'Choosing beggars' and the best way to say 'no'
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@Braden-Hallett I hear you. I make light of it, but if anyone I didn’t know personally asked for something free I would probably have the same dilemma as you. My extended family and friends have finally learned that I’m worth something at least and have stopped asking for free stuff. They pay me now, I give them huge discounts tho,
[edit: sorry about the language. I forget sometimes that people here don’t really know me and visa versa and may be offended. I shall try to keep my shenanigans PG from now on. I just thought it was funny because I’m a Guardians fan
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@Braden-Hallett I might respond with:
Thank you for the opportunity to work on your content. Please understand that the time I spend on working for a free project actually costs me money in the form of time that I could have used to work on a paid project. Those paid projects are the ones that sustain and support my livelihood.
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I had someone contact me for free work recently. It was just 'something small, no big deal for someone like me to draw..'
I said I was swamped and couldn't take on new projects at this time. I told them to certainly ask me again in three months.
They won't. -
That sucks and unfortunately is very common. I've had that a good few times ranging from, I just need a simple sketch or it doesn't have to be great! I had someone ask me to 'rough out' their graphic novel as a non-paid trial to see if they wanted to hire me to do the graphic novel, I ran so fast!
My polite response would be I do this for a living and don't have capacity to take on free work at the moment as my paid contracts are my priority.
My non polite answer is a lot shorter and aggressive lol but I very rarely go there tho, I try to stay as polite as possible.
My main advice is don't get sucked in to a big email exhange, it can suck up so much valuable time. So when you get a sniff of it being dodgy just bail. Some big warning signs I've found are when they avoid discussing money at the start and just jump into project specifics and it's very close to their heart. I always throw out the question 'and have you a budget and timeframe in mind?' in the very first email. Saves a lot of time.
Hope that helps.
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This is the way @Braden-Hallett.
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This reminds me of a Picasso story. A woman asked him to draw a portrait of her. He did with one simply line. She asked why he charged so much when all he did was draw a line, he replied, “Madam, it took me all my life”
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@danielerossi lol!
i’m with the lady though. If I paid you for a portrait, I better see a portrait and not some single line bs
