Someone asked me about freelance apps and crowdsourcing creative today. It's a topic that always pisses me off.
So this is more of a half-baked rant than anything else.
Finding freelance work as a creative professional is a hard hustle. In addition to doing outstanding work each and every time, you have to cultivate relationships and manage expectations. That way you can develop repeat customers.
Freelance apps and websites are making it harder.
More than that, they're undercutting the value of expertise.
Everything is reduced to a blind bid; and mostly at prices that would make even the any-minimum-wage-is-too-high crowd blush.
Hell. Fivver is predicated on the idea that you can get professional creativity for five bucks. And the offers on UpWork are ridiculous "$20 for a series of articles" or Of course there are crowdsourcing options like 99 Designs where only the "winner" gets paid.
Give away creative ideas for free? No. And you know what you can go do to yourself for asking.
As Don Draper said, "That's the job. I give you money. You give me ideas."
If you want my ideas, I get your money. Period. And it had better be more than the spare change in your pocket.
Outside the creative arena things are even more awful on the pay-scale front. Uber. Lyft. Task Rabbit. Takl. They're all digital plantation owners getting rich off the hard work of others.
Of course, that leads me down the rabbit hole to LinkedIn, Yelp, FourSquare and countless sites that generate revenue on content they get for free.
I'll be writing a lot more about this topic.
And as I do so, I'll be reminding everyone I can that no one buys the cow if they're getting the milk for free.
No comments:
Post a Comment