Sneaky clients at best are somewhat silly to obnoxious, and at worst may want you to break the law. I’ve never had a network ask me to do anything questionable, but stand alone clients have been another story. Here are some things that a sneaky client might try.

Give you a demotion for low stats early on. First off, ask if you can have access to stats, then it’s easy to know where stats stand. Also, unless it was in your contract, you shouldn’t get a pay cut, especially not if it’s a new blog. It takes a long time to build stats, some clients aren’t smart enough to know this. I know one blogger who took a pay cut once on a blog because stats were low, but she already had a good long-term working relationship with her client, and there were other circumstances. In most cases if you do your job, you need to get paid.

Tell you to buy photos for posts. If it wasen’t agreed upon in the contract, do not pay for premium photos. There are places to find free images, and if it’s something like celebrity photos, that often do need to be bought, the client should pay, not you.

Tell you to take photos or text from another blog without permission and post it at their blog. Um, yeah. Don’t ever do this. Furthermore if a client asks you to do this run; run fast. You don’t want your name and rep as a blogger associated with them.

The twist on the above sneaky act is when clients add questionable stuff to your post after the fact. If your name is on the post, you could get in trouble for stolen content.

Wants you to post each day without fail at 3pm. You agree. Then they change it to 5am, then 10pm. You’re not a traffic guinea pig. If your client is being obnoxious with timing, don’t put up with it. There are plenty of clients who won’t do this

Asks you to wait to agree on a pay amount until they see how you do. Don’t work for free – period. You could start your own blog “just to see how you’ll do” and make more money.

Changes your work and then tries to not pay you. I used to have this ghostwriting gig for a client. Until I know a client, I save posts in Word, which is a good thing, because this client was going in and changing my posts. Cutting words, cutting photos; and I had no clue. Then comes payday, and I get an email that says, “Due to you not following our contract, no pay” – I got pretty snippy and actually I did get paid, but I was just lucky. Of course I quit. Having gone through that, I’d suggest you pay attention to new clients until you know them.

What sneaky client acts have you run into?