As freelancer you are accountable for everything you do, whether it is good or bad. You might have noticed that whereas your clients expect great work by default, the moment there is an error or an overlook, they make it sure that these errors and mistakes are portrayed as the gravest things happening on the surface of this planet.
For instance, I had committed to write 200-word blog posts for one of my clients. It so happens that I don’t hold myself back when I’m writing on a subject. If a topic requires 600 words, I don’t try to cram everything in 200 words. Since he sends me the topics, I don’t know why he chooses topics that would never fit the 200 mark. I have no problem with that.
Last week, as it happened, one of the posts was 192 words. It was a mistake because I could have easily written another sentence to make it more than 200 words. But I’ve been writing for him for months and since all my posts are way beyond 200 so I didn’t count the words and just sent him the document as it is. In half an hour I received a reply from him that one particular post didn’t have the required 200 words. My first instinct was to just remind him about all the big posts I’ve been sending him, but then I quietly added another sentence and resent the post. I even added that it was an overlook on my part. The point is, he had never asked me to write those long posts; he had just asked me to send him posts that were not less than 200 words.
Kristen on Freelance Switch writes about handling similar, somewhat similar situations.
