“This should only take you an hour.” To freelancers, this is code for “we aren’t willing to pay you what you’re worth.”
Would you tell a dentist, surgeon, firefighter, appliance repairman, carpenter, or ballerina the same thing? Of course not. You want the job done, and done right. And you hire them because they work in a field in which you might not have expertise. But when you designate a time limit, your freelancer has the following options:
- Do their best, no matter how long it takes, and resent you for showing little respect for creative process because you don’t understand it.
- Give you exactly one hour’s worth of work—finished or not—and never speak to you again (and more than likely, never get paid, even though they spent your designated hour).
- Pass on the job.
No one hires freelancers for any length of time without hiring a dud every now and then. They lie, they don’t listen, or they’re just plain incompetent. Or they’re your boss’s nephew. I get that, and it sucks when you’re responsible for them. If they’re giving you more headache than relief, they shouldn’t be masquerading as a freelance creative.
But don’t penalize the rest of us. We’re honest. We have experience. We want to do right by you. Please, do right by us. Respect what we’re there to do—and pay us fairly. We know it looks easy and admittedly, sometimes it is; but every color, every font, every word, every piece of execution—if you’ve hired the right people—has purpose. Thought, trial-and-error, re-trial-and-error has gone into it so that your message is airtight. When you balk at our rates, or tell us how long it “should” or “will” take, you are telling us that we are not worth it.