Guides

We built a scoring engine that reads freelance job posts for a living. These are the patterns it looks for, written out plainly — so they are useful whether or not you ever run a post through it.

• The red flags in a freelance job post, and what each one costs you

  Fourteen patterns that reliably predict an unprofitable project — what each one looks like in the wild, why it costs what it costs, and the question that settles it before you write a proposal.

• How to price a freelance project without guessing

  Estimate effort, then calculate money — never the other way round. The floor, the two premiums that are not the same thing, and the one division that makes any two projects comparable.

• 12 questions to ask a client before you take the project

  The questions that turn what a post leaves out into information — grouped by the risk each removes, with what a good and a bad answer actually sound like. How they answer tells you more than what they answer.

• How to prevent scope creep

  It is not caused by difficult clients, which is why "learn to say no" does not work. Four structural defences that close the definition gap while it is still cheap — and what to do when creep has already started.

• When to turn down freelance work

  An arithmetic problem, not a confidence problem. What a bad project really costs, where to put the threshold, which marginal jobs are worth renegotiating first, and how to decline in a way clients remember well.

• Fixed price vs hourly: who carries the risk

  Not a matter of temperament. If the work turns out twice as large, one of you pays for the second half — and the contract decides which. Including the padding mistake that quietly loses you jobs.

More guides are on the way. If there is something you want covered, tell us.