Getting Clients in 2022: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

With the ever growing number of queries I get in web, web3, and blockchain development, I can say that declining any of them is pretty much a hard pill to swallow especially if we know that we have bills to pay, bobbies and businesses to support and families to feed and it gets more difficult if we cannot even distinguish the good client from the ones we should avoid. Here’s a quick guide on how to spot the good , the bad and the ugly when trying to select the right client.

QUICK DISCLAIMER: The pointers that I would throw into this publication is taken from my own experience.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

The Good Client

Who doesn’t like a good client? As a freelancer/business owner we all have our favorite clients. These clients are the ones who consistently stands out on your long list of clients. Now, how do we really consider a client as a “Good Client”? Here are some quick pointers.

1. Good Clients knows what they want. Pretty easy to say that all clients can throw in what they want right off the bat on your first touch base meeting. But it’s a different story when a client knows what they want, how they want it and understands how long would it take to get it. Good clients understand that web developments can take a day to a week more to create on platforms like Wordpress, Squarespace, Ghost and other available and similar CMS and even longer on hardcoded environments. they know that their vision of a token of their own won’t materialize on the spot. They understand the feasibility of their idea and envisions a clear output with feasible elements. There are clients who are willing to pay more just for you to create an impossible idea on a time frame as soon as 48 hours; and there are some clients who understands the project on both the consumer, and the developer’s perspective.
2. Good Clients Learn From You (and your team). This is a clear indication that they trust you and considers you and your team as experts on the project’s field. That’s why their outsourcing developers like you because they can’t make things happen themselves, and they learn as you go by. I really admire clients who ask us how we did it and what should they do if something goes wrong in the future, rather pay us more to fix something they tinkered out of curiosity leading to a messy ending.
3. Good Clients Pays Right. Some clients still want to low-ball a pretty discounted project offer and hopes to get more, no matter how polite and sincere their tone is, low-balling a floor priced project offer is insulting enough for us developers in my opinion. We didn’t study and spent hours to build our skill stack just for these clients to low-ball. As the saying goes, you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it. Good clients pays you right, treats you as their own (employee or partner) and gives credit where its due.

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

The Bad

Bad clients are not really bad to the bone. They’re more of a “good-problem” because they still pay you to develop but they don’t fall under the good client category just because they pay you right. These clients usually gets in the nerves of most developers and here’s why.

1. They Just Don’t Get It. Let me be clear on this one, there are clients who just don’t get it because they don’t really get it and it is your responsibility as the service provider to make them understand everything. Now there are some clients who are just very firm on what they want regardless if it’s feasible or even possible. No matter how you place it, these clients will never understand you (they won’t even try!) and the worse thing is they will even berate you and complain that what you’re doing is not what they’re paying you for. Keep a look out for these clients and if ever you land on one, it’s going to be a long day in the office!
2. They Pay-On Demand. Literally, under the conditions of the developer spamming these clients for delayed invoices demanding them to pay for the service they have rendered. It is basically a good practice for service providers to provide everything right on the deadline with or without ample grace periods, and in return, it’s common courtesy that these clients should pay you as they receive the expected output. Remember, we’re developers and not landlords. Though like landlords, if you have access on their hosts, it’s an eye for an eye thing to just cut their service off so you would get their attention, but I don’t really recommend it.

Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

The Ugly

Now here’s where it gets messy. There are clients who start off as Good Clients, then will eventually turn into an Ugly Client in time. And there are clients who are just ugly AF from the get go. Here’s how to spot them.

1. They don’t treat you as a professional. This happen on certain occasions wherein the client is a C-Level of a company with more than 20,000 employees. No matter how you position yourself, they will always look down on you as if your someone from the bottom of their food chain. Maybe (or maybe not) they can do this if you’re a bonafide employee of their company, but in the case wherein your are just an outsourced developer because their developers cant handle it or they don’t have developers at all, they should treat you as a professional. On the same logic wherein doctors who get sick doesn’t look down the doctors in the hospital they plan to get treatment. get it? good.
2. They Don’t Respect Your Time. Imagine a bright Saturday morning, you’re on the couch, enjoying your favorite show while sipping on your favorite drink and then a client calls you just to tell you that their website is down because an intern tried to edit something and broke it. Annoying isn’t it? If they can’t respect your time, then they don’t respect you at all.
3. They are complete A**holes. These clients are who are bad to their bones. They think so well of themselves just because they have the means of paying you, but still low balls your rate, doesn't even consider your perspective, doesn’t sway on your feasibility concerns and sets impossible timelines and deadlines, and what’s worse is that they will even bad mouth you amongst their peers and partners so you won’t get clients anymore just because you can’t deliver what they want.

These are just some of the experiences that I have personally encountered as a developer for over 8 years. And I had to admit, though as much as I wanted to earn and get a living I pretty much set my client standards on the pointers I just mentioned and try to at least weed out the bad ones from the good ones. Always remember to know your worth, your skill’s worth and your reputation’s worth. You may consider it to be picky but I’m telling you, 5 Good Clients who pays $10 each is still better than 2 Ugly clients who pays $25 each. It’s not always about the money, it’s the value of work that you should really take a closer look on.