Polite Ways to Say “I’m Not Doing That for Free”
Whether it’s a potential client trying to get a freebie or an old acquaintance trying to score free advice, here are professional ways to say no.
I have been working as a writer and a digital marketer for over 15 years. In the span of my career, I’ve had friends, relatives, and even total strangers ask me for help with their personal writing assignments, editing their stories, or driving traffic to their websites. While I don’t mind spending 10 to 20 minutes proofreading a story someone else wrote, it’s a whole other thing when someone asks me to spend hours of my time to do unpaid work.
What really pisses me off are casual acquaintances or random strangers asking me how much it would cost to write a 1,000-word article then saying so many negative things when they find out how much I charge. Well, feel free to do it yourself, mister!
Social media and instant messaging apps have made it so easy for people to slide into your DM to get free advice or ask you to do something for them for free. Just to be clear about it, this is never okay. Whether you’re asking a doctor, a lawyer, a graphic artist, or a writer — think about the number of hours and years they’ve spent learning and honing their craft. Photographers and…
