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

Comments (947)

1. Honestly, if more people did this, it would benefit all of us. Trying to get your blog seen as a relatively unknown is like pushing string up a hill so it can feel tempting to allow big companies to publish you for free – but if someone asks for your material (your time, your emotional contribution, your talent), you deserve to be fairly compensated for it.

2. Instead they’re the ones getting “exposure” for poor business practices.

3. Arianna Huffington’s Salary is $4 million per year. Assume 65% is taken by taxes, she’s still making $1.4 million net. If she gave up $1 million of her salary and decided to pay that to writers, she’d only be making $400,000 per year less, which I’m sure she can afford.

4. Preach it, Brother. (All joking aside, you are 100% right)

5. The best quote on the subject I recall is, “Exposure is either something you die from, or something you get arrested for.” I don’t remember who said it, but it strikes me as the appropriate response to folks wanting you to provide them with the fruits of your creative labor “for good exposure.”

6. “Exposure…” – it’s what artists die of.

   1. It’s unfortunate that so many of us have to hear this and know the phrase well.

7. “Exposure is what you die from, on the side of a mountain, alone.”

8. Way too much of the internet content distribution model is based on this idea that works (and content) are free, but distributing them is worth money. When I see the phrase ‘disruptive technology’ the first thing I think is “oh – who is someone exploiting now?” Somehow the ease with which we can duplicate work has become conflated with a cost point of zero or near-zero, and there is no justification for that. Thank you for being part of the movement that is turning the tide. You are not alone.

9. You DO deserve to wear that uniform!

10. Great article. I deal with this routinely, as I write quite a few op ed pieces. This also happens with academic writing. Journals pay nothing and then make money distributing the work of scholars. I looked at an article I wrote a while back and the publisher was charging $40 for it. I get zero. This also happens in the music world. Clubs offer musicians to work for tips. This is a form of exploitation, plain and simple. I suggest you offer up this blog to HuffPo and see if they might be willing to publish it for free.

11. And yet you don’t credit images used on your blog taken from external sources? Do you pay rights for those photos such that you don’t have to credit them? I can’t imagine that you do, but I could be wrong.

12. You can die from exposure.

13. It is a good thing that you are in a position to refuse and make this practice public. Don’t get me wrong–I love HuffPo, but refusing to compensate someone for their work is exploitative. Unfortunately, many writers would not think that they can say no, so they accept the status quo. Perhaps if more writers declined the request to publish their work for free, the sites that are making money off the content would start sharing the profits with creators.

14. Wil, my dad was a “stringer” contributor to several newspapers back in the 80s. He’d write stories and submit them to the papers he thought would have an interest in the story. If they published, they paid him. In my opinion, today’s bloggers are the stringers of yesterday. Freelance contributors. Exposure and reach is nice, but only to generate a paying interest.

    I’m completely support your stance and think you made the right stand.

    Mike

15. You totally made the right call! They are making money off of your content (ad revenue) and you are getting nothing in return. From my experience with Huffington Post and many other sites like this, the vast majority of people will read your story and that is all. They won’t click over to your site and become new readers and followers. There are sites that I have stopped contributing to because of this very reason. They make it seem like they are doing you a huge favor with exposure, but in reality, they’re just in it for themselves. It took me over a year to realize that I needed to value myself and my content more and not get starry-eyed when a big publisher approaches me and says they want me to write a post or allow them to share one of my posts. Unless proper credit is given and only a snipped of a post is shared that encourages readers to visit me, it’s just not worth it.

16. I’m glad you said no and that you made it public that they aren’t compensating writers when they obviously have the money to do so.

17. kudos to you on shaming that institution! they have plenty of $ but make sure no one else gets a chance to make any.

18. I’m an artist and writer. I get sick of being asked for my “work” for free. Good for you Wil! Please continue to put this in the spotlight. Maybe people will start to value their creatives. Not just the popular and highly paid artists, but their local talent as well.

19. That’s low. I woulda told them where they could go too. Everything I write is for sale. Not for free. Unless of course I am commenting. LOL exposure doesn’t pay the bills and Google adsense pays out .01 for X number of clicks and doesn’t register every click. Not worth it. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills!

20. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have no problem with anyone’s choices for their work but I believe that until we all insist on the tangible respect we deserve we certainly will never get it. And it pains me to hear people use the terms “paid” or “payment” as if there is something wrong for being renumerated for your work.
    The respect I have for you has been doubled by your stand for yourself. Well done!

21. Wil, your choice is good enough and well grounded. The Huffington Post bosses are just greedy ones, their attitude to authors is quite shrewd.

22. Well, you’ve highlighted the difference between a blogger and a writer.
    It’s like the Mamet play “Edmond.” You’re not an actor if you only perform in acting class.
    And the HP does pay for content. It pays the people they’ve hired.
    Now, you could have gone ahead an let them reprint the work. You shared it for free on your blog so, clearly, you didn’t write it for money. You would have reached a much larger audience, driven traffic to your blog and, possibly, solicited some interest from a professional organization. But you didn’t.
    You used the HP’s policy to attempt to garner attention for yourself and reached far fewer eyes in the process. You may have also raised a red flag to anyone who may have considered paying for your work. I assume that most everyone in the business is very aware of how the HP works. Nothing personal but you came across as a disgruntled novice.
    Your blog your rules though, right? That’s the perk. One that typically doesn’t exist when money is on the table.
    My unsolicited take? Possibly a valid personal call but a short-sighted professional call. But maybe writing for money isn’t your goal. If that’s the case, I guess you win.

23. You did absolutely the right thing. I ask a painter to paint my house on the outside because I’m going to sell it. How would s/he react if I said I expected them to do it for the exposure? Happens much too much with writers, photographers etc, particularly with online titles.

24. Hi Wil,

    It’s a trend, isn’t it? The Craig’s List “Gigs – Writers” pages are filled with idiots who want free content. Most of them offer some version of the inducement you heard from Huffington, “Hey, CREDIT!! EXPOSURE!!” I now have a standard reply for these in the form of a text template:

    “Dear Ad Placer,

    I need my lawn mowed, but I’m not going to pay you. I think that the credit you receive for working on my house should be compensation enough.

    Cordially,

    Fuck Your Mother”

25. Mr. Wheaton, welcome to what artists have been dealing with for decades. As a musician, I started training in 4th grade. At the age of 57, I have acquired a vast knowledge of material that spans all genres of music. I am gainfully employed as a musician. Despite the fact that I am a working in my craft (and have been for quite some time), I was recently asked to do a gig for free, with the lure of “exposure.” I AM exposed. I have been exposed for decades. The insult of this is that someone couldn’t just ask me to kindly donate my time, but felt that it was appropriate to treat me as a second-rate artist.

    Until the on-line media circus made the field of journalism for the printed press/newspapers nearly obsolete, there was no sense of camaraderie. Not so any more … welcome to what singers, dancers, composers, arrangers, writers, painters, photographers, costume designers, set designers, and directors have been going through for all our lives. Just to be treated with some sense of dignity as valued workers in the world.

    Oh, and by the way, I have a paid subscription to the New York Times. Yes, that paper can be found in any coffee house, rumpled and ready for the person to enjoy it for free. However, those writers are valuable and I do prefer to ensure that the art of journalism continue somewhere, partially funded by those who read it.

26. Thanks for posting, Wil. I make part of my living as an author, and I hear what you are saying. It seems crazy that after I spend ten months or writing a book, someone pays me about the same amount per book as for a cup of Starbucks.
    But there is another side to the story. Exposure does have value. If I had a piece in the Huff Post, my guess is, I’d probably sell more books as a result. I look it as a trade: my content, for their advertising.
    I do get what you are saying, however, about the fact that they approached you, not vice versa, but even so, in my position (kind of “halfway there” in terms of my writing career) I would have taken the publicity.

27. What’s this “wanting actual payment” nonsense? I regularly accept payment in the form of pictures of you collating paper.

    For real though, as a photographer, I 100% agree. I had a publisher ask for (full) rights to a photo to be included in a book they were selling. No payment for me, just the knowledge that I would be included. Soooooo, you get to make money off my image but I don’t? No thank you.

