I’ve been trying to make a more economical gig, cutting down on free revisions and the like, to minimize time spent. I ask the client to submit all of the relevant information regarding the character design, and then I work to completion based on that info, and deliver it. Sounds simply and easy, right? Nope.
The reason I stopped offering free revisions because it stretches the task out much longer than it is monetarily worth, and they don’t want to compensate extra for them to be done. In the past, I just did the revisions until the client was satisfied, but working this way is totally counter to my success. It drains my time, motivation, etc.
The core issue is that clients will not leave me CLEAR information regarding pose/expression/whatever and then when I delivered the final product, they go on about how they wanted it in that pose they never mentioned, or that hair color that was never mentioned.
Now when they find out that they failed to tell me they wanted it in a frontal pose instead of a 3/4 pose, they expect me to redraw the entire thing for free - as if it didn’t just take me an hour to draw and color the whole thing. I tell them they have to pay for it to be done, but they are outraged. They have no grasp on how long it takes to do a task, it seems. The client seems to think that they are buying my time with that $20.
If I don’t offer free revisions, they are unhappy. If I offer refunds, they take them because they’re unhappy. If I don’t either offer them a refund or free revisions, I’m stuck with a bad review, or an order that never gets completed. If I offer free revisions, I’ll be working on a project way past it’s value. If I offer refunds, I’ll be cancelling orders left and right, surely making no money at all.
This all stems back to them NOT providing me with the info, and then being upset that the illustration didn’t reflect that information at delivery. How am I expected to deal with this incompetence without spending extra time doing work over and over again until the client is happy?
Can anyone help me figure this out?