Deciding not to take up work

Sep 13, 2005

The following thoughts were triggered by this post. Today in the morning somebody called to get some content written. Since I mostly go to bed at 5 am, when he called I was wafting in the dreamland. He drawled his first sentence: “I stumbled upon this website of yours that says you write this content stuff.”
“Yes I do,” I said. “I write content for websites.”
“How much do you charge?” he asked.
“It depends on the scale of the project because different projects require different time and skill commitments.”
“Well, come to our office and we’ll see if we can give you some work,” he said.
“I’m sorry but I’m not looking for new work, and specially from within the city,” I said.
He put the phone down, a bit taken a back I guess.
You must think what I was up to, and if this is my attitude towards new clients, then how do I conduct my business? Well, believe me; I have this knack for smelling clients who are going to be a sheer wastage of time. 100%, and I mean 100% of the time, whenever a client has called me to his or her office, I have lost money instead of earning it. I’m a web content writer and I mostly, not mostly because sometimes there are calls to, but mostly by emails and chat messengers (and also Skype and GoogleTalk). You want a web page written, send me the specifications and I’ll write it. What’s the purpose of my coming to your office, first spending hours on the road and then waiting for you in the office when at that time I can write content for some other client? As it is I have lots of things to do. Most of my clients realize this.