Whatever kind of web professional you are, one of the most challenging and frustrating aspects of your work can be dealing with difficult clients. Even with endless amounts of patience and a willingness to readily compromise, clients who don’t understand, don’t pay, or have unreasonable requests and expectations can really grind you down.

Following on from our recent Facebook discussion, we’ve put together a list of some of the most interesting, useful and even controversial views on dealing with clients, improving relationships, and knowing when (and how) to walk away. Let us know your thoughts (and horror stories!) in the comments!

Dealing with clients who refuse to pay

‘…at some point in your freelance career, you will encounter a client who does not respect the work you do. The most unfortunate part of this unfortunate truth is that it will all too often present itself in the form of a client who refuses to pay for your services once all of the work has been completed.’

A dozen tricks used by clients to manipulate freelancers

‘“Freelancers don’t do the same kind of quality work that a large corporation does and they don’t have as many overheads either, so I can cut down their salary base by 20% and still get the type of work that I want.”’

How to fire a client

‘Firing a client might sound like committing professional suicide, and in harsh economic times, walking away from paid work might seem naive, but it can actually be a liberating experience, and allow you to move forward stronger than before. Walking away is actually the professional thing to do.’

Clients from hell

‘Like clients from hell who always try to delay payments, there are also freelancers from the abyss who always miss the deadline. Worse, they don’t even explain to you their reasons, they just tell you that they will submit the project later.’

How to explain to clients that they are wrong

‘One of the most common problems, especially among freelancers, is an inability to speak the client’s language. Being able to speak in a way that relates to the client’s business sense is crucial at all stages of managing a Web project, but never more so than when challenging a client’s decision.’

Freelancers: It’s not you, it’s them

‘Many freelancers deal with less-than-ideal client interactions that spiral out of control and leave both parties frustrated, stressed and jaded. More often than not, the difficult situation could have be prevented if the freelancer had taken the necessary steps to weed out the good prospects from the bad.’

Impossible conversions: Avoiding bad clients the cheap way

‘Today, I want to talk about our favorite subject as designers: clients. Oh, clients. You can’t live with them, you can’t slap them. The primary thing to remember when dealing with clients is this: you can never – I repeat, *never* – make a bad client into a great client.’

Freelancers: 10 things clients don’t like hearing

‘Woe be the client who meets freelancers who charge, heftily, for every little change, and this is not even a rare occurrence in the physical business world. You ask them for a quotation on the project, they list up their services and terms, makes you think it’s good and that the deal is done. Well, that’s only the start of your nightmare.’

How to deal with nightmare clients

‘From minor fall outs to projects that didn’t quite go as planned, there are hundreds of reasons for formerly solid client relationships to turn sour.’

6 warning signs of a potentially bad client

‘I was recently racking my brain trying to recall the moment that I knew I was no longer a design newbie. Then in a flash of realization, it came to me: it was when I trusted my gut enough to know when to turn away a potential client for the first time.’

6 ways to make your nightmare client less nightmarish

‘There’s a famous quote, “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” When dealing with clients you might consider clueless, you can be frustrated by their lack of knowledge or you can appreciate the fact that if your clients knew more, you might not have nearly as much work.’

Turning all clients into dream clients (or common client difficulties)

‘The question then is, how do we take our most difficult clients and turn them into dream clients? The answer may be easier than you realize.’

7 common client personality types

‘Designers and developers form two parts of the design trinity: the client completes it. You can have the technology to build something and the design to make it magnificent, but if someone doesn’t fund the project, it usually falls flat.’

Nightmare clients: What to do

‘When you are approached by a potential client that makes you feel uncomfortable to work with, it is best to be honest. A good way of putting it is that you are not the designer with the skills set that they are looking for.’

How freelancers can mantain and grow their client relationships

‘…relationship building should be at the heart of any freelancers’ marketing strategy. You want to find the right clients – and then continue to do business with them over the long-term. By keeping your current clients happy, you’ll also benefit from their referrals, and you’ll find it easier to land new clients by leveraging their testimonials and recommendations.’

Tell-tale signs of a potentially bad client and how to deal with them

‘While we keep ourselves from being abused by making use of contracts there are times that the client’s horrendous attitude really kills our will to work consequently slowly making us feel inferior about ourselves. One thing that we designers can do is spot which is the good client (or the tolerable one)and avoid the potentially dangerous ones.’

5 ways to tame difficult and problematic clients

‘Well, a client is difficult only if and when you fail to live up to his or her expectations. At times, beginning the project by expecting the client to be difficult, will lead to that becoming true. It is therefore, important to understand the degree of expectation a client has from a project or a product and lo and behold, you will find that even the trickiest clients are actually easy to deal with.’

There’s no such thing as a bad client

‘Everyone has a client horror story. Plenty of websites and blog articles feature creative professionals venting their spleen.’

7 essential red flags to watch out for in new clients

‘Some clients are great, while others leave us tearing our hair our and wondering why we felt the need to subject ourselves to this line of work. While some problems with clients can be put down to poor communication by both parties, many times we can identify clients which are going to be difficult before we even start working with them.’