When to Stop Doing Pro Bono Writing Work
If you're a writer working yourself to the bone for free or somehow got caught in the whirlwind of working for likes/clicks/downloads/exposure, you're definitely not alone. But there's a point where getting the clip or niche experience without getting paid becomes more harmful than helpful. For this week's livestream, we're talking about when to start and stop, how many clips you need to get paid, when you can call yourself a niche expert, and when pro bono work isn't a fit.
________
Hello. Welcome. And Hey Marie, welcome in. We are talking about pro bono work. I have notes. Everybody get excited about the notes, but also also get excited that both dogs are pretty much on camera this time. I can't believe it. This hasn't happened in awhile. They're finally both on camera. So we're starting with a pup date because everybody's finally on camera. I know we can all celebrate together now. It's very
Cool. Easy, good job
Bud. A little while today. So sometimes he gets a little TT when he's wild. So we have to tell him to take the treat and be all
Nice about it. Easy.
All right. We can celebrate cause it's oh, maybe we can just get like lower it just a tad. There we go. Now we're pretty much everybody's on camera. I can't believe it. You guys finally did it. Congratulations to my dogs. All right. And everybody watching this. All right, so let's go. So we're going to talk about pro bono work and I have some notes. So the first thing we want to talk about is like, what is pro bono, but pro bono work and why are we really doing it? So our pro bono work is going to be the work we're doing for free. So pro bono just means, you know, just like a lawyer is pro bono. The pro bono pro bono work that you do is going to be free. You just call it that because it sounds better than free work.
So sometimes what happens with freelance writers is we ended up doing pro bono work because we want to make sure that we get a clip in a certain niche or someone approaches us. And we're really trying to get a case study or we're really trying to get, oh my gosh, Charlotte, Charlotte almost took the whole operation down easy there. Tiger. And now she's sitting under the camera, so let's all. What are you doing? What are you doing over there? Yeah. Looking at the camera up there. Doesn't count. You have to look at the camera over here. All right. So pro bono work is oh, there we go. She hit it on the way out is free work. So we're doing it to get a clip. We're doing it to get a certain type of writing. Let's say we need a case study or a white paper sample, or we need like some sort of, we, we just want to get our very first blog post or something like that.
We're doing it to get that, or we're switching niches. And we just haven't been able to get a paid sample yet. So let's say I'm you know, a health writer and I want to get a travel clip. Let's just say I've been pitching ideas or I've been sending Lys. Where are you going? Travel pork. Come on, tribal pork. Why don't you go to your whole, have the whole good job. Good. No, you have to go back to your humble. So if I'm going to get travel work, let's say I've been pitching things, sending LORs, and it's just not working. I'm just not getting anything in. And man, it just becomes this thing where you just get really frustrated and you need the clip. And you're like, you know what? I really want to move into this niche. I just need a clip.
And so then what ends up happening is you end up doing one, you know, one or two or however many free samples to make sure that you get a clip. So when we're doing our pro bono work, we have to go over a couple of things. So when we're talking about pro bono work, everybody starts in a different place. So this is, I'm going to put Marie's thing up here. Yeah. So when we get to the response part, I'm going to pop, Marie's coming up here. I think it's really good one. So everybody's journey as a freelance writer is different. So for me, I have never done unpaid work. Never if I have, I don't remember it. And it was something a long time ago, but I don't, I don't ever remember doing an unpaid project. I was always paid for my work.
So for me, I never started pro bono work, but I have friends and I know a lot of freelance writers who have started out doing pro bono and free work just to get one clip just to get one case study or, or just to move into a different niche or to get something that shows that they're a writer that's not on medium. That's not something they self posted on LinkedIn, you know, and those can count as clips. Right. But it's something different when you do it for a client. Like when you say, oh yeah, I wrote this clip for a client. Here it is. And then you can say, okay, cool. Like have something to show to someone else. So I have never done pro bono or free work, but I think that there's a different place for everybody. If I was switching niches and I just couldn't get something, let's just say, like, I couldn't get anyone to, to like LA like jump on the idea of me switching to like, writing about a question first, or like, I'm just saying something random that I probably wouldn't write in.
