Now, my response was friendly and clear as well as establishing the fact that I value myself correctly. It had a little humor, but was also quite straight to the point - what you are offering is not enough, period. This has resulted in a series of projects with this client and will total 250k words by the end, all at my going rate with a small discount that I offered after the first 50,000 words. If I had just said “No” to the client, that would have been the end of it. If I had accepted that rate, I would be absolutely miserable working on this while having to send away higher paying clients. Moreover, the client is exceptionally happy with the work and the overall experience. Now, this situation is just one of many similar cases where the initial contact with the client was what others would call negative. Some clients do not order with me because my price is higher than their budget - that’s ok. They go away disappointed because they cannot work with me - some even come back weeks or months later having saved up the required amount! So there you have it, dealing with “bad buyers” is not so bad usually. How you handle them can dramatically change things for both of you. Try it out next time and see how it goes. If you disagree or can take nothing else from this whole post, just go read the Valuing Yourself Properly section again. Whoa! This is an interesting post, albeit a long one. I had to take breaks in between. You’ve hit a bunch of good points here. :ok_hand:t4: Nope! I don’t have a problem saying “NO”. Of course, I don’t blatantly so “no”. I use nicer words like unfortunately. “Unfortunately, I can’t do XYZ” project. I always cringe when people say this. I never bought into this tagline! I’d go beyond that by making myself “THE CEO” by taking control of my ship. Managers are underrated and don’t get paid well. I’m curious how did the person react to this line? 🔺