Let’s talk about free work

Clients are changing the ways they try to make creatives work for free.

We’ve all done it. Desperate, naive, or insecure — we’ve all worked for free. On occasion it’s a charitable endeavour; a positive experience. Others it’s a mistake. But at some point in our careers, all of us have waived our fees for some reason.

It’s almost a rite of passage. Take on free work and come out the other side with greater respect for one’s own worth. But, with the gig economy continuing to make a mockery of professional practice, the demand for free or low-budget work is becoming overwhelming. With so many young artists entering the industry, desperate for work and experience, learning how to say no has never been more important. In a job market that has many clambering to meet unrealistic expectations, platforms like Fiverr, Reedsy, Upwork, et al. are keen to exploit that desperation to cater to their cheap clients.

As such, many experienced creatives — who lived through the age of “exposure” — have used the reach social media grants to better prepare young artists for the challenges of the gig economy. But it’s not easy to keep up with the myriad techniques people instigate in order to exploit creative professionals.