I have never worked for free. If someone wants me to do work for them then I expect to be paid.
Why wouldn’t I?
Likewise, if I write and submit my work to a website or publication, I expect payment if they want to publish it.
I’m a hardworking writer so I should benefit from my hard work. People should respect what I do and if they want to make money from what I do they need to pay me.
Yet I come across so many writers who think that it’s normal to write and not get paid. They think that writing for free will mean they have clips to show an editor, or that giving their work away for free will get them exposure.
Cheapening yourself this way will not get you the job. If you have no confidence in yourself, neither will anyone else.
If you want to negotiate a price, that’s fine. But at least have a price to start with.
And this belief about the necessity to write for free is getting worse. Nearly every day I see a new writing scam on social media or on freelance writing websites offering writers great exposure (exposure to whom they never say) instead of paying them.
And even worse than that is people charging writers a fee just to send their work to them, whether it’s published or not. I find this the biggest scam of all, especially when it’s an unknown publication, or worse, an ‘online publication’ which, for the uninitiated, means it’s a website or blog.
Just a couple of weeks ago I came across a Facebook post asking for fiction submissions. I clicked through the link to ‘learn more’ and found it was someone who had only recently set up a website, had no content whatsoever, and were wanting gullible writers to send in stories so they could upload them to their website for free. In other words, they would make money from the stories, while the writers continued to write all the content for their site and get nothing.
What a scam.
Yet so many would-be and newbie writers fall for this. And how much ‘exposure’ will they get from an unknown website that no one’s ever heard of?
I’ve challenged some of these websites owners and they always (and I mean ALWAYS) come back with the same excuse as to why they refuse to pay writers. They all say it’s because they have to keep up with the cost of running a website (which can be done for free or as cheap as $100/year) and they have to use their valuable time to read the submissions.
Did you get that? Their time is valuable but the writers’ time isn’t.
My advice to anyone looking to write for free is, don’t cheapen yourself.
No doubt there’ll be those who tell me I’m wrong, but I know that I’m right when I say that writing for free for an unknown publication/website, or for an unknown person who wants to publish an anthology, will only benefit whoever is earning money from your work AND they’ll keep earning money from it for years.
I have never worked for free and I never intend to. And neither should you.
The Monthly Challenge Writing Series:
Book 1 - Quick Cash Freelance Writing
I don’t believe in being a starving writer and neither should you.
That’s why this is the first book in a four-part series of how to write and earn money.
In this first book I take you step-by-step through Seven different ways to earn money fast as a freelance writer and this information comes from my own years of experience and success as a freelancer.
https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html
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