That would be very like off-base from my current niches. So let's say I wanted to write about a question. And I just couldn't get anybody on board. Even a trade magazine to give me a clip or to take my idea. Then I might consider saying like, Hey, I'm happy to do this work pro bono and seeing how that works out. So when you're thinking about pro bono work, you have to figure out if it's the right fit for you. For me, it just never was the right fit. I I, I think we've talked about this on here, but I started out on Upwork, which used to be oDesk. Like I started out on it when it used to be oDesk and Elance which I don't recommend. I know a lot of people do well on those platforms. But for me, I just don't think it's a good idea.
Plus I got scammed on those platforms. So like, that's a big no-no for me, I'm not going back and I never will. But I started out on platforms where people were paying for work. So even if it was $25 for 1500 words, like I still got paid for that work, even though it's a very small amount of money. Sometimes what ends up happening though, is you just don't know how to break in. And maybe one of your friends owns a company and they're like, Hey, we need a few blog posts. And you're like, great. And she's like, but we just don't have the money. And you're like, I'll do it from pro bono just to get the clips. Sometimes what ends up happening is you have someone who gets in your inbox and they're like, Hey, we we need a writer you're in our area, but we can't pay, can you do it for pro bono?
Or sometimes they say, can you do it for exposure? I would just be careful how much you take. So when you're starting your pro bono work journey, you need to be careful about how much you take on. So if you decide that pro bono work fits for you, the next step is figuring out how many clips, like how many clips count. And I think the answer is most of the time, very surprising, a lot of people and writers and coaching students that I've talked to think that you need a ton of clips. You need to have this big portfolio. You need to have all these different references, all these different clients, all those different things just to get paid. And it's not true. You need one clip one. If I went and got one equestrian clip, I could use that one, a question, clip to go get other work.
If someone said like, Hey, do you have any other samples on a question and stuff? I'd be like, Hey, right now, this is my only sample, but here are a bunch of other samples that are like how to posts or other things that are similar to the type of content they want. I can use that one clip over and over again until I get another one, but one clip means I can get paid for my work. So if you can demonstrate expertise, if you can demonstrate that you've written in the niche that you've written for a client, that's all you need. Don't make the mistake of thinking you need like 10 clips or don't make the mistake of thinking that you need a huge portfolio. The cool thing here is that, like, there are writers who get their very first clip in the New York times, Washington post Conde, Nast, traveler, travel and leisure.
All of the biggest like new Yorker, all the biggest publications across the planet. There are freelance writers who get their very first clip there and it's paid. So you don't have to work for free for long periods of time. Okay. They have zero portfolio. They roll up in there with a good idea that fits the magazine that fits the tone and style. Boom. They get a paid assignment. And one of the ways to kind of do this, let's say that you have something that you've shopped around to the big magazines, and it's not really working. Let's say you just go to trade magazines, trade magazines are a lot a lot easier to get clips because you can send them different types of things. So you can send them an LOI pitch hybrid which I have a an example in my template bundle.
So like, if you go to now, I have my cool little things I need to edit, but if you go to Mandy ellis.com/bundle amongst the marketing templates and LOAs and pitch templates and all that stuff you can go in there and see the LOI hybrid LOI pitch hybrid model that I send to trade magazines. So you could send something to a trade magazine, include a few headlines, a few ideas and they often have internal editorial calendars that you can't find or know about. And then they say, Hey, we loved your headlines. Would you be able to write this piece? It's 400 or 500 bucks, or it's 25 cents a word or 30 cents a word. And then you have a paid clip. So there's a lot of other ways besides doing pro bono work, which is why you only need one clip.
