3 ms·

The bulk of my clients pay me hourly, on an as needed basis. I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do jus

The bulk of my clients pay me hourly, on an as needed basis. I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. I have mixed feelings about this.. on one hand--billable hours. On the other hand--it is not satisfying to do things with absolutely no business value.

spinlock 12y ago
You should hire a VA to do the BS work they give you.
KMag 12y ago
If your client is a medium to large sized company, it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year. A place I once worked one year had a big budget surplus. They bought a Winnebago, affectionately named the Waltabago after Walt, the guy who ran the team. The next year, Walt bought a Sunfire V1280 with his leftover budget. Walt was a good manager and generally a good guy. It's just that the nature of his business had unpredictable ups and downs, so he was incentivized to make justifiable but wasteful purchases in order to avoid over-spending in peak cost years.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Did you get to borrow the Winnebago? We call this need to spend the budget thing 'slippage' in the UK. Once we had a little bit of slippage, about £1k, so we bought some Sony Mavica floppy disk cameras when they were new and exotic. We just lent them out to staff to learn how to take digital pictures. That lead to digital editing, storyboards &c and quite a lot of upskill. Much better powerpoints. Just a thought...
- reboog711 12y ago
  > it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year. That could very well be a consideration.
Havoc 12y ago
>I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. Have you tried approaching them with a proposal for actual work? If they are willing to spend money on BS work then you might as well propose something solid. Either way you're billing, either way you're working...but you might just deliver some extra value in the process.
- reboog711 12y ago
  Sometimes that works out. Sometimes they ask if I have any ideas or recommendations. Other times not so much.

spinlock 12y ago

You should hire a VA to do the BS work they give you.

KMag 12y ago

If your client is a medium to large sized company, it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year. A place I once worked one year had a big budget surplus. They bought a Winnebago, affectionately named the Waltabago after Walt, the guy who ran the team. The next year, Walt bought a Sunfire V1280 with his leftover budget. Walt was a good manager and generally a good guy. It's just that the nature of his business had unpredictable ups and downs, so he was incentivized to make justifiable but wasteful purchases in order to avoid over-spending in peak cost years.

keithpeter 12y ago
Did you get to borrow the Winnebago? We call this need to spend the budget thing 'slippage' in the UK. Once we had a little bit of slippage, about £1k, so we bought some Sony Mavica floppy disk cameras when they were new and exotic. We just lent them out to staff to learn how to take digital pictures. That lead to digital editing, storyboards &c and quite a lot of upskill. Much better powerpoints. Just a thought...
reboog711 12y ago
> it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year. That could very well be a consideration.

Havoc 12y ago

>I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike. Have you tried approaching them with a proposal for actual work? If they are willing to spend money on BS work then you might as well propose something solid. Either way you're billing, either way you're working...but you might just deliver some extra value in the process.

reboog711 12y ago
Sometimes that works out. Sometimes they ask if I have any ideas or recommendations. Other times not so much.