Dear Baby Creatives,
When you’re just starting out, you might be tempted to take any job that comes at you, even if it’s for little to no pay, just to get some work under your belt. You might be asked to do a favor for friend’s mother’s dentist. You might be asked to take a “writing test” for a job (and might be surprised at the sheer volume of copy requested). You might be asked to do a free job now for someone who’ll give you paying work in the future (probably…). You might receive an offer to work For Exposure by someone who promises, cross their heart, to drop your name whenever they display your work.
And it might be pretty tempting. You’re new, you don’t have a lot of work under your belt or in your portfolio, and something’s better than nothing, right? Especially that last one — your entire goal right now is to get your name out there, and that’s basically what Exposure is, right? And besides, you’re getting something. Your friend’s mother’s dentist wants you to work for free. These other folks, though, they want to give you something. They want to give you Exposure.
In a previous post, I outlined ways to fill your portfolio if you don’t have any professional work yet. And I was careful to differentiate between spec work (making fake ads and such for a brand that isn’t actually your client, while making it clear that they’re fake) and working on spec (doing creative work for a company without actually knowing if they’ll pay you or not). Working For Exposure is both more exploitive and more brazen than working on spec, because there isn’t any question of whether the client will pay you or not. You’ll know from the beginning that they won’t pay you. Because Exposure isn’t a form of currency.
Exposure doesn’t pay bills. You can’t use Exposure to pay rent, buy food, or put gas in your car. Exposure has no cash value. “Exposure” is someone’s way of disguising the fact that they’re taking something from you and giving you nothing.
(Also, those “writing tests” are so frequently a scam — a way for a company to get work out of you and then neither hire nor pay you. A little bit of copy you can knock out in half an hour? Probably legit. A lot of work with no guarantee of payment? If it smells funny, walk away.)
The point is, your work has value.
Let me say that again:
YOUR WORK HAS VALUE.
See the all-caps there? That’s because this is important. No matter how new at this you are, no matter how uncertain you might be about your skills as a baby creative, your work has value. You’ve put your actual time into it, and your creativity (which isn’t nothing), and your effort, and that is worthy of remuneration.
A lot of remuneration? Not necessarily. You’re not going to be commanding high-dollar rates right out of the gate. You’re unproven, and agencies know that early on, they’re going to have to do some work of their own to get good work out of you. But you should be able to feel you aren’t being exploited. Broke-ass? Potentially — thus is the life of the junior creative. But not exploited.
And for that matter, remuneration doesn’t necessarily have to come in a cash form, as long as it’s something valuable to you. If the client can’t give you money but can hook you up with a set of tires when you really need them? That might not be a bad trade. Doing work for a personal trainer, and happen to be in need of personal training? You might be able to work something out. Your client is a nonprofit you personally support, and the warm, fuzzy feeling (and maybe a tax write-off) you get from helping them out is all the thanks you need? If the warm fuzzy is worth the effort you put into creating the work, that sounds like a reasonable trade.
But having done the work is not compensation for doing the work. Putting the work in your portfolio is not compensation Having other people look at it and know you did it isn’t compensation. It’s just the end product of doing the work. You wouldn’t knit a sweater or bake a cake or build a car for a stranger and then accept “Thanks! I’ll tell people you made it” as payment. So why would you accept Exposure for your creative work?
It can be scary to turn down an opportunity. And a lot of creatives aren’t in a financial position to turn down paying work. But this isn’t even turning down paying work — this is turning down non-paying work. It’s saying, “My work isn’t worth nothing, and I’m not doing work for someone who thinks my work is worth nothing.”
Seriously, if you need advice or suggestions about how to get work into your portfolio without doing it for Exposure, get in touch with me — all my contact info is right here. I’ll do whatever I can to get you hooked up. Because your work has value, and also your work has value, and in case I haven’t made myself perfectly clear: Your work has value.
Best of luck with everything, let me know if I can do anything to help, and also, your work has value.
XOXO,
Caperton
Former baby copywriter, now wildly successful in the industry