Lies Told To Me As A Freelancer

• Collaboration: a fancy term that means you do all the work and get paid nothing. 
• Assistant: someone who is looking to offload the work while reaping the benefits. 
• Seeking student: just like with internships, someone is trying to pay you nothing for your time.
• Micro-budget: a polite way of saying they are too cheap to pay you what your time is worth. 
• Amenities and credit: substituting actual pay with pennies on the dollar for sandwiches and a brief line of credit for the product.
• Internship: see assistant.
• Team-up: you do all the work while he or she “brainstorms.”
• We have some celebrities or “heavy hitters” signed on: become so impressed that you are willing to do this for free. 
• Improve your portfolio: do some free work so you can let other people know that you do free work.
• Really simple: incredibly complicated and I don’t want to pay you what your time is worth.
• The first of many projects: I want you to work for free for a very long time.
• Will be shopping this project to major outlets: we want you to work for the promise of future exposure.
• Food provided: why pay when you can barter?
• Equipment provided: we don’t really need you.
• Valuable experience: see assistant and internship.
• Make great contacts: we want you to be wowed by the opportunity. 
• Huge opportunity: therefore, we don’t want to pay you. 
• Award-winning: aren’t you impressed?
• ANYTHING IN ALL CAPS: we don’t understand yelling on the internet and we don’t want to pay you, either.
• On spec: work for us now and we will come up with a reason not to pay you later.
• In desperate need of: a budget, a plan, and people willing to work for free.
• I am producing this myself: which means I don’t want to pay for anything.
• We are a small company: I sit in my home office and look for people willing to work for free.
• Deferred: never, ever, going to be paid.
• Exposure: a mention somewhere in small print and no return on investment of any kind.

Dan O’Brien
Editor, Empirical

Author: of The End of the World Playlist, Bitten, Cerulean Dreams, and The Journey
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“Be the change you want to see in this world.” -Mahatma Ghandi

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