28. Definitely did the right thing..

29. My thoughts… I think a fair solution would be to get a “cut” of the revenue generated by the ads that would appear alongside your publication on HuffPost.

    They want your post for eyeballs, they get revenue by how many eyeballs see ads on their site. Since it would be your contribution that would be gaining eyeballs, then you should get a cut. It still probably wouldn’t pay your rent, but I would take that over a flat fee.

30. HuffPo doesn’t reach “a pretty big audience”, they reach a lot of really small audiences. Semantics maybe, but “exposure” and “reach” have a qualitative aspect that HuffPo could never provide. Good for you for not giving away your content.

    Ironically, reading this really hit home in dealing with qualms I’ve been having about charging entry for our Tabletop Day event. I could hemorrhage time and money to secure an awesome venue free for 3-400 people for 14 hours, complete with a liquor license and food service, have tournaments and giveaways, etc, and the hope the “exposure” and “reach” translates to multiple thousands of dollars in future sales – or I could recognize that our work has created something that inherently has value, and that it’s OK to charge for entry.

31. Writers get paid per word? No wonder there’s so much TL;DR stuff out there.

32. I’m a performing musician and this applies so well to what we do (and I imagine to all of the arts). People ask for stuff for free all the time and offer “exposure” as compensation, as if they’re being magnanimous and doing us a huge favor by asking for free work. You wouldn’t do it to your doctor, or your lawyer; why do it for these other specialized skills that also take years to master?

33. And then there are former journalists, like Mike Ross at Gigcity.ca, who pay actual story rates even though their websites are relatively tiny, because it’s just the right thing to do.

    1. Oh, and Will, as a journalist for twenty-five years who got out in part because of the new face of the biz, .06 cents a word is insulting. The bare minimum for news was .10 cents a word TWENTY YEARS AGO. ANd columnists (like your piece) typically would get from between $50-100 for a very short piece (500 words or less) and into the hundreds for a long piece.

34. Huffington Post has been notoriously publishing work without paying writers since they began. This isn’t a new practice for them, nor is it particular to Wil’s work.

    I’m a little confused because the article Wil’s talking about was first published on Medium which is another platform that I’m pretty sure doesn’t pay writers. Or does it? Maybe Wil got paid to publish on Medium.

    Or is the difference that you choose to contribute to a platform like Medium to spread the word, and Huffington Post came to you directly to republish the work?

    Personally, I’ve never understood how Huffington Post gets away with it. They have an immense revenue stream, and yet tons of writers contribute for free. Including prolific and famous people.

    1. You wondered if Medium pays it’s writers: I haven’t received anything, but then I never got anything from any other blogging platform, not that I ever wrote enough. I managed to get a couple of dollars from banner ads back in the early 2000s on Fortune City, but I needed $20 in my account to cash out, then Fortune City folded. Anyway, enough about me and more about Medium. I think Medium is an odd beast. I’m largely positive towards it since it’s so easy to use and I treat it like any other blog/hosting provider (like WordPress/Blogger): I get a free platform, Medium gets my content as part of its social network. I have no idea how Medium will make money with their current strategy. I’ve seen BMW-sponsored posts, but that’s it.

35. As a member of Master Photographers International Organization and photographer of 25 years, dealing with this issue constantly, I applaud your response and sharing of it on Twitter. We need more people like you SPEAKING OUT! Thank you.

36. You’re right. Good writing is hard work, and it deserves compensation.

    As a freelance blogger, I’m thankful for customers who believe my content is worth paying for, because I do my best to make it have value, and that takes work. I’m also an art instructor and a face painter. In my fine art or art instructor capacity, no one ever asks me to work for free. However, in my face painting capacity, I’m constantly bombarded by organizations who want me to work for exposure. Many of them have budgets for entertainment and fundraising, but they don’t want to dip into them or go to the trouble of finding a larger sponsor if they can get a service for free. With my business costs running at approximately 50% of my regular fee, exposure is a costly, ineffective form of advertising. The only exceptions I make are several non-profit causes which I choose to support each year because I was already closely involved with them before I became a face painter.

