@ Write – I’ve learned to spend a little more time investment figuring out what clients want and limiting revisions tightly. It’s kind of like playing a balance game – what do you want to spend now in time to save it later, versus saving now to spend later. Tricky!

@ Phil – Agreed on much of what you say. I also agree that sometimes, we take on less-desirable projects for various reasons, and those are the ones that we have to be more careful about. Then again, bigger projects do have their share of headaches too. Can we say “endless project”?

My very first freelance project caused me to suffer from a great deal of scope creep. It was a 400 page re-write prjoect with an extremely tight deadline. I worked for hours on end, and eventually realized the amount of work wasn’t worth what I’d agreed to do the job for.

From that point on I’ve been extremely clear about my terms in my proposals, and do my best to have a rock-solid agreement between mysself and the client before I do any writing.

I bet most writer’s have encountered scope creep possibly without even knowing it.
Great Post, thanks alot.
N.

I’m so glad that I freelance basically for myself now. I prefer running my own ship. I’m more choosy these days, as to what I take on, hence I don’t often find myself spending unplanned on hours on a project; however, on my own work, I must admit, I gladly spend many hours.

We are a dedicated lot aren’t we?

This can happen with one-time projects and long-term clients. Usually, I’ll do a lot to keep long-term clients. But I had one that expected an increasing amount of research on articles with no subsequent increase in pay, so I had to cut them loose after seven years.

The one-time client, a survey project long before there was online surveying taught me to limit what would be done under orginal agreements before additional charges. In this case, more surveys were returned than expected, but there were no terms for tabulating additional ones (took 15 minutes to tabulate the very detailed surveys).

Newsletter work taught the importance of promising a single set of revisions before needing to institue additional charges. Otherwise clients will change their changes.

Sometimes expenses (for example, I have a daughter with serious back issues) makes one want to agree to almost any terms, even changing ones, to get the work. But without protecting yourself against “scope creep” in the agreement/contract, you could be costing yourself much more in terms of time lost than that contract/agreement is worth.