A man walks into a restaurant. A waiter takes him to his seat and gives him a menu of the dinner choices to look over and leaves him to make his decision. After a few minutes, the waiter comes back and asks the man if he has made his choice. The man shakes his head no, and says to the waiter “That won’t be necessary. Bring me one of everything on the menu, and I will pay you for the dish that I like the best, if I like any of them at all”. Of course this wouldn’t happen in the world of fine dining. Unfortunately, many independent professionals are asked for free sample services. This is called working on spec, and it’s a major no-no.
In the beginning of my freelance design career, I was asked to create few logo ideas to compete for a job. I really wanted this client, so I spent a few days going through the process and sent the files to the potential client. A couple days later I received a call asking for a few more. Irked, and after already spending much of my time doing unpaid work, I told them (nicely of course) that if they wanted more of my work they needed to sign a contract with me and pay for my services. I was told that if I didn’t do more for them that they didn’t want to be my client. Reluctantly, and even though I really needed this particular job, I walked away.
A couple of months later, while browsing their website I ran across a familiar graphic. Low and behold, there was one of the logos I had created for them. Later, I found out that they had taken my files to another designer and had them “redraw” the logo and change a few colors – for free of course. By not protecting my work I left it wide open to be stolen, and wasted my time and resources on an unpaid project. This was not the way I wanted to start my business, but it taught me a valuable lesson: though it might be tempting to do so, never work for free.
No matter what your business is, you should never be asked to provide a free service, and you should never do any work without a contract in hand. When you decided to become independent, you gave yourself the choice of who to work with, and who to turn down.
To learn more about the dangers of working on spec: https://www.no-spec.com/
Wow, that was a rude “customer” stealing your work like that. Yes, I guess that the beginning phase of your business is the best time to learn that lesson, but hopefully people can avoid learning it the hard way now.
Unfortunately, it happens to a lot of people in my field. Its a tricky situation, and I hope that others can learn from my example!
I have had similiar experiences working with a book creation company. After I hadn’t been paid in several months, I told the company I couldn’t work with them. They handed off my cover comps and book spread comps to another designer. I never got paid, and the other designer had a great layout courtesy of me. Yes the book (s) are in print. Never again. It turns out they treated all of their freelance designers this way.
I was eventually paid, but after almost a year, and after filing court procedures.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience.
Wiser and stronger,
Cheers,
C.
Great Info! Thanks for the post!
I made similar mistakes when I was starting out in marketing years ago. I learned the hard way that once you’ve done work for free or for extremely cheap – maybe just to get a client ‘in the door’ so to speak, you can almost never get that client to then pay your actual price for that service. I guess the moral is that there is never a good reason to do work for less than you feel you are worth. These days I’ll only do pro bono for causes I personally believe in, and I’m much better at sensing the red flags in prospective clients.
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That’s terrible that they’d steal your work like that!