You can learn from my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad freelance editing project.

I make freelance proofreading and editing mistakes so you don’t have to.

This article was crossposted at the author’s blog.

Soon after I started freelance editing on Upwork, I had a bad experience. More accurately, one of my first clients had a bad experience.

The worst thing was, it was almost entirely my fault.

At the root of the problem was a failure to communicate, spurred on by my well-intentioned effort to deliver a product as quickly as possible. It was made worse by my inexperience as a freelancer.

I learned a lot. I hope you do too — without making the same mistakes.

TL;DR — “What I learned” in the final section. All of the knowledge, none of the drama.

I “solved” a problem without communicating

The client requested familiarity with Google Docs.

I was familiar.

I knew that there was a way to allow others to see changes you made. I hadn’t used it before, but I could figure it out.

This happens in freelancing. Sometimes you commit to accomplishing something you (pretty much) know how to do. So you figure it out.

My client sent the link. I sent my email address for access. (Upwork. Thank you for the reminder…