How To Survive A Client From Hell

A client from hell is every writer’s nightmare. At least once in your career you will meet a client that sets a standard so high, you’ll think that you’re writing an article for the New York Times. So how do you survive such hellish experience? A bottle of energy drink and following these tips will help you make it.
Know what the client wants
A client from hell will not make you write an article just to torment you. The first thing that you should know is the purpose of the article. Ask probing questions. Is it for a website or a school project? If you can’t ask the client directly, the title of the article is the perfect indication of what it is for. You should also know his target market.
If he requires you to write an article and meet the 8.0 Flesch-Kincaid grade level, the article must be for average readers so you better use simple words and write short sentences. If he wants keywords to appear for a certain number of times in the article, he might be after the search engine optimization. Knowing what the client really wants will help you understand and meet his demands, including the unreasonable ones.
Read the instructions from hell over and over again
Rereading the client’s requirements is extremely important. A difficult client often has too many requirements and writers just scan them to save time. Scanning might cause you to miss small but important details. A few minutes spent in reading and rereading can help prevent hours of revisions in the future. But if there are too many requirements to remember, save a copy of the requirements on your desktop as you write so you can check them from time to time.
Make room for revisions
A client from hell is very difficult to satisfy. The client will ask you to rewrite your article more than once (some clients set a limit for the number of revisions) so be ready for it. You need to allot some time for future revisions. It would help to submit your articles earlier than the deadline so you can have more time for revisions. If you’re still working on hell’s article after the deadline you will be losing other possible clients. Another ill effect of working with a difficult client is you get burned-out (no pun intended). The more you anticipate revisions the less frustrated you’ll get.
Expect the worst
The only thing that’s worst than several revisions is not getting paid after the revisions. It’s part of the risks of being a freelance writer. Consider it as a learning experience. Just look at the bright side, even if you’re unpaid; you have still survived a difficult client. And you know that he/she won’t be bothering you anymore.
Hell is not so bad after all
It takes a lot of patience to deal with a client from hell but you will surely learn a lot from it. Surviving a difficult client will make you a better writer. If you’ve been to hell and back all the other projects will be child’s play.