Several Reasons To Avoid Writing Free Samples

Tweet

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like a crow that’s obsessed with picking up anything shiny when it comes to the free samples that people ask us content writers to provide to get the work that pays our bills. It’s hard to discern between the people who will rip you off and take the sample and never return any of your subsequent emails, but I’ve found there are certain criteria that can be helpful when trying to separate the honest clients who just want to get a feel for your writing and the shysters who are out to take you for a ride.

First of all you need to be sure that you’ve got adequate contact information. It used to be an e-mail address was good enough so that you could start a business relationship but now you need to get some further point of contact like a telephone number, a snail mail address or even some kind of social media to look at like a Twitter or a Facebook page. The reasons for needing this much contact information are simple. It’s important that you can rest assured that you are dealing with a reputable company and on the Internet that means you’ll need to have several different points of contact.

Even then you want to be extremely careful when people start asking for free samples of your writing and one of the best ways to get around it is to have a comprehensive list of your past work on a website. Several times I’ve been asked to write samples and pointed perspective clients to my website where I’ve stored information away that highlights my experience and provides URLs and samples to my previous work.

One of the rules that I like to use is the fact that if you’ve been around for a while in the writing game and have a portfolio of your work there’s really no reason to provide anything for free. If you’re a proven writer with a background you should get paid for what you do even if you make a promise to rewrite according to your client’s specifications for free so you can get on the same page.

There are several other things that you want to look out for when you’re writing for a living on the Internet and they include the promises that go along with free samples. Usually I found that companies who promise you a lot of work without being clear about payment methods can be the ones that you need to watch out for in the end. Sometimes the people who promise you the world aren’t necessarily dishonest but they’ve just oversold the amount of work that they think they’ll be able to get.

Finally, I just like to remember that there’s never a contract with any freelance writing that I do on the Internet so there’s never any reason not to pay me for my time and effort because clients can let me go just as quickly as they hire me if they don’t find my writing is up to the standards they set. For me there’s no reason to give out any kind of free samples.

Related Articles

• Blogosphere Trends + Choosing and Using Images
• How to Sell More From Your Blog (Blog Critique: Steven Aitchison)
• 20 Free WordPress Themes from 2010
• How Cornerstone Content Gets You Traffic and Subscribers
• Working With Distractions

Watching Out For Shoddy Business Practices

Anyone that works on the Internet will be able to tell you that while there are virtually limitless business possibilities available for writers and bloggers, there are also a lot of people who do shoddy business on the web and are out to take your work away or pay you nothing for it.

Last year I noticed there were more than a few of these snake oil salesmen out there and even though I’ve learned over the years a few things to avoid, sometimes your only recourse is to cut your losses and start looking for another client when one of these people cross your path.

Hired Guns Without Any Bullets

Although it’s not always the case and you should not take this piece of advice as gospel, it’s quite often true when a company or individual you are working for hires some kind of a consultant or editor to oversee your work, it’s a red flag. Just this past year I lost a lucrative contract in Toronto to somebody whose resume reads like he might be a programmer or a comic book aficionado or some combination of the two, but I didn’t see him as qualified to take over the social media and blogging he did. That happened as soon as I’d got the blogs running for the firm in a professional way. Watch out for these hired guns. They don’t want qualified writers hanging around but they like to learn from you.

That brings me to another point concerning social media and the less than qualified hackers who come along and often convince business owners they can get them the traffic and Google rankings they are looking for. Social media is the latest thing in Internet advertising if only because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy but it certainly attracts a fair share of people who convince naïve business owners that it’s worth a lot of their hard-earned money. It is, in a way, but unfortunately it has also become the domain of a bunch of scammers who charge exorbitant amounts of money for maintenance on Facebook or Twitter that’s really a lot more affordable when they use a professional writer.

Sample Sorrows

I’d like to be able to sit on the mountaintop and tell anyone who’s ever written a sample blog or article and then never got paid for it, ‘I told you so’ but I’ve fallen prey to the same creeps who ask for these samples and then take off with your work. Here’s a great way to get around those prospects who ask for 200 to 400 words on a subject to ‘test’ your skills:

• Make sure you have some samples on your website. Understandably, that could be hard since you’re more than likely ghostwriting and the client wants to adopt your work as their own, but there are usually smaller clients who don’t mind you using your work or at least a link to it. Then anyone who wants a sample can be directed to your website.
• If you’re just starting out and don’t have a good resume yet, the best thing you can do is get the right contact information from the client to check their credibility. Ask for a telephone number and give them a call over Skype or the other VOIP system you use to make sure they have nothing to hide and look for something more than just an email address for contact information.

The Internet is like any other business in that you’ll meet all kinds. While an overwhelming majority of your clients will be upstanding people who pay on time, you do need to be on guard for others who use questionable practices.

Related Articles

• Business Plan, Business Planning and Goal Setting
• 5 Most Popular Myths About Making Money Online
• Knowing Your Target Market for Effective Blogging For Business
• Truths about Making Money Online
• My Interview with Six Figure Affiliate Blogging