You only need one. And the same thing, if you were switching types of writing, if you just need one blog post, or one case study, I floated on one case study for a long time. And that is something where it's like, I've just, that's all I had. Like I couldn't have, I couldn't find other clients who wanted a case study at that time. This was like a few years ago. I just that's it. They were like, have you done a case study yet? Like, yes, I've done this one. And case studies are usually kind of longer pieces of content than just a lot of blog posts. So sometimes like one is plenty. So even when you're switching types of writing, you only need one to prove you've done it. You've done it for a client. And most of the time, if you're doing a case study, you should get paid for that.
So number one, figure out we should, oh, we have our numbers. So number one, hold on. Let's do this. Number one, figure out if pro bono work is a fit for you, do you need to do the clip for free? Do you does that as something that's real? Do you really need to do that? There are lots of freelance writers who haven't ever worked for free. There are times when it makes sense to work for free. And there's times when you're just like, you know what? I need the clip. I'll do it, whatever. So that's number one, hold on. I have to cough.
All right. So that's number one is like, you have to figure out whether or not pro bono work is a fit for you and what your goals are and what's going on. Cool. All right. Number two. Number two is that we need to figure out how many clips we need. And it's one is always one. You need one blog, post, one case study one landing page one webpage, one one of something, one, or you just need one person to agree to give you some kind of assignment that you will do. And you only need one clip and people sweat over the amount of their portfolio. They sweat over the fact that they need all these extra things. But the secret is like, you don't, you don't you don't need this big portfolio. And I didn't, a lot of times I talked to people who say, well, yeah, like you have like 200 clips.
Yeah. Over like 10 years. I mean, like that's, that's not even all my clips. That's just the ones that I haven't cleaned out in my portfolio. There's at least probably half of those that need to go. That's just like, I just haven't cleaned them out. But the difference is like, when you've been doing this for a while, you collect clips over time, it's the same thing. As anything, like you collect things over time, like even stamps, if you're a stamp collector, you collect them over time. And the difference is like, I started with nothing to, I had zero clips and I ended up getting a few clips and then I replaced those clips. And then I replaced those flips. And I did that over and over again. Now I have the portfolio I have, but just because your portfolio doesn't look like someone, else's just because you don't have any clips.
Every writer starts with zero clips. It's kind of like saying, it's kind of like going into the bookstore and being like, wow, this author has 10 books and I have none. Okay. But it doesn't mean those 10 books are selling as well as one book might write, one book could, could set an author up for the rest of their life and they never write another book. Right. And sometimes people are just, that's, they're prolific writers. They write a lot and they write a ton of books or they write a ton of stuff and they have a lot of things in their portfolio. And that's not really a comparison piece. There's a lot of people who can ride a New York times clip for like 20 years. Okay. Let's say their very first clip they ever got was a New York times clip. And it was just like in their niche, it made sense all this stuff.
They can ride that like forever. That's a very, very big difference. Right? It's not like you can just build a giant portfolio immediately. So don't worry about that one clip, one clip to prove you've done it. Even if it's pro bono, even if you do it for free, even if you end up doing it for a friend one, just one, and then you can charge like the next time someone says, you said, yes, I normally charge X amount of dollars for said project. Alright. And then the next thing that we're going to talk about is the niche expert part. So the next thing we're gonna talk about is I'm not doing very well with clicking today. So bear with me in my clicking. Ah, there we go. So next thing we're gonna talk about is being a niche expert. When could you call yourself a niche expert and how does that work with getting paid and pro bono work.
So there's a bunch of different things here. I think being a niche expert depends on your experience, your knowledge base. If you have clips in that niche, if you have clients in that niche and if you have past work history in that. So that means that if you're coming from, let's say, you're coming from a marketing background, let's say that you worked at a marketing company and you did a lot of healthcare projects. Well, that makes you a neat niche expert just because you're not a freelance writer yet, just because you're just like, oh, well now I'm starting freelance writing. I have no clips. It's like, yeah, but you've done all this work. You don't just erase, you know, the last five to 10 years of your career because you're starting as a freelance writer. It's very different when you're taking your background, like you're taking a background in marketing or you're taking a background and content strategy or content marketing or all these other things than being like, I'm going to be an arborist, like that's way different than what we're doing, marketing content, all those things go together.
