I think this speaks (good) volumes about you and your approach - without all the details you take the initiative.

As someone currently using 99designs (booo!hiss!) to get a website relaunch off the ground. There are one or two designers who have actually, well, read the brief, who engage and listen to feedback intelligently. I will want to work with them again in different areas, and am happy to see they have got some portfolio beginning.

Its the difference between asking permission and asking forgiveness.

On the opposite end of this, no amount of organizing for the impending content by creating fake but ideal character counts (something I've done on nearly every site I've worked on) has led to those constraints actually being followed by the internal staff or external clients I've worked with. This is easily one of the biggest after-the-fact issues/time consumers I deal with in dev because often times, the content isn't finalized even after launch. At the end of the day my experience has been that the content provider would rather the layout be changed to accomodate their copy rather than them going back in and removing a few words they feel are vital/more appropriate for the messaging. Obviously YMMV, but be sure to calculate the effort vs. your understanding of how the business makes decisions or you may be in for some heartbreak.

With all due respect, neither the designer, nor the client knows what the right copy and the right layout is.

A/B testing does.

The layout will be changed to accomodate the best conversion of customers to cash. Anything else is under-selling your client.

This is in situations where there isn't the time nor the budget for A/B and it's one person's word against another, which is a much more likely scenario for any website plucked at random.

If it's a website that makes money there is time and budget for a/b testing

if it does not make money how is there budget for professional designer and copywriters? Edit It's late, that post is more aggressive than I meant it to be and so, I apologise for snapping at you, I would like to suggest you have a look at @patio11's blog Kalzumeus if you want to be bludgeoned with AB test positivity, and bid you goodnight

But seriously, AB test your designs - in fact I might suggest that designers who offer a design-and-test service would make more cash and more leverage in negotiations than not

now there is an interesting counter to 99designs

I don't know where our disconnect is here, sorry. I'm not saying anything remotely negative about A/B. I'm saying that despite business owners understanding the potential, other things get in the way (other projects, time constraints, etc). For many people, their website isn't their primary means of revenue and their designers' and copywriters' time is best spent on the part of the business where shareholders have proven results of their effectiveness and value-add.

I'd be worried they'd leave the copy/paste approximation in the final website. Maybe that says more about the people I work with though.

What I do in those cases is to color the unchanged text in red or pink. That way anybody can see what needs to be done and help get things moving.