Dear Core Freelancing community,
I’m new to freelancing, and am in need of help navigating a certain situation.
A little background: I recently quit my corporate job of 3.5 years to change tack and move closer to family. I’m currently interning with a company that is a little bit outside of the industry, but much closer to what I want to do professionally. To help pay the bills though, I’m trying to pick up freelance jobs.
I was put in touch with someone who runs a product business (I won’t get too specific as it doesn’t really affect anything.) The products are pretty lame, and nothing I would put in my portfolio or on my CV. It would basically just be relatively easy work to help pay the bills.
So here’s the problem: the individual running the business basically wants me to do free work for him before deciding how much he wants to pay me.
I met him in person expecting to have a relatively quick intro, but he spent 2.5 hours jumping into what they do, their method, etc. He basically started off giving me a sales pitch about the company and then showed me projects they were working on at the moment. At this point some bells in my head went off about having to sign an NDA (?), but he seemed fine just showing me everything they were working on, and I have no thoughts of sharing them with anyone anyway. He asked me for my thoughts on the projects and what could be done to improve them. At that point I already felt a little unsure of what I should say as I didn’t want to act as consultant without already agreeing officially to any specific official freelance relationship. I tried to offer some thoughts without getting too detailed.
I brought up the subject of compensation, and for the first time he got a little cagey (as opposed to Salesman Congenial.) He replied that with the designers he currently works with, he basically has them come up with ideas and then pays them for the ones that they decide to pursue. This to me also doesn’t make any sense, but I didn’t say anything. I proposed we start to work together at a daily rate several days a week, or even one day a week, and he was reluctant to agree. I mentioned briefly my internship, and he ran with that and said that I could do an internship with his company-- which is obviously ridiculous given my background. I regularly travelled to Asia with my corporate job, and would be basically the most senior designer on his team if I end up working with him-- and he wants to start me off as an intern?
He went on a two-week vacation right after I met him and he said that in that time I should go out into the market and do some research and come back at him with ideas. I felt uncomfortable with this not having agreed upon any sort of rate (why would I do market research for him without getting paid?) and so I emailed him saying again I thought it would be best if we could agree on a day rate and go from there. He emailed me back (when he returned from his vacation) saying that the reason he met with me so long before he left was so that I could have stuff for him by the time he got back. He says again he wants to see what I can do before agreeing to any sort of compensation or to an ‘actual role’. I understand that to some degree, but not paying for any work, especially given my level of experience, is just ridiculous to me. Other potential clients I have spoken to were happy to discuss a paid trial project to see if we would be a good fit working together, so I don’t see why this should be any differnet. Not to mention the fact that my very first internship was in his sector of the industry (and it was a true hands-on design internship, no coffee-buying or anything like that), so it’s not like I have zero experience in what he’s doing either.
Can anyone offer any advice as to what I should do? My thoughts at this point are just to say ‘daily rate to start or forget it’ but the other problem is that I could really use the money going forward. I’m not really worried that he wouldn’t pay me going forward, it’s just that I don’t think doing pro bono work in a situation like this is acceptable.