So if you've done projects that are in your niche at your full-time job, that counts as having niche expertise and experience. If you're someone who's rolling up in there where you don't have a ton of clips and you have more personal experience, you have to lay on that for a little bit before you kind of start talking to people and you learn a few things. So let me give you an example of that. So when I started with food and travel, that was based on my own experiences. So I was lucky enough to travel as a kid with my family. And I, you know, have always been interested in food. I've always been interested in like where it comes from, how it's made, how people come up with really interesting recipes, how restaurants work. Like I've always been really interested in the fundamentals of the food service and restaurant business.
So for me, that became from just reading a lot of things and being familiar with them and that I use in the beginning to get some clips, I was like, yep, I'm familiar with these types of topics I'm familiar with this, or I would just pitch ideas. So when you're starting out, you have to kind of think about the niche experience as like you're building it over time, or it's a situation where like, you've built a big knowledge base and you can kind of use that to your advantage, to pitch ideas to list that Nisha something you're experienced in and use it to kind of help either your editors or your clients get some more insight into who their audience is. So when you're starting out, you don't have to know everything. Like I try to impress upon people that like, I don't know everything.
I don't know everything. And I'm a recovering. No, at all. That's a big problem that I have dealt with is being a know it all. And that's something that I like still working on. And I think that a lot of people think you have to have like 25 billion clips to say, you're a niche expert. You don't, you need at least a handful of mixed type of samples. So let's just say five, but they're about different things in that niche. So when you're thinking about building niche expertise in pro bono work, think about getting different types of clips. Don't just write five different blog posts and say niche expert. I think the thing about being a niche expert is that you have a blog post, maybe a case study and maybe a white paper, that's all you need. You're like, I've got it. I've, I've talked to people in this industry or you start writing for magazines in your niche and they start ha you start having interviews with people in that niche who give you a lot more information.
You start talking to people and they kind of open up about what's kind of going on. You learn about that, but over time, you're going to learn a lot more. And I still don't know everything about my niches. I will never know everything about them because there's so much complexity in depth. There's so many different types of things that go into being a niche expert. So even if someone like, for example, even if I write in real estate and prop tech I write in a very specific part of real estate in a very specific part of PropTech. It means that there's plenty of parts of real estate that I never talk about. I'm not an expert on those, but I'm a niche expert in real estate because I have all these different clips from different things. So when you're thinking about pro bono work, think about getting clips that are in different types of writing.
Hold on my notes that are in different types of writing and span, different types of topics. You don't need a lot. You need like five. And maybe if you end up getting a blog post project, maybe like 10, because like, let's say half of them, or most of them are just blog posts. I think trying to get different types of clips really helps, but niche expertise can come from your past experience, your knowledge bank, the things you're interested in, in, you know, about your PA your past full-time work a lot of different things. But the most important thing here is that you have to be open to learning more. A lot of times people roll in and they think they have to be the expert. And they don't a lot of times when you're doing these things, you're talking to other people, right?
A lot of times when you're writing articles or when you're working for a client, your client knows their, their customer very well. You can ask them a lot of questions about that. Customer learn more about them. When you're doing an assignment, like I learned a lot about the restaurant industry from interviewing like thousands of restaurant owners and not even just restaurant owners, like people in all different facets of the restaurant industry and that takes time. So I think if you're going to market yourself as knowing a niche, I think it's better to think about learning and knowing and figuring it out rather than worrying about the expert part as well. So that's the third part. All right. The last thing is we want to go over and if you have questions, Hey, Getty. Welcome in. So last thing we're going to go over is whether or not like when pro bono work, isn't a fit. So we're going to talk about that. Hello? You're the cutest and I love you. Maybe we'll do a pub date, Lou, quick puppet. Alright, Charlotte, can you go to your Hobbit hole? You have to go to your house. The whole good girl.
