When Should You Shoot for FREE?

[@derrenleepoole]

Knowing your value and worth is one of the hardest if not the hardest lesson to learn when starting out as a professional. And the embarrassment of asking for or presenting a fee can be a deal breaker for some people. My advice is to break down the work into chunks of time: so travel time and cost, time on location, time spent editing, cost of digital delivery etc. work out a fee or hourly rate you’re comfortable with and take it from there. Crucially stick to your guns. Clients will always imply they can get it done cheaper, so let them. Like you, I earn a good salary, so do work for free on smaller items to help out…. But anything more than a few hours and I’ll ask for a small fee to cover fuel etc and take it from there. I have a few clients that pay bigger for my services as they value it. But it’s taken a lot of graft to get there.

[@lukasvanderlende]

Some great wisdom here! Thank you for taking the time to share!

[@dimanatti]

Doing photos or videos is like any other business and i suggest to any one to treat it as such, yes is okay to charge low and yes is okay to do it for free (samples or collaboration) with other creators. But if they coming to you depending on the project then they gotta pay. If a real state agent came to you asking for free photos or a music artist and claiming that it will be good for your portfolio then is a BIG NO. But also cause am older i deal with better clients and reject BUM's or people who wanna take advantage, since they got away with it before they wanna continue to do so. At the end of the day is a TRADE, just gotta see the value of it. Thats why theirs people that suck at photos/videos but since they excellent at doing business they will always surpass you and get all the great projects with a good pay! Am pretty sure if you walk in and ask for a free cup of Coffee they will say no! is a business we don't give out free stuff. And if you say "but how do i know if this coffee or snacks are any good?" well you still gotta pay to try it. Look just be good in business and attract good clients. Me doing a video or shoot for a coffee shop i gotta see what i would get in return. cause at the end of the day how much is coffee and a muffin at the end of the shoot? less than $3. Views? the business just started, Helping a business? i help my friends these people are just strangers to me. And even my friends i charge. I mean damn they charge me when i need something in their trade. And these tools of ours are cheap to obtain, they get old or damage, and gotta upgrade eventually. Free work is not gonna compensate for all that.