a breaking point for me. I wrote four articles for them at the end of July. I received payment for two of them about halfway through this month. The other two are still pending approval as of today. While I have no problem giving clients an opportunity to make changes, I think over a month is a bit excessive. When you add in the lack of variety and several days of no jobs available at all, it's just not a good fit for me. Unless they make changes in the near future, I will most likely be closing my writer's account there as soon as I get paid for the remaining articles.

NAA has turned out to be my favorite freelance writing site so far. The jobs are plentiful and on a variety of topics. In my first month, I have already managed to impress several clients, who are now requesting me specifically to fill their orders. One liked my original article package so much she put up five more packages totaling 22 articles for me to do.

The Breakdown
66 articles-$381.00
Total to date-$402.60

I actually did a little bit of writing for Associated Content this month, but still not much. The three articles I did were all assignments. My plan is to continue adding a few articles a month to build my residual income.

The Breakdown
3 assignments-$9.00
July PV bonus-$2.52
Total for month-$11.52
Total to date-$119.57

I didn't have a lot of time for eHow this month. I did collaborate on one article with my husband. After hearing him tell me several times that he wasn't much of a writer, I was expecting to do the majority of the work. I told him all he had to do was write down the steps to the project for me and I would take it from there. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn he is actually pretty good at writing. I ended up only having to add some safety information and do a little fine-tuning for SEO.

He's quite pleased with himself and asks me daily how many page views it is up to. If you want to check out the article (and make him happy by increasing his page views), you can find it here.

The Breakdown
6 articles
PV earnings for month-$3.63
PV earnings to date-$5.28

Textbroker got put on the back burner while I focused on NAA. When I did look on the board for assignments, most were either on topics that I was unfamiliar with or ones that required a lot of research. I ended up only doing one article for them this month.

The Breakdown
1 article in the 4 rating-$5.95
Total for month-$5.95
Total since start-$175.20

*Photo by Christophe Libert.