Good job. Good girl. Good job. Here you go, buddy. Good job. All right, everybody good. One more. Cause we're adorable
Today. Oh, Charlotte. You're like just out of the camera.
Okay. There we go. We've got you on camera. Good job. All right, you go buddy. Good boy. Good
Job. You guys great. We did our great pup date today. I can't believe, but we're almost all on camera today. Almost all on camera. You did you look like a tiny penguin? All right. Back to our thing here. So if this has been helpful so far, make sure to give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about a high earning profitable, sustainable freelance writing business, make sure to subscribe below. We go live every Friday at noon. So last thing we're going to talk about here is when it's not a fit. So let me put on my little number. So it's easier to scan now that I have these, because that's what smart people do. The last thing is that pro bono work was never a fit for me when I started out, I always thought of it as exchanging things.
And when I think about exchanging things, they're getting something that's really valuable. They're getting a piece of content that is useful, time and time again, they're getting something, that's building their brand. They're getting something that could get them a ton of sales. They're getting something hello. That is really providing. Why, why do you do this to me? They're doing like a lot of things with that content that are really, really complex. They're you having a problem? Okay. And for me, that means I should get paid for that. Like, even if it's a one-time fee, Hey, we'll give you $25 for a 1500 word blog posts. At least I'm exchanging like what they're getting out of it and something I'm getting out of it. So for me, pro bono work never really seemed like a fit. And I also started at a different place when I started my career.
I was on oDesk, which is now up well, oDesk and Elance, which is now Upwork. And it was easier like at that time I think, you know, it's a lot different now, but I thought it was easier at that time to just go in and like pitch a bunch of things and like lower my rate if they asked. And it just, you know, that's just not, if I had to do it over again, I would send LORs to trade magazines and like send some ideas. I would get some magazine clips, prove my niche expertise that way. And magazines will pay you for ideas. That's the exchange. You've given them a good idea. They're going to print it, the ma the glue in the middle of the money. And I've always kind of thought that there's always value in something that you're creating.
Even if at the time it's not the best, highest value you could get is $25 for 1500 words, which you should definitely do better than that. Like, don't go that far down in the scale. Oh, free pricing guide. I have my free pricing guide. If you're worried about pricing, let's pop that in. Yay. so if you don't want to work for $25 for 1500 words, grab my free pricing guide there. I updated all the time to make sure that if writers give me new projects or they're like, Hey, this is really low as a rate. Now let's up it. I change it out. So grab it there. So for me, pro bono work, didn't really like that click with me, but I have been asked to work for free a lot. And it's, it has different names, right? Hey, will you do this for, you know, we don't have the budget right now.
Can you still do this work? Or, you know, you'll be exposed to like all of our social media followers or they say something like, oh, well you do this first one. And then we'll pay you later. Like if you do a good job, we'll pay later. Excuse me, that kind of stuff. So for me, I just never really felt comfortable doing work for free. It just, wasn't something that I felt, felt comfortable with, but there are times when I think it's totally legit to do that. Like I have I have a friend who did a case study for free because she needed the clip. She wanted to have a case study. So she's like, you know what, I'm just going to offer it pro bono. And she did that. I have another friend who did a case study for I think it was like $500.
Like normally, you know, we wouldn't have a case study somewhere a little bit higher than that, but she did it for like 500 bucks and then her next case study, she charged a thousand and then the next one, she charged 2000. So I think when you're thinking about when pro bono work, isn't a fit, you have to think about number one, your own stuff. You have to think about whether or not that works for you. Maybe pro bono also means trade. So maybe pro bono work means that you trade one thing for another and maybe that trade isn't money. Maybe that trade is something like you know, like it's a service that they provide. So let's say you trade with a graphic designer. Hey, will you fix this part of my website? And I'll write two blog posts for you. That can be fine.
