you can’t pay your rent with “the unique platform and reach our site provides”

Comments (947)

1. Hey Wil,

   I originally read that post on Medium.com. How do you feel about their platform? I am debating whether or not I should use it to share my own writing.

2. Exposure doesn’t pay my student loans or my phone bill or my cat. The student loans I have because I thought the school would boost my resume. My phone I have to get work. My cat wasn’t wanted at first, but I suddenly found myself with him and he wormed his furry little self into my life.

   I’m a costume designer. Five hundred dollars doesn’t cover the materials for ten costumes, much less pay for the items mentioned above. I’ve been paid by major league companies and exposure means nothing to me. I already have a reputation. What I need is money. If you can’t do it yourself for the price you’re offering, don’t expect a professional to. Artists are constantly stepped on and taken advantage of simply because people assume we need them. No, they need us. We just need you to pay us

3. Seeing what they usually post on Huffpo, it makes sense now knowing they don’t pay for content…

4. Really when you think about it commissions in return for exposure is the same as any employer going up to you and saying we’d like you to work here but we’re not willing to pay you. But at least you can put it on your resume right! I get why artists do jobs for free but if at the end of the day your exposure isn’t getting you anywhere it might be time to change up the formula.

5. You made the right choice! Huff Post should be paying writers they seek out.

   Exposure can be a fair trade – especially when someone is starting out and need to get known. Too often, though, artists and writers are expected to work for “exposure” all the time. Well when does exposure translate into getting paid for your work? It has to stop sometime and they get some compensation.

   To think that Huff Post can’t afford to pay even going industry rates is an insult.

   Well done, Mr. Wheaton. Thank you for standing up to them.

6. Thanks for speaking out on this. In 30-some years of improv theater in San Francisco, video game voices (Mitsurugi in Soul Calibre II anyone?) and other shenanigans, I’m still flabbergasted by the shitty way creative artists are treated. I’ve had many conversations like yours. I’ve started asking event planners if their table and tent rentals are provided for free for the “exposure”. Or if they have ever asked a mechanic to work on their car for some “exposure”. It usually meets with a stunned silence. Then a click. Younger people can be too quick to jump. If someone asks “what do you charge”, don’t respond by saying “what’s your budget?” Give them a price. Don’t be afraid to negotiate. And don’t be afraid to have a “rate card” and stick to it. Don’t let anyone treat your talent like an afterthought or a cheap piece of window dressing. Because if it was, they wouldn’t be calling you. Chances are, no one will remember the food. They WILL remember the performance.

7. My mother, a formerly (and still pretty big) patient activist for Migraine and Sjorgens (sp?), wrote an article on her blog about things not to say to people in chronic pan, and after changing only a BARE FEW words, republished it as thier own, no referance to her original work, not did they ask or offer compensation to her…I can’t remember if it was Huff Post or who, but it was a prominent news place.

   I understand this. It’s irking, and brings out a bit of my ragemonster, to be honest.

8. Wil, I am a professional cartoonist, and am pretty decent with a still camera. I make my living with my images. The Daily Mail contacted me in September asking to use a couple of photos from my blog. I asked what they pay for such usage, and the answer was “nothing.” Without hesitation, I walked away. I respect my colleagues too much to devalue our entire industry by providing my work for free. Thank YOU for saying, “no.”

9. I thought it was a perfect response. Any company offering to use your work to make money should compensate you. Totally different story if you asked them to publish for your own benefit, but they approached you simply because they thought it was good, therefore would attract viewers which drives their revenue ad streams.

   For me it’s the “we can’t afford” piece that ticks me off the most, seems unrealistic and in reality won’t drive the best content if they aren’t willing to pay for it.

10. Brilliant! This made it into the wikipedia article about the Huffington Post!
    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post#Labor_disputes )

    2011 Arianna Huffington sold the Huffington Post for US$315 million to AOL and AOL made her Huffington President and Editress-in-Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.

    If you look into her behavior you can clearly see, that she seem to be used to taking intellectual content without paying for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington#Claims_of_plagiarism

11. It’s the same with music. People want everything free now. Kudos for standing up to it.

12. I had to double-check the date of this article, b/c I can’t believe they’re still doing this shit. Huffpo has grown its fortune on not paying its writers for years. They exploit less known bloggers with these insulting emails, and a lot of them take it, because they think they need the followers.

