When A Potential Client Asks You To Freelance…For Free?
If you’ve been freelancing longer than five minutes, you’ve run into a million of these types of potential clients. They’re the kind who start off so excited to tell you their business idea. They talk about what kind of website they’re absolutely dreaming of – a custom design, CMS, shopping cart, flash banner, 5 tiered login system, etc etc. And all this time you’re getting excited thinking to yourself: This is going to be a great project that’s going to pay my bills for months….right?
That’s until the potential client dashes your dreams with: But there’s no budget……so can you…
…Work for free and when the site makes millions, I’ll give you a commission
DON’T fall for this. I have never met any freelancer who had this turn out well. Unless it’s a product like Pandora that you personally want to see developed and can afford to spend your free time on it, don’t do it. If the potential client really thought their product was going to make money, they would invest the money you’re asking to make them a great site. If they’re unwilling to pay for a website, logo, or whatever; they’re probably not really going to make any money.
…Do it for a trade?
Hey, if this was Apple asking me, I would be all in. If it’s a product you want or a service you need, instead of the money, go for it. But only if you really need or want their product.
…Do it for free or pro-bono?
This is another huge pet-peeve of mine. How are you going to ask someone you’ve never met before to spend over 25+ hours of their business time doing something for free for a business they’ve never heard of? Is that how they make money in their own business? I’m all for pro-bono projects; as a matter of fact I just contacted a non-profit I love to ask them if I can redo their site for free. But notice…I asked them to do the site….they didn’t ask me.
…Do it for free because I’m X Design Agency and I can make your business prosper a.k.a Do you know who I AM mentality?
Out of all these, this one is the worse. It’s one thing for a client, who really doesn’t know all the work involved, to ask us to work for free. But when a design agency asks for it? It’s despicable and highly unprofessional. I could understand if I’d been working with X Design Agency for years, then yeah, I might do a pro bono project to thank them for all their referrals and work. But when I’ve never even spoken to X Design Agency before, to come up to me and ask me to work for free is offensive. And the line “I can make your business prosper!” How conceited can they be? What if my business is already prospering? Even if it wasn’t, how exactly is my business going to prosper and pay its bills when 100% of my time is going to your unpaid project? I don’t think so. We do the work, therefor we should get paid. We’re not running charities are we?
Why does this perception exist in our industry?
Most of these potential clients are startups who never factored in any advertising/marketing budget. They’re hoping and banking that you’re also slow in your own business and will take the bait of possibly having lots of more work from them in the future. Also, the perception of our industry is that apparently it’s not very hard to do the work we do, therefor we shouldn’t be paid for it – or we should work for extremely low hourly rates. It also doesn’t help that because it’s on a computer with little software needed, a bunch of high school kids can give the impression they are also professionals, while asking $50 for a logo and $500 for a full fledged website.
It’s our job to try to stop this mentality. I tried asking my mortgage company if they’d let me stay in my house for free, and maybe someday in the future I would give them lots of money. Guess what? They didn’t bite. A lawyer, doctor, or any other business would laugh these people out of their offices; as a matter of fact these same startups would NEVER dream of asking their lawyer “Will you do this for free?” Whether we send them industry rates, a chart of the extreme process we go through from start to finish, or just a long email; we, as developers and designers, need to get this mentality changed – or be forced out of business.
There’s nothing wrong with turning these businesses down. You’re not greedy or evil for asking for money. You’re a business. You’re business needs to make money; or it’s not a business – it’s a hobby. Of course there are exceptions to all of these above and you’ll have to go with your gut. But I can already assure you, 99.99999% of these requests are trash – and you’ll only lose time and money by dealing with them.
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
I agree 100% Great article Amber! The worst offenders are on Craigslist!
That’s spot on Amber. Whenever I talk to a potential client, the first thing I ask them is how much they’ve allocated for marketing. And if I hear they have zero budget for that, and assume that ‘Google will take care of it’ or ‘it will go viral, don’t worry’, walk away. Far better to work with clients who know what things cost, and have a business plan and funding to match.
Agree with Bob, until people truly value things there will be nothing in their wallets. What comes around goes around and that is the economy I guess that is what that circle chart was made of that shows how money goes round.
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?