Freelancing can be discouraging when people act weird

Short note from this morning.

Freelancing can be discouraging. Not because every lead should convert. Most will not. The discouraging part is when a normal business conversation turns weird for no good reason.

What happened

I reached out to a prospect about Google presence for a WooCommerce store moving off Shopify. He asked a normal question:

... and what is your price for that?

I answered with a clear offer:

• €450 for initial setup: review, keyword and competitor research, Google Ads structure, ad copy, conversion tracking, and measurement
• no required long-term contract
• optional ongoing management later at roughly €150–€300/month if he wanted it
• ad spend paid separately to Google

His reply:

Keep dreaming of riches—goodbye.

That is already a strange way to decline a price. He asked for the number. I gave the number. If it was too high, “too expensive for us” or “we only have €X” would have been enough.

I still tried to keep it professional. I said I work across a range of budgets, use AI and automation to keep costs reasonable, and asked what budget he had in mind so I could say what was realistic inside it.

His last message:

This is of no interest to me. Please send no further messages.

Fine. Contact closed. No more messages.

Why this lands weird

Asking for a price and then mocking the person who answered is not negotiation. It is not feedback. It is just rude.

There are clean ways to end this:

• “Thanks — that is outside our budget.”
• “We were thinking closer to €X. What could you do for that?”
• “Not moving forward. Good luck.”

Any of those are adult. “Keep dreaming of riches” is not.

What I am taking from it

Lead gen will keep producing uneven conversations. Some people are serious. Some are browsing. Some are having a bad day and dump it into the inbox.

The work is still to quote clearly, stay professional, and leave when someone asks you to leave. One rude reply does not redefine pricing. It does redefine whether that person was a real buyer.

Freelancing gets easier when more people remember the basic rule: if you ask for a price, treat the answer like a business reply, not a punchline.

Personal contact details from the thread are redacted here on purpose. The point is the pattern, not the person.