    BTW, professional writers can expect at least 75 cents to $1.50 a word from a reputable publishers. Or a flat rate of a month’s salary at a $70-100k/yr rate.

13. I follow a group on Facebook called “Stop Working for Free.” It’s quite interesting and relevant to this post.
    Well done, Wil. Huffpo is a fifty-billion dollar company who got there by “aggregaring,” which is Newspeak for intellectual property theft.

    1. *aggregating

14. You know… I am terrified of this happening with the 47k words I have written; the jazz and acting performances for free don’t help, either.
    I have never failed an audition, but I’ve never been able to pay for a paying acting gig; proof of a good story seems to require you to self publish, and then get picked up and re-published just to get paid; and I need to pay a studio to consider recording my own music in hopes of it selling.
    Why the arts in our country seem to cost you a lot of money just to be an artist, I will never know.

    1. Other countries support artists with robust public investment in the arts. For example, countries like Australia want good books about Australian characters — and they pay grants for them to get written, too. The UK wants good British television and radio programs for people of all ages, and so it spends heavily in fostering that. The US invests almost nothing in any of this. We can’t even adequately fund Sesame Street – which is moving new shows to HBO!

15. I can’t imagine anyone asking me to write software for exposure, and would be ticked if someone had. I think its ridiculous that a company expect you to hand them intellectual property for free when they’re going to turn around and make profit on it. I have had potential clients who want me to work a temporary contract for lower pay to “assess my abilities”, or have clients who promise “equity”, or clients who complain about being billed for the hours I spend talking and consulting with them. I’d say that most similar thing from a programmers perspective would be getting promised equity in a company that has little to no funding. It’s like “hey, if we make 1million dollars this year, you’re equity will be worth 1% of that!”. So I work for an entire year without pay hoping to god that your idea works. Then in the end I make less than the median wage for software developers. Great investment on my part.

    There are a number of things I learned from my first year of freelancing. First of all, get those mothers to sign a contract with a clear definition of your scope or work, or some kind of terms for the intellectual property you are selling. Find a few good clients who have steady work and are willing to pay what you’re worth. If a client/company cannot respect you your best interest is not on their list on priorities.

16. One of the dangerous things about these kinds of practices is they set industry standards. If Huffington Post can get away with it, anyone can, and that makes it incredibly difficult for journalists and writers to earn a living.

    At the very least, there needs to be a minimum industry standard for freelance web writing — even if it’s just 6 cents a word. Bloggers need a writing guild…

17. A long time ago MTV contacted me about an animation of mine that they saw online that they would like to use for some new show that they were doing. Not only did they not want to pay me for it and only offered “exposure”, they wanted to re-edit it themselves as well. Both were a no-go for me. I do not regret the decision one bit even though others told me that the exposure would have been cool. I don’t remember what the show was called, but I know it didn’t last long.

18. Thank you for using your platform to draw attention to this! It’s a huge issue for writers and other creatives. We love what we do, but we need to eat and pay rent just like everyone else. I’m constantly asked to do work for free. My brother is a plumber and no one thinks that he should work on their plumbing for “exposure and good will.”

19. Thanks for sharing this!

20. Thanks Will- as a not-even-close-to-huge blogger it’s tempting to do it “for exposure” (even though experience has shown that exposure does literally nothing for me personally) because editors tell you it’s the only way to become “known” if you want to maybe write for a living. It’s galling when big sites like these claim they can’t pay.

21. As a professional musician and music teacher, this hits home very hard for me. Happens all the time in my business as well. Thanks for your stand on this issue, Wil.

22. Thank you a million times. I try to explain to you upcoming musicians about this very concept. You need to start drawing lines or else you’ll never be taken seriously nor will the art form. Even if I got paid 100/night to perform every night of the week is only make 36,500$ before takes and expenses. I always say ‘I may not make music for the money, but I can’t hug my energy provider for its arrive either!’ Thanks so much. I hope this has a trickle down effect not only for the people, writers, bloggers, artist etc but also for the people who will be in positions to hire such people in the future.

23. There is a flip side, I am contacted on a regular basis from advertising agencies wanting ME to write an article that they can insert links into, to post on my own website, without any sort of payment.