I can work. The other thing to think about when it's not a fit is like, do you feel uncomfortable with it? If you ever feel uncomfortable doing some type of work or working for a client, if you ever feel uncomfortable, that's not gonna work. That's not a fit. So if you ever go into pro bono work and it starts feeling weird, then don't do it. If you go into something and you're like, man, I really wish I could charge charge for it, charge for it, go in there and say like, you know what? I don't feel comfortable doing a whole case study, you know, a three or five page case study or two page case study for $0 you can charge for your work. So think about the times when it's not a fit. I think the other parts when it's not a fit is when someone comes to you and asks you to like ghost, write a bunch of stuff.
If they're asking you to ghost, write a book or a chapter, or if they're asking you to do some big project pro bono, that's a hard, no, if they're asking you to do like 10 white papers, that's a no, or even 10 blog posts. Anytime that they're coming in there with something big and they're asking you to do it for free, big, no on that pro bono work is, is little tiny stuff along the way pro bono work is in order to help you advance your career in very specific, calculated ways. It's just to get a bunch of stuff. That's not it. We want to use pro bono work as a leverage to get paid work. That's why we're here. We're here as freelance writers who want to make high earning incomes in sustainable ways. And if you start doing a lot of pro bono work, which I've had I've seen freelance writers do pro bono work for months, months, long periods of time.
They're like, oh, I thought I had to have a big portfolio. I thought I had to work for all these clients. What was the, oh, oh, I, I thought I had to have a lot of links, like links to my website all this stuff, or like, oh, I started writing on medium and then they use medium as their personal blog. And then like that kind of spirals out of control because they're spending all their time on medium and not on paid clients. You have to cap it. And pro bono work is not a fit for any types of projects that like are big. These are little things like one blog post, or maybe just four blog posts. So you do one month of blogging pro bono pro Pono, or you end up doing one case study and then your next one, you know, you charge a good rate.
You end up doing small one-offs for pro bono work. And I think that piece really matters to figuring out when it's not a fit. And I think when you're thinking about doing free work, think about all of the other industries where people don't do free work. So here's a good example when I was getting an internship, like, you know, when I was in when I was in college, there was a very big push on internships. It was like a big, big thing and it wasn't as big like before that. But there was a lot of push on, like, you need actual job experience, you need all these internships. But of course all the internships that I had been looking at were like, yeah, you can work for free. You can do all this stuff. And I went to an engineering school, actually, I'm wearing it right now.
I forgot. So I went to Virginia tech and it's an engineering school. It's where my dad went and my dad did an internship and it paid huge piles of money. And that was in the seventies. So my dad, as an engineer, got paid a bunch of money, me as an English major looking for different types. Like I looked at a publishing one, I looked at two journalism ones. I looked at all these different internships and they were all like, yeah, you can come work here for free. And the other example too, is that my partner had an internship and he showed up at this internship and he was like, oh, you're going to pay me to like, do this internship. Cool. Like he, he would have worked there for free, but they paid him huge piles of money to come do.
Right. He put huge piles of money. They paid him huge amounts of money to come in there and do this internship. Right. And I'm being asked to work for free. So the difference here is that it also depends on industry, right? So how many engineers get paid to do work for free before they get paid before they ever get to a salaried position? Right? Why is it different for freelance writers? Why do we automatically assume we should work for free? And I'm pretty sure this is my own opinion is that it just has to do with this artist thing artists create and we create for free because we like to create, and it's different because other people have like more functional things, but what's nice is kind of the shift that's happening is content is really important. It has a lot of value right now, and lots of people are creating lots of content.
So it doesn't mean you have to work for free finishing up that story that I didn't finish about the internship. When I did an internship, I ended up doing two internships for credit. So I did them for college credit. I traded that to like, I wasn't going to work for free. When I, when I knew like engineers and other people were getting paid like actual money, like, like way more money than you make as a lifeguard, which was my job. And I did it for college credit. So like, they're like, yeah, if you come in and do this internship, you'll write this many articles. You'll do these interviews to do all this stuff. We'll give you three credits. So basically your internship is like a class so that I traded and I still got credit. I didn't have to go to I didn't have to take another class.