    As they say, you can die from exposure. (Given the option, I’d rather not.)

37. I have a number of favorite answers for these people:

    Do you work for free?

    Please come to my house and wash my car.

    Do you try this with your plumber? Electrician?

    Fuck you.

38. Yep, got one of those emails today. There about as much fun as getting requests for sponsored posts that ask you not to disclose “keep your usual style of writing and this shouldn’t necessary be a sponsored post”. Sooo annoying!

39. Neither party is in the wrong here. Wil is certainly entitled to seek compensation for his work; he put effort into it, crafted something that’s clearly unique enough for HuffPost to get excited about it, and deserves to be paid at least the bare minimum for his work. HuffPost, on their end, has a right to approach- APPROACH writers with the offer of “exposure”. However, if they are shown repeatedly that authors/artists cannot pay the bills with exposure, they should change their business model and begin compensating those content creators instead.

    Also, show me how Wil freaking Wheaton needs exposure?!? Most people who have ever dipped a toe into internet and/or geek culture at least know OF him, even if they haven’t watched every episode of Tabletop or read Dancing Barefoot. HuffPost should have known a little bit better in this particular case. I’m not saying “celebrities deserve money while non-celebrities don’t”, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work. I’m just saying they should have exercised a little bit of common sense.

40. As someone who is relatively well known, you would be adding exposure to their site, not the other way around. So they are literally offering you nothing.

41. You made the right call. Huffington Post should pay writers. I remember a time getting paid $1.00 per word for magazine articles. Now professional writers compete with bloggers who write for exposure. I stopped writing. Now I create adult colouring books. Drawing helps me turn my bipolar2 into a Super Power and keeps me off the streets. Sandra

42. Sorry, but 99% of you are not on Wil’s league and thus must give it away. You give it away until you can afford not to. I am making serious money as a blogger as well as a paid writer for companies like Char-Broil, Kraft, Farmland Bacon, and many others. I gave away a TON of content and because I did, I got enough exposure that when someone contacts me now for content, my first question is “What’s your budget?”

    Sorry, Wil, but the article only pertains to a very tiny percentage of bloggers/content creators. The rest have to give it away until they can do without the exposure and ask, “What’s your budget,” knowing that a good half of whom ask for content will say they have no budget and thus the exposure and the pay are both gone.

    Give it away until you can afford to get by without the exposure.

    1. If the people who weren’t worth the money would stop giving it away, maybe the internet wouldn’t be 90% of such awful crap.

43. Well said , Will. Often we are blinded by the possibility of being noticed. We allow others to prey on our weaknesses so that they can succeed rather than standing up for our own possibile outcomes.
    There are so many things that hinder our ability to succeed. What is even more disturbing is that many of us feel we don’t deserve the success we create. We are conditioned to believe we are not good enough or smart enough to pursue our endeavors. Ultimately, it is how we feel about ourselves that determines our ability to succeed. We must overcome the stigmas and the judgements that have hindered our efforts and stand up for ourselves.

44. I’m starving from exposure 🙁

45. So true, A friend is a professional hula hooper (yes, they exist!) and had a similar issue with Oprah Winfrey asking her to perform for free during her national tour. Jezebel picked up the story here: http://jezebel.com/oprah-expects-hula-hoopers-to-accept-payment-in-the-for-1659855673

    1. If Huffington Post just bothered to read the first paragraph of the post that they wanted to publish for free, basic common sense should have been enough to know that you couldn’t just contribute your efforts for nothing.

       Should have told the editor that, “There is going to be a charge for using my blog post no matter what,”

       Respect for your integrity has increased 100 fold. Wish everyone would stand up to wage theft the way you did.

46. I could not agree more. It would be one thing if it is an up-and-coming forum or a new platform, but Huffington Post? Seriously? That is nothing other than big corporate greed. Thank you for standing up for writers and artists and workers everywhere.

    1. But it SHOULDN’T be a different situation for an up-and-coming forum or new platform. You want