    Or to post advert heavy posts without any advertising fee.

    1. Ah. Ponies. Ken White over at Popehat has fun with them – https://popehat.com/?s=pony

    2. At least they contact you. I get spammers posting comments on my blog posts that have some generic introduction like “Nice post,” and then launch into a pitch for whatever product they’re likely being paid to promote on X number of sites, with a link back to their site. Those get immediately deleted.

       1. Actually, they used to do it to increase search engine rank (because links would count), but I think most blogging platforms omit those links now from counting towards rank. So I’m not sure why comment spammers still do that, unless they think your readers really ARE interested in Ray Bans sunglasses. 😛

    3. I get this too, fairly regularly.

24. “The line must be drawn here!”. Who didn’t hear Patrick Steward’s voice in their head?

    1. Totally!

    2. Heard it immediately!

    3. No further!!

       1. And I, will make them PAY, for what I’ve written! Totally on Will’s side about this btw

    4. Actually I heard sheldon but i just watched that episode lol

25. Plus huffpo and those other sites take what’s popular on other sites, make it their own, and share it, but the original places don’t get much out of the deal.

26. Well said. Tradition employment is fast being replaced by ‘micro-employment’ (my term). Being paid for ‘small’ work is perhaps more vital than salaries.

27. Spot on, Wil! It’s not like HuffPo is running on a shoestring, like say, 99% of writers out there.

28. It may have been the right thing to do.. no. Not ‘may’. It was the right thing to do. But young writers and journalists crave exposure . They hunt these so called “opportunities” because they think that ‘Huffington Post Contributor’ will look good on their resume. They see their, undoubtedly, state of complete writing slavery as a stepping stone to a ludicrous career.
    And, surprise: The good millionaires of the Huff Hub are taking advantage of that. I sincerely hope more people would start saying no. This practice is both humiliating and terrifying.

29. I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, yet, but in the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth, Harlan Ellison gives a marvelous rant along the lines of “pay the writer.” Thanks for taking a stand.

    1. I thought of this straight away : https://youtu.be/mj5IV23g-fE

    2. I love that Harlan Ellison bit. He is brutal.

30. Good timing! I’ve just been on the EyeEm (alternative Instagram type) app where they set ‘photo missions’. The idea is that they give you a theme and members upload to them – there are different ‘rewards’ but looking at the most recent, the concept is ‘home shrines’ and the reward is being published in the Huffington Post and the EyeEm blog. I’m a pro photographer, but still enjoy the concept of photo sharing sites and can see the fun in submitting to a contest, but to think that the huffington post gets an illustrated article about home shrines (and others, there’s more than one) for free; in effect content to continue building their brand and raising advertising revenue makes me pretty annoyed.

    1. thats precisely why I refuse to submit anything to their competitions. The prizes are laughably exploitative. You add value to their brand and then when they eventually sell eyem for a billion or so, none of the contributors will get a share of the wealth that they have helped to produce.

31. I completely agree with you. I’m a film maker and I often make music videos for bands and a lot of the time they ask me to do it for free for exposure….

    There was a time I would but now I feel it’s more important to value your own skills and if clients aren’t wiling to do that they aren’t worth the time.

    Problem is there’s so many blogger San d young “film makers” out there willing to fall for the “exposure” line which then undercuts and devalues those trying to run legitimate businesses or create genuinely compelling content that they deserve to be paid for.

32. Yeah but which version did you hear? The take used in the trailer or the take used in the actual film?

33. I don’t understand how this is different from actors appearing on Tabletop for free. Or do you pay them their standard fees?

    1. People don’t have to pay people for everything Monika…just for things where they want someone to work for them.

       If Wil Wheaton asked me to meet him in a pub, next time he was passing through London, so he could chat to me about Spelljammer, I would jump at the chance. But if he asked me to turn up to events where he was speaking with an audio recorder, and to sit in the front row recording him, so that he could upload it to my website, that would change from “fun” to “work”.

       I might still do some free work for Wil Wheaton if we already knew each other and he was going to do some sort of free thing back in exchange.

       Or if he wanted to “team up” to do something together, I might do free work as an investment that might earn us both cash further down the line. (I’m guessing that the Tabletop thing might fall into that category.)

