"Hippy Jobs"

I was mentioning in another forum today about what I like to call "hippy jobs". A hippy job is when an individual/company proposes that you, for example, design their website for free. Your benefit being publicity/exposure.

I have had a lot of those requests lately, two in particular stand out in my mind...one was a guy claiming to be 'Usher', he said if I design his myspace profile for free, in return, I would receive lots of publicity with his celeb friends. Naturally I told him that if he was the real Usher, he could afford to pay hard cash. The other was a guy who wanted an adult industry site designed, and said he couldn't pay me up front, but I'd get a percentage of the profits. I thought "yeah right! Do I look like I have a stoopid tattoo on my forehead?" Damn hippies!

They wouldn't go to a hairdresser, and say "Hey if you give me a free haircut, I'll tell everyone what a great hairdresser you are" so why do they insult web & graphic designers with stupid propositions like that?

I'm willing to bet all of you have had at least one hippy job request in your working experience. What do the rest of you think of these proposals?

I'd tell them to "Prove it!!" and then we could talk. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....It Is A Duck!

Yes all the time. But I just laugh and move on. The only job I thought about doing for free was Gladys Knight's website, yes the real Gladys Knight, not a wanna be...lol. But nope normally I ignore them and move on to people that pay $$$$$$$$!

I haven't had too many people want freebies "EXCEPT FRIENDS"! *cough, ...............*

I never get that. People know if they want to use my skills, they pay for it. What I do get is existing clients who I have built up a relationship with trying to get freebies out of me. Occasionaly I will do a text update for someone, but mostly I make them pay as they would to me.

I think the idea of speculative work is bad.