HACKER Q&A
📣 aetherspawn

My clients always lose interest towards end of projects


Hi,

I am having a problem where my clients are losing interest towards the end of projects. When the agreed contract is delivered, usually very early in the amount of time agreed, I usually ask for feedback on the deliverable before sending them the invoice.

The work is not garbage - it's high quality work, fully commented, and I'm good at my job.

In 2 instances now, my client has taken a long time relative to the contract period to send back feedback (i.e. up to 2 weeks on a 3 week contract), and in two cases now the client has simply become either non-responsive or argues long-running of the contract, mainly to do with their delay in providing feedback.

I was wondering perhaps instead of sending the deliverable for feedback, I should be sending them an invoice as soon as the project is "100% complete" and allowing them to argue any touch-up points rather than leading with the assumption that the client may want touch-ups made.

Does anyone in a contracting or freelancing background have any feedback about how to deal with this issue?


  👤 eschutte2 Accepted Answer ✓
Don't ask for feedback. Just send the invoice. Try to avoid being done very early. Maybe they'd have less trouble staying interested if they paid in advance.

👤 clintonb
The money, referrals, and future contracts are your feedback. What sort of feedback are you seeking?

> The work is not garbage - it's high quality work, fully commented, and I'm good at my job.

Depending on who hired you, no one cares that your code is commented. Keep doing it, but note that it's probably not a huge deal to the decision makers.


👤 daleholborow
You should be getting paid at incremental milestones, NOT big-bang 100% at the end.