I Accidentally Wrote An Article For $5
Strap in, because I have quite the story to share.
Let me tell you about the time I agreed to write a “cheap sample” article for a client looking to hire me for continued work.
Based on the tone of this blog, I’m sure you can already tell where this is going. Please take this as a cautionary tale of knowing your worth!
Where the pain began
To paint the picture — it was August 2020, and I had just started to apply to jobs on Upwork (a freelance resource I still use and love today, btw).
I came across a job for a client looking for ongoing medical blog articles. This is exactly what I was looking for! I sent off my pitch and waited to hear back.
Excitingly, I heard back almost immediately:
This ask alone should have gotten my spidey senses tingling.
But, at the time, I was new to writing and had never been asked to do a test article for a potential client before.
I had heard the cautionary tales of never doing work for free, but rationalized my thinking because he was agreeing to a small fee. $5 isn’t technically free, so this has to be legit, right?
The moment I made the mistake
My response to his request is hard for me to read now.
I SHARE THIS WITH YOU AS A CAUTIONARY TALE. DO NOT DO WHAT I DID.
OMG CRINGE. What was I thinking? The “sample” I had offered him was a full-length article, offered with a quick turnaround time. All for $5.
Talk about the bargain of a century for our buddy David here. Reading this message back now literally made my blood pressure spike.
Unsurprisingly, this client was more than happy to take this deal. He sent over the job offer right away, which I accepted.
Notice the sneaky use of the word “ongoing” here. I was under the impression that after this sample, I was going to be offered long-term work at my going rate. To nobody’s surprise, of course, that is not what happened.
False hope & the reckoning
I submitted the sample the next day. I wanted to get it out of the way so we could start working on better content together, and so I could get paid my going rate.
The client loved my sample, which felt amazing. He also followed up, offering even more regular work that was explained in his job description. When I saw this message, I was so excited.
“I was right to take the risk”, I thought. This was going to turn into my biggest client project to date, so the $5 sample was worth it!
I came in guns a blazing, sure that I had won him over with my quality work (and, to my credit, I do appreciate how direct and forthcoming with my rates I was, even back then).
But, can you guess how this request was received????
If you guessed with crickets and ghosting, you would be correct.
I never heard back from this client again — even after reaching out to him multiple times to follow up.
Lessons learned (the hard way)
Moral of the story — if someone is asking you to do something for less than your going rate, don’t accept it. I know, especially for those in the early stages of your writing career, it is tempting to take these jobs for the experience. But I promise, they are never worth it.
P.S. The ending of this story is a lie — I did actually hear from this client one last time. When he closed the Upwork job on me, months later. The scar of this decision still sits live on my Upwork profile today — a reminder to myself to NEVER agree to work well below my worth ever again.