I just did my internship as part of the credit. And that worked out really well for me, but I still got something in exchange for that. And it wasn't money at this time. But I think the whole point is like, we don't have to start our freelance writing career, doing things for free. We don't ever have to work for free if we don't want to, if we want to work for free and get a clip or two or if we've been trying to get into a niche or trying to get a certain type of higher level project. Yes. I would consider doing maybe one small version of that for free to get the clip, if that feels like a fit for you, but you don't have to think about being a freelance writer or an artist or a creative as having to work for free.
And there's also a really good book called real artists don't starve. And I think it's by Jeff Goins, if I'm right. And if you go read that book, like all of the famous artists didn't work for free, they lived in people's mansions and got like huge piles of money. And they were rich. So the interesting thing is that over time things have shifted to writers, believing that they have to work for free in order to get paid work. And I believe this at the beginning too, I, even though I never worked at pro bono stuff, I believed like, oh, eventually I'm going to have to do something for free. Eventually I'm gonna have to do this. Luckily I didn't, but we have this idea that pro bono and free work is like a natural part of like doing our job. And it's not, it doesn't have to be, we can be just like all these other industries where like, before they even graduate college or before they even are prepared to get into the world, they get paid huge piles of money.
And we can use our experience and our knowledge base and our niche expertise and all these things together to get paid for good projects. We can get paid for all these different things and think about the value that people are getting out of content right now, people are getting a ton, a ton of value out of content right now. That's what people are creating. That's like social media, their blogs, LinkedIn polls video content lives like what you're on right now, like our live stream. All these types of content are really like emails that counts. They're creating all these types of content and that has huge value and that's monetary value. So you don't have to work for free. Okay. So we're going to pop in what Maria said. Cause I wanted to pop in. Some Reese has one of the best comebacks was someone who suggested I have a small number of gifted pro bono work each year.
And this year is completely allocated for charity work. See, that's a great way to end up, you know, excuse me to end up doing pro bono work, but change the slant. So maybe what you end up doing. Like I know one of the things that I considered and that I know other writers do is providing content for for shelters, for dogs and cats and animals that are in the shelters is like you write blog posts, you write their listings so that people can find them and fall in love with them and adopt them. And this is like a great way to say like, Hey, every year, like I do a small number of pro bono pieces. You know, let's see if we can work on this, it's allocated for this, whatever. You can do it for a charity and then you maybe get a clip or you can do it in terms of like, Hey you know, I, I know that your budget's really small.
I, you know, I'm happy to do this pro bono just this one time, whatever, but you can also give them, it's basically like a win-win in this scenario. So I really liked this response. I think it's a really good one. Cool. Any other questions? If you have questions about this, pop them in. If you feel like this was helpful so far, make sure to give it a thumbs up. And if you feel like you want to learn more about a high earning sustainable freelance writing business, we're not running ourselves into the ground here and we're definitely getting paid well. Make sure to subscribe. Let's see Getty says unfortunately, much of what I've written as a niche expert is proprietary. My work belongs to several companies, not me. So here's what we do with that is I've talked to people with this issue before that doesn't mean you don't get paid going forward.
Even if that work is per pie proprietary, you're still a niche expert. You have all this stuff. And there's lots of writers who sign NDAs. I've signed many NDAs over my career where like, I can't use that clip. I can't do this. I can't use the clip. I can't talk about the client. I can't list them like, you know, any of that stuff. But what you can do is tell people like, Hey, I wrote for I used to work for a fortune 500 company and I wrote white papers, case studies and blog posts for them. Unfortunately, I I'm under an NDA, but this is the type of work I've done for this specific company. You can lay out what you've done and for who like not the company name, but like you could say for a small tech startup or you don't want to name them or make you leave any identifying information, but you can use these things to tell people that you have niche expertise and experience.
