If you're running a business, you'll probably need the services of a freelancer at some point. Overall, it's far cheaper to hire a freelancer than it is to hire an employee, pay for benefits, and provide a place for an employee to work. So freelancers can be a great asset... not to mention that they're generally very good at what they do - after all, they make their living by providing superior services, rather than by engaging in office politics or playing Minesweeper when you're not looking.

So this means you should treat your freelancer with respect and make it as easy as possible for them to provide services for you, right? Of course not! What fun would that be? It's far more entertaining to be a complete pain in the ass, so you can not only delay your project, but make your freelancer wish she'd never met you!

Now, I don't expect you to know how to be a nightmare client right away, so I'm graciously giving you these pointers to help you make the least of your freelance experience. Enjoy!

1) Keep your project description as vague as possible. It's common knowledge that all freelancers are highly trained psychics, so we know exactly what you want, even when you don't. So don't hesitate to ask for a price on "an ebook" - we'll know whether you mean 50 or 500 pages.

2) Complain about the price after you hire your freelancer. Nothing makes us want to do a great job for you more than having our work devalued. We're really just trying to take advantage of you anyway... we're kind of like vampires, in that we don't really need money for rent, heat, food, and electricity to power the computers we use to provide our services. So we really don't mind lowering our fee for you.

BONUS: Tell us you could have gotten a cheaper price overseas. We really love that.

3) Schedule your freelancer's project due date during your vacation. We often burn the midnight oil to make sure that a project gets done on time, but what really makes the freelancing business worth it is waiting for two weeks to hear back from you after we've pulled all-nighters. The money is fine and all, but prolonged nervous anticipation is really what keeps us going.

4) Suddenly decide what you want after your freelancer has turned in the project. See, we really hate having to go back and change one or two items. We'd really rather scrap the whole thing and start over because you just decided you want your website content to be in first person, or you'd like to see how your blog looks with the sidebars on the left instead of the right. And since we're all trained psychics, we should have realized that's what you'd want anyway.

5) Don't give us all your revision requests at once. It's much more entertaining if you spread them out, so we have to do four or five revisions instead of just one. We don't have any other clients but you, so we've got all the time in the world to fiddle with your project.

And finally, the single most effective thing you can do to be a nightmare client for your freelancer:

6) Drop off the planet without paying part of your freelancer's fee. What your people call "stealing", our people call "accepting donations". So don't worry, you're not really stealing our time, effort, and hard work - we're just graciously donating it to your cause.

See how easy it is? By following these simple steps, you can purposelessly screw up your freelancer's week (or month, or...) without ever breaking a sweat. And since you can't hear your freelancer cursing your name to the heavens, you can act completely baffled when she doesn't answer your emails requesting a second project.