Freelancing or 'Free'lancing

Helloooooooo!

How you doin’?

Did you notice a change? You might not if reading this in your inbox, but I have renamed this newsletter to ‘To 10X’.

Because we will be aspiring 10X, achieving 10X, and celebrating 10X!

This week was such a roller coaster of emotions for me. Happy, sad, very sad, and happy again.

Trying to keep myself grounded and not get overwhelmed by either feeling.

I wrote and shared 3 sample pieces (paid).

Client 1

Said “Hi Nikita, unfortunately, we won't be able to go ahead and work with you at the moment. The primary reason is we felt there could have been better context building in the blog.”

They paid the next day. Perfect.

Gave reasons, didn’t hold on to the payment, and communicated effectively.

Client 2

I had shared the article on Aug 29th. After a few weeks, hey gave feedback, which I addressed. They even asked for a discounted price. 

I got this message on 24th September. Should I start calling myself the queen of patience?

I declined the discounts because the amount was already low (₹2.5) for the time and effort the blog took.

But I wanted to write for them and kept my patience. Reminder, it has been over a month with no payment.

Now came the client feedback and it was a slap on my face.

The content was flagged as 70% AI, she said she was not happy with the tone (which I agree was my fault) and wanted a complete rewrite.

What?

I patiently declined it. It was just not worth the effort I’d have to put in, for such a long delay and so low price.

Another reminder, I had increased my prices to ₹4pw by mid-September.

So after multiple follow-ups with the editor (who I now know is the Founder) and the HR person who contacted me for the original payment of ₹5030, I sent a mail to them (date Oct 7).

I had removed all hope of getting paid by the constant ghosting and no replies but I shot this final shot with this email.

I got a reply the next day saying please share your payment details.

I had attached an invoice with the details already in the mail but why would they see, right? I have shared the details, with no cha-ching in my bank account yet (Oct 11th).

Client 3.

I really want to work with them. Here’s the timeline of the conversation:

• Sept 18th: I Cold Pitched them.

• Sept 19th: The told me they’ll give a pilot assignment to do.

• Sept 23rd: Followed up and was assigned the pilot.

• Sept 26th: Submitted the pilot.

• Sept 30th: Says will get back to you on this today, and asks for contact details later in the day which I share.

• Oct 1st. I follow up.

• Oct 3rd: “Hey Nikita, I will ping you today on WhatsApp. Sorry, it's been very very hectic.”

• Oct 7th: I asked for his contact details so I could ping him first. But no reply.

You see the roller coaster of emotions here. I want to ask for payment for the sample I did and forget about them. If they want they can get back, but given I really want to work with them, I am holding on to it as long as I can.

Let’s test my patience some more shall we?

Then there was this inbound lead who pinged me on WhatsApp on Sept 16th. Asked for my email to join Slack on Sept 17th and forgot that I existed.

I followed up a couple of times but no response. Gave up. This week got a sudden Slack Invite and no communication.

2 days later he says he’ll assign some work (still cricket sounds as of today).

I’m happy that this counts as a new client but at what cost?

There’s another client who promised ₹3 per word / ₹4800 per article of around 1600 words. 12 blogs per month. That amounted to over 50k.

This made me think I might cross the ₹100k mark.

First Month they assigned only 6. Then this month zero. I asked for a clarification and they said, “There are some strategic changes on the content strategy at the client end. And we had not been getting the request as expected. 

Please plan your months accordingly, we will let you know once the client decides to scale.”

Now, basically this is also gone (not entirely but yeah 50% of what I expected).

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And to top it all off, my boyfriend forgot my birthday… so yeah had a weird week!

But the Good News is!

To distract myself from all these emotions, I created a Free Resources edition for you all. It is a web-only version (hence not in your inbox) but you can check it out here!

I shared two resources in the last newsletter, and I’ve added three more. I’m working on more drafts as I learn.

Thank you so much for all the referrals and for helping me reach 60 subscribers! Feel free to share the resource link with friends and colleagues who might find inspiration.

P.S. I realize just sharing proposals/calendars isn’t enough unless I also share the thought process behind them. Would you like me to walk you through it in a 30-minute quick session? We can get to know each other better, too!

What do you think? Would you be interested in something like that? Even if one of you says yes, I’ll do it 🙂

Anyway, wishing you a happy Dussehra and a joyful festival season! Sending all the positive vibes your way (and mine!).

See you next Friday!

Love,
Nikita