Should You Work For Free?

Hey friends,

I interviewed writer extraordinaire Nicolas Cole on my Deep Dive podcast the other day. And we got talking about ‘the return-on-investment (ROI) on free work’.

See, most people make the mistake of charging too early when they’re breaking into a new industry (eg as a copywriter or video editor).

That builds a barrier: ‘you have to pay $X to work with me’. So they end up competing with thousands of other freelancers on Upwork or Fiverr, and 99% of potential clients never see their work.

The smarter alternative is to work for free – but be strategic about it.

Draw up a list of dream collaborators.

Then send out sample blogs, video edits, or pieces of graphic design you’ve made especially for them, for free. Post it on social media as well, saying ‘check out this cool thing I made for X’.

If an influential person sees work you did for them and really likes it, I almost guarantee they’ll offer to pay for more.

If a video editor turned one of my full-length videos into an amazing YouTube Short for free, I’d throw money at them to produce more.

But most people don’t realise this.

So they send generic emails saying ‘hi, I’d like to work with you, my rate is X’. And these emails get ignored, because I just don’t have the time to get into a long email discussion and look through someone’s portfolio.

Now, a lot of people say ‘never, ever work for free, people will take advantage.’ And I 100% agree that if a sketchy person asks you to ‘write a few blog posts for free so I can see how good you are’, you should say ‘no’.

But if you’re strategic about doing free work (and good at what you do), I promise that the money & collaborations will start flooding in.

Have a great week!

Ali xx

生词记录

extraordinaire 非凡的

return-on-investment (ROI) 投资回报率

charge 充电，收费，控制，主管，负责人

break into 闯入

industry 工业，行业

copywriter 撰稿人，文案

barrier 屏障，障碍

end up 结果

Upwork or Fiverr 这是两个自由职业的工作平台

collaborator 合作人

generic 泛型，通用，一般性

portfolio 投资组合，作品集

take advantage 利用，占便宜

sketchy 心机，粗略，概略

flood 洪水，洪灾，淹没