       That is totally different from some dude at Huffington Post trawling the Internet for good content that is going to give their website good page rank on Google and then contacting the writers to see how much of that content they can grab for free.

       The guy at Huffington Post gets paid. If they can afford to pay a dude to trawl around the internet to beg for people to give them free content, they can afford to pay for the content itself.

    2. Considering HuffPo is a multimillion dollar organization owned by a multibillion dollar company. (AOL paid 315 million for HuffPo) It is very different. At least the people who appear on the show get a copy of the game and swag.

34. This reminds me of a guy who asked a mutual friend of ours to see about recruiting writers for his game and webcomic series. Only he refused to pay a fat rate, refused to pay royalties, refused to do an exchange of services and, finally, refused to give any credit to the writers. I felt sorry for my friend (who has since stopped dealing with that individual.)

35. I wonder what that editor’s response would have been had you said “sure, but you are prohibited from displaying my post in any page with an advertisement.”

36. Maybe they could run a kickstarter to take money from their fans instead of investing their own money in their passion projects and then pay you with that?

37. “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” – The Joker

38. You are absolutely right, I write for my school newspaper and get no compensation, financial or otherwise and hate it. People don’t care about writers the way they used to.

    1. School newspapers are different, and they have always been.

    2. I worked on my college newspaper and I hope that you are as pleasantly surprised by its lasting benefits. I gained experience, received a partial scholarship and was considered more experienced than my peers. Just make sure your school includes activities on your transcript. 🙂

39. It’s very difficult. On the one hand, I’m a professional journalist and photographer. I frequently get contacted by companies (I’m looking at you especially BBC) who want to use my words and images for ‘exposure’. It makes me angry, because dammit – I’m worth 17p per word and a whole load per photograph! I really am worth that – it’s what I get paid regularly. And it annoys me that people are being taken advantage of by companies when they don’t really know any better – so many of my class mates at University write for free because they think they need exposure and to get their names out there. But all they’re doing it making a CV with names on it that editors know don’t pay. Why should an editor pay you to write for them when you write for others for free?

    But on the other hand I run a small community blog that serves a niche hobby in the UK. I’ve just started to break even through associate links on my site costs and I have nothing in the budget to pay writers. Fortunately people write for me because they believe in what I’m doing and they want to be part of something that makes a great resource for the community.

    It swings both ways. But big companies like Huff and BBC… they have the money to pay. They should pay.

40. That´s what the author Harlan Ellison thinks about “free exposure”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

41. Congratulations, Wil. You’ve just joined Larry Correia in the “Get Paid” camp.

42. There’s an established and ethical way to get content off other people’s content, without giving them money, and giving them exposure.

    “

    The 7 things Wil Weathon did to reboot his life

    Wil Weathon posted a great article in his blog about how he rebooted his life. He made some great points, like X and Y, and here’s what we personally thought about it: blah blah blah.

    See the full text on Wil’s blog.
    ”

    1. I just did a post like the above… in my mind you are giving the credit… it is the same as “sharing” to facebook… this is whole conundrum, because the share options are often a hassle to take off for a post you don’t want shared. reckon this whole copyright issue will have to hit the fan soon.

43. The phrase that always comes to mind when sites try this trick is “People die of exposure”

44. But if huffpo wanted to post THIS article…

45. I hear Oprah is too cheap to pay for talent as well. Maybe she’ll contact you next!

46. I totally agree with you that this is exploiting and wasn’t right for you.
    I’d still jump at the chance. I have 13 YouTube subscribers and my last professional writing sale was in 2012. Any exposure or building my brand is a greater chance at income from the creative side of my life.
    I believe that creative artists, of any stripe, deserve compensation for their work. Some of us, though, would take exposure in a heartbeat.

47. Well said and from a powerful voice! Mosy of the time bloggers are used for free and their work teased with the carrot of ‘exposure’ often not worth the time it takes for the pr to agree terms with you. Will clearly doesn’t need exposure but he wanted to be compensated for his work, as he should! Well done for bringing it to peoples attention!

48. Bravo, Wil! Totally agree.

49. Very good take on an offer that many people would have fallen of themselves to accept. You were absolutely correct. Anyone putting forth the effort to produce something, deserves to get paid for it. That really is the end of the story.

50. Hear, hear. Well said, etc.

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