Why plumbers don’t work for free and neither should we
If we had a pound for every time we’d been asked to write a blog post for a brand or company for free we’d all be rich by now.
I mean – yeah, we’d all love a bit more “exposure” and a few more social media followers but that really doesn’t pay the bills and as one writer said “Would your plumber work for free if you told your mates he was good?” No! And neither should we.
The list of things we’ve been asked to do as interior stylists and writers goes on and on. Videos for commercial brands, blog posts for magazines, online magazines features as they’re “just getting started and don’t have a budget yet!”, some even ask you to take photos of your own home and write a whole feature! For free! How much spare time do they think we have?
How We Can Help
We’re currently in the process of formulating a response to anyone who asks us to work for free that anyone can use. If you have any ideas, thoughts or reactions to this idea please drop us a line. As soon as it goes live we’ll let you know. Make sure you’re on the mailing list to keep notified.
Resources & Information
For more reading and research into great responses have a look at this post by photographer Tony Wu (p.s. his marine life photography is amazing!)
This post on The Guardian’s website is also interesting.
But hang on … hold your horses!
It isn’t all bad news working for free. Chase Jarvis makes some very good points here as does David Hobby on Strobist and didn’t most of us start out working for free when we did work experience? Well, yes we did but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about very experienced interior stylists and writers not being compensated for the experience and hard work they have done to build up to be where they are now.
