[ThomPete]

Every freelancer starts out not having a lot of experience being freelancers and so they make the typical mistake of thinking about their clients as their employer rather than as an investment in a relationship that needs to be developed over time.

Many get too hung up in the value of the services they provide when what they are really selling is trust.

The people that manage to make good money on freelancing aren't always the best at what they do, but they are good at managing expectations and making the client feel like they made the right hire.

[weaksauce]

Managing expectations is so important and you really should learn it early on in your career. If you pad your expectation and then deliver it early you delight. On time and you are still ahead of most freelancers/employees.

If you see problems ahead with the timeline, communicate and let them plan around your delays otherwise you are surprising them in the worst way.

[ThomPete]

Exactly. I found that most clients care way less about "world class" quality than they care about delivering on time since their job is rarely to deliver quality but rather simply to deliver.