When You Should Work for Free – And When You Shouldn’t

As the economy has gotten worse, I’ve noticed an upswing in the number of people asking me to work for free.  I don’t think these organizations quite understand that I make my living writing and speaking, so when I do these things for no pay, I don’t eat.  They rationalize that they are paying me in exposure – meaning that more people will experience my work because of them, and therefore more people will click on my website and buy my books.  From where I’m sitting, though, in most cases the exposure isn’t worth the time.

 

 

I thought it might be helpful to you to provide a distinction between when I feel you should work for free – and when you shouldn’t. 

 

 

When You Should: If you’re trying to get experience in a new field so that you have something to put on your resume, then yes, you might have to take an internship or volunteer position for no pay.  Similarly, if you need to prove yourself in an extremely competitive field in which you’ve never worked professionally (like writing), you may need to, temporarily, put yourself out there free of charge.  You can also justify working for free if it allows you to support a cause that’s personally important to you.  Make sure, though, that your unpaid position doesn’t compromise your efforts to pay your bills.  The last thing any of us need is more debt. 

 

 

When You Shouldn’t:  If you’ve already established yourself in a field and have a reputation of doing good work for pay, then you shouldn’t get too caught up in this whole “pay for exposure” thing.  Not only does it diminish your credibility and undermine your professional expertise to accept these offers, but it hurts the people that make an often precarious living doing these tasks.  After all, if an organization can get a service for free, why pay for it? 

 

 

Unpaid work can lead to paid work, but only sometimes.  Evaluate your situation carefully before expending your work product and intellectual property on an organization that doesn’t value it enough to pay for it. 

Comments

[Erika with Qvisory]

This is a necessary topic to talk about! I agree that working for free does work to your advantage at times but needs to be carefully considered before agreeing to. Sometimes it makes sense (like when you need the experience or you just want to support the cause) but at other times it can be a career set-back.

[Alexandra Levit]

Thanks, Erika. I'd be interested in any examples you may have heard about how it can be a career setback.

[Lindsey Pollak]

Alex - Thank you for this excellent, fabulous, much-needed advice. No one asks lawyers, accountants, mechanics or doctors to provide their expertise for free (except for worthy pro bono causes, of course). Creative professionals need to stick to our guns and be paid for our hard work, too.

[Alexandra Levit]

L - thanks for your support on this. Together, we help each other stick to our guns. I mean, I'd love to help everyone with a worthy cause, but the fact is I have to earn money and so I need to pick a few to support pro bono and charge everyone else a reasonable fee.

[Sharon]

Thanks for posting this topic, Alexandra. I'm forwarding it to my husband who just can't seem to say no to all of these wannabe directors who ask him to work for free or for ridiculously low wages. I say if you can't get anything out of it for yourself (exposure, experience, contacts) then don't do it. I think it all comes down to how confident you are in your talents. If you know you're good, why would you diminish yourself by giving away your talents for free? If people know they can get you for free or cheap they're not going to all of the sudden start offering you a higher wage out of the goodness of their hearts on their next project. I think that's where it hurts your career because then you establish yourself as someone who will work for free or cheap and then you throw away your power to negotiate a higher wage. I've seen this happen to my husband and I know people have called him to work on their project because they have heard from someone else that he does great work for next to nothing. I just wish he would let me be his manager!!! :(

[Alexandra Levit]

Sharon, thanks for commenting! I've learned the hard way that people won't offer you more (or any) money out of the goodness of their hearts.

Your husband's job sounds interesting. What does he do?

[Dan Hallak]

Alexandra, great post. At what point did you stop offering free services? I am trying to figure out when to discontinue pro bono and start charging.

[Alexandra Levit]

Hi Dan, well, I haven't ENTIRELY stopped offering services for free. I select one cause each year that I provide pro bono services to, and every other nonprofit that I feel is worthwhile receives a huge discount. But I stopped writing and speaking for free regularly when I had earned enough visibility in the space that people were volunteering to pay me.

[Nancy Christie]

Dear Alexandra--Re "Similarly, if you need to prove yourself in an extremely competitive field in which you’ve never worked professionally (like writing), you may need to, temporarily, put yourself out there free of charge."--my only concern is that it can be darn near impossible to get a client to start paying you if the relationship starts out as a free one. (And word can get around that you work for free.)
It seems like this advice is most offered to writers and those in other creative fields. Our industry (I'm a writer) is tough enough without telling us we need to prove ourselves by working for free.
Also, college grads may never have worked professionally in the field that they were educated for, but when they are hired, they get paid--maybe less than an experienced employee but something.
My feeling is, if you have learned enough about the trade (like writing) to feel confident soliciting work, you should do it for money.

[Alexandra Levit]

@Nancy, I agree with your points, and I'm not really suggesting that people work for companies for free. If a company can afford to pay you, than they should. But with writing in particular, in order to gain experience you may need to do some pro bono work for, as an example, a start-up blog or a nonprofit.