Also, in the film industry its even worse. No one wants to hear about the number of freebies you do or how you must risk life and limb (literally) to work on a crummy script that gets cut down to a short from 90 pages. No one wants to hear that they need a temp job to make ends meet. They don’t want to know about how closed the unions are to new talent (below the line, not actors.)

So, even when I know how to get to where someone wants to go, they don’t like the answer. Jeez, if it was easy everybody would do it! But also, in a way it is easy. You just have to look for the jobs, ask for the jobs, and be the solution that the producer is looking for. Its no different than any other industry, just be what someone is looking for, that’s what counts. The qualities of any good employee really are transferable from one industry to the next. In this day and age of available information, it really is possible to do what you want.

ReetaLuthra- I have the same issue where giving a little advice can actually harm someone. I can’t give a short violin lesson, its possible to cause nerve damage if you don’t have a really good instructor in the first year of training (I know it happened to me.)

The line between free and billable for me falls in the following, I will point someone in the direction of a good instructor, website, software (ear training is so cheap these days) or good rosin (for the bow.) but, I won’t teach for free. Even when I was in high school I was paid for lessons, so why be cheap now? Also, I put water marks on my photography and video samples. If a producer wants to see more, I will show up in person.

I found this article via twitter. Someone else re-tweeted it.

That’s exactly what I was attempting to say, thanks for clarifying Jim.

In your second paragraph, you refer to them as a ‘client’ which, is interesting. I see that a lot and whilst it may have been written by accident, it’s a fact that many service providers fail to differentiate someone asking for a freebie, from a prospective client or even a client. A prospective client is someone with a genuine need for our help and the willingness / availability to pay. A freebie hunter knows from the start that they won’t pay you a penny. They will grab what they can and then go and pester their next victim.

As someone said earlier, it takes time to learn how to spot the freebie hunters. Sadly, many small businesses go broke by doing too much for free; often for people who are well able to pay.

However, many service providers start off by showing little value for their own time, by being too accommodating and giving too much away for free.

It makes it far harder to start charging, if you have given so much of your time for nothing. This is especially the case, if you manage to solve a primary issue for them and there’s no longer any real motivation for them to take action and hire you.

You make a great point here, regarding the difficulty in providing the answers someone needs, when they themselves are vague about their actual problem.

They tend to want structured, specific answers but because they want your time / expertise for free, they often miss bits out. This makes it waaaaaay too easy for you to give them the wrong advice; purely because their problem required a LOT more research – more than is possible via a ‘freebie.’

End result: The service provider can’t deliver the correct answer and the freebie hunter heads off to try the same low-class trick on another victim!

As you have said in previous posts, making the call that “this is now billable time” can be difficult and will almost exclusively depend on the client and your ability to assess them and if they are serious or not.

Another angle to this is covered by these guys in a candid way and although it digresses a little it has some other angles to consider as well in the internet mindset of “Freeism”:
http://www.from-the-couch.com/post.cfm/title/1000-clients-or-1000000-fans

Also, this vid has been floating around for a while now and still makes me smile (its about half way down the post):
http://www.justinparks.com/clients-budgets-cost-a-website/

While I’m sure we all appreciate the amount of free stuff we can indeed get on the internet, it really isn’t viable, but the fact that its there makes the business of doing business so much more difficult because the mindset is “oh its free so your free as well” and for me, I get quite offended at this. I could never assume that anyones time is free and expect the same in return.

As you say “Your time is not money – it’s far, far more valuable than that.”

You post it before me . I was gonna record a video about this exact thing. Another common thing for these people is that their business is always just starting off so they don’t have money to spend.

At first I was taking my time to look at their websites and see what needs to be done. Now, I ask a direct question: you want my services for free? If the answer is yes then I direct the person to my blog where he/she can get ALL my knowledge for free.

Solving specific problems has to be paid. I think people misunderstand the concept of free content but I also think it’s the duty of every service provider to educate the public.

Thanks