And people understand that the things are under NDAs. Like for example, I have a couple NDAs where it says in the NDA, like you can not tell anybody about our processes, how we create content, how we find keywords, how we do our, our outlines, how we put together, our blog, how we tag things like there, there's very specific things that they don't want their competitors to know about how they structure their content. I couldn't go in and like, then use that for a content strategy project. That's a big no-no. So what we do here is that it's okay that some of your work is proprietary. That's what happens. Like there are freelance writers who come from like government projects and that stuff is like under lock and key government work, but they still can get paid. They're like, this is what I've done.
If that works for you. Cool. If it doesn't, I totally get it. But someone will eventually be like, sounds great. You know, whatever, let's roll with this. So eventually even if you can't show them that specific work if you feel like pro bono is a fit for that, let's say you go in there and you're like, Hey, I get it. My stuff's under an NDA. I do have this experience. It's just under lock and key. I'm happy to do one pro bono piece for you to see if we're a fit to see if my writing style works. That could be an in a situation where a pro bono is a fit. But like, this is more common. Like over the years of my writing career, more and more people are having me sign NDAs. So it's not uncommon that you would roll in there and say like, I can't tell you.
And I can't show you these clips. Eventually you'll get to the point where you have clips that you can show. And you will, like, at some point, someone will give you a chance. And even if you don't offer pro bono, you're like, yeah, I'm happy to do this. For, you know, a thousand dollars, whatever, someone will give you a chance, always like this is something that took me years to figure out. Someone will always give you a chance. And whether that chances that your, all your works under NDA, and they'll give you a chance to write a PO pro bono clip, or it's a chance where like, they'll pay you for your first clip. EV at some point, someone will give you a chance. They'll talk to you. They'll feel like you're a good fit. They understand your niche expertise. You talk through the project, they feel good about that.
And they give you a chance. So I hope that was, if there's any other questions I'm curious to know, like, have you done pro bono work? Have you ever done pro bono work? Let me know in the comments below. And then if you haven't, if you've never done pro bono work, let me know in the comments below why I'm always interested in hearing why people don't do pro bono work. Sometimes it's value-based sometimes people don't do pro bono work because they're like, I've been in marketing for 25 years. I have a bunch of experience. No. sometimes people don't do pro bono work. Cause they're like, I need the money straight up. I can't do anything for free because I need the money, regardless of like how I feel about the value or whatever. Like I need to make a hundred dollars at least on each assignment.
So let me know below, like, have you done pro bono work? How did that work out? Or let me know if you have it. If you've never done pro bono work, why, why did you choose not to as a writer? So cool. All right. I hope this was helpful. And I will see you next Friday at noon central time. And I hope everybody has a good weekend. Oh, we can do one last pup date. Let's do one last pub date. Okay. We still have one pup in the pup date center. Let's see the other ones like moving the wires on the camera. Charlotte, can you go on your Hobbit hole? Where'd she go? There she is. Can you go in your, have a hole? Thank you.
Good girl. You got a hair on your chin. There you go, buddy. Good job.
All right. You guys doing great today, guys. You're doing great. Bo. You were a little teasy in the beginning because you're all wild, but seem to be doing good
Now. Good job, buddy. Good job.
All right. Well the puppers wish everybody a happy weekend. I wish everybody a happy weekend. I hope this was helpful and I will see you next Friday. Bye. Okay.
________
Trying to figure out how to price your work for what it’s worth? Check out my FREE Pricing Guide!
Need some fantastic contract and marketing templates to make your freelance writing biz run as effectively and efficiently as possible? See my Templates!
Want to stay in touch for weekly detailed advice plus updates on new freebies and courses? Join my email list!
Want to follow me for inspiration, tips, and to stay connected?
So psyched you’re joining me on this livestream adventure!
