Clients are often ready to hand over a down payment, but not actually ready to build the site yet.If you find yourself in this situation (and it will happen a lot at the beginning of your career), you’ll need to help your client get ready. And if they don’t hire a copy writer, you’ll need to help them write the content themselves. Give Them Constraints If your client is writing their own content, they may need to be told what to write1 Most people, when told to write some content for a website, are probably going to stare at the blank screen for a while.[pullquote]Most people are not writers by nature[/pullquote]Then, hesitantly, they might begin to pick out letters on their keyboard, one by one. Welcome to the home page of our website.” And then they might write a bunch of stuff that would be better suited to the “About Us” page.People have long made the argument that total creative freedom doesn’t make for good design; constraints do. Go Through The Process With Them Before They Write Even instructions like, “Okay, you need a paragraph of introductory text for the home page.” might be a bit vague for people unfamiliar with writing website copy. Get on Skype, or even meet them in person to take your client through the plan you have for their website (wireframes or other prototypes may come in handy here), and give them examples of what they might say.Also be sure to tell them how much content is intended for each page, page section, or UI element. If they can go nuts on the “About Us” page, make sure they know that, too.And yes, giving them a space to go nuts is probably a good idea. If you’ve got the budget for one more darned SAAS product in your pipeline, you could try out Content Snare .You literally just set up forms that specifically request the content you need.