I don’t work for free. On the rare occasion, if I believe in the product or the person, I might write a review for free. Or I might help a non-profit with checking for spelling and grammatical errors on their website. Every now and then, I don’t mind doing a bit of unpaid work if I believe in the cause.
My high school art teacher once told me, “Julie, never work for free. Never, ever do unpaid work.” When I asked her why, she said that eventually, people would either take advantage of my work or take my contributions for granted. It’s one of the most important pieces of advice I ever received from a grown-up. It’s funny because I think that advice like that works best when it’s given to adolescents. But try to tell an adult who is set in his ways that working for free is stupid and he’ll just tell you to bugger off.
People have hope. People think that working for free will earn them promotions or chances at being recruited or who knows. People have hope and then they develop expectations. And then they blame others when their expectations aren’t realized. Thing is, it’s a game of odds. You have to weigh the odds against the time that you put in for free. And if you don’t or can’t know the odds, then you can’t have expectations. You have to love working for free more than you love your time away from work if you’re going to try your luck at being recognized or getting promoted or finding an angel investor. A lot of the time, we’re just not passionate about the work we’re doing for free.
I enjoy writing but I know I won’t enjoy it if someone asks me to write for them while they profit off my writing. It’s simple. If something I write makes money, I should be compensated. Recently, I was approached by a large and popular entity who wanted me to write weekly for their site. I was interested and asked for more details.
The following is a dramatization of correspondence that occured between me and them. It’s a “dramatization” as in ‘most of it is greatly exagerated’ but some of it is also true. Like the fact that it was unpaid work.
Them: “Hi Julie! I’m writing to you from XYZ company. I was reading your blog, liked your writing and wanted to offer you a weekly deal to write articles for us. We have 25 million unique visitors per month! Interested?”
Me: “Sure. What do you want me to write about and what’s your rate of pay?”
Them: “We want you to write about health-related topics. Pay? Ha! No, we won’t pay you. But we’ll let you promote your blog. And your articles might appear on the front page. And, we get 25 million unique visitors per month! That’s great exposure for you!”
Me: “Dear Mr. Dude, I researched your company. You’re part of the network (*cough* everydayhealth inc *cough*) that also operates jillianmichaels.com, mayoclinic.com and a bunch of really popular websites and brands. You’ve applied to become publicly traded, too. Oh, and you made about 70 million dollars in 2008. Dude, you’re a FOR PROFIT company. You’re not a charity and even if you were, I’d have to believe in your cause in order to want to donate some of my time in helping you out.
What you’re asking me to do is to donate my time and talent to you, for free, and in exchange, my articles may or may not get an audience. And one day, I may or may not get recruited by some other dude that just happened to find me on your website and wanted me to write for them too. Oh right, but that’s the new scam… chances are that the other dude would also want me to write for free. So, what we have now is a world where a bunch of “freelance” writers are working for free for sites like yours, hoping to get recruited and make it big one day. Viva la Internets, the new American Dream!? Hardly – it’s too saturated now and it’s full of companies like yours that know that people will do the work for free so they can be associated to your brand. It’s a great idea, if you’re a business. It’s a pretty shitty deal if you’re a writer though.
Meanwhile, the millions will keep rolling in for your company. And a bunch of gullible people will continue to write for you because.. who knows, maybe they’re attention whores. What matters more to them is that they’ll get a few more visitors a month on their own sites in exchange for less free time. Thing is, dude, I don’t work for free. I especially don’t work for free for people who can afford to pay me for my time and for the content that I will produce. Share the wealth, bitches. Maybe you Americans call this kind of thinking a form of “socialism” but I call it “principle”.
Any of you got any stories about for profit companies asking you to do volunteer work for them? Did you do it or did you refuse the work?
Speaking of freebies, you still have time to enter my draw for the book of the month, “Your Money or Your Life”. Deadline is April 29th, 2010!
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4 Comments
Never found myself in a situation like you, but I believe you made the right decision here. I’d definitely do the same. Sometimes I get the feeling that in today’s world everyone just wants to use everybody else out…that’s sad, right? It’s a good thing that you’re not selling yourself cheap *thumbs up for that*
Well, let’s just say that a lot of people don’t seem to feel too guilty about using others to get what they want. But that’s just how it is and we’re crazy if we think that we can avoid this part of human nature.. it just really comes down to living independently and being able to recognize when a deal is only beneficial to one party.
Valuable things have value…
selling the product of your work, creativity, imagination forces that product to be something good enough that someone would pay to own it.
I don’t want to add to that because your comment is strong. Thanks for posting it, Franck.