She wanted the four rodeo ads ASAP: horizontal and vertical versions of an ad that just needed to be resized and horizontal and vertical versions of ads I would create from scratch. I worked on the ads that night while waiting for her to approve my offer. By the evening four solid ads were ready for her – if only she would hurry up and approve my offer.
First Round of Ads
Horizontal rodeo ad, resized version. I had to crop a lot of the top off the photo if I wanted to use the entire width.
Vertical rodeo ad, resized version. I used the entire photo, but it took up little of the ad space.
Horizontal version of a “from-scratch” ad. Probably the strongest, most dynamic ad of the four.
Vertical version of a new ad – a solid good-looking ad.
It wasn’t until the next day that my client approved the offer. I sent my ads quickly and waited. Later on in the day, she had two comments: 1. in the horizontal resized version of the rodeo ad, I cropped the rider off the bronco and 2. in the horizontal new version, I needed to totally redo the ad – they didn’t have longhorn bull riding at their rodeo. Fair enough. I made the changes and waited for her response.
Second Round of Ads
Between slightly distorting it and using all the ad space for the photo, I didn’t crop the rider out.
I found a nice panoramic photo of a rider team roping a calf. Another solid ad I thought . . . until my client pointed out that all the heads of the horsemen were cut off. As I looked for different artwork I discovered a problem. Almost all of the horizontal, team roping pictures cropped the photos at the tops of the horses’ ears, thus cropping the riders’ heads off. I eventually found a drone photo of two riders roping a calf. The action wasn’t as dynamic as the ground photos, but at least the riders kept their heads.
Final Rodeo Ad
Meanwhile, communication from the client was sluggish. When it became evident that I wasn’t going to make the deadline, I filed for an extension. My client promptly filed a dispute which prevented me from uploading her final ads. I removed the extension request and she removed the dispute allowing me to deliver the final high resolution ads one day late.
That was my last communication. There was no comment back from her, no “good job” and certainly no tip. I’m not sure what she expected from me – probably an on time delivery. I have learned not to expect a tip but I did expect that someone who was in a hurry would be quicker to communicate. Maybe I need to manage my expectations more.
A Retraction
I’m going to totally let my client off the hook and apologize to my readers for the negative characterization of her.
I just had some excellent SEO work done for me where I was the buyer. Upon completion the Fiverr interface gave me no option to give her a five-star review nor a tip. I don’t know if Fiver is doing away with those features but they sure make it hard to find them if they’re not. I could and did message my seller with kind words which she seemed to appreciate.
This is yet another reminder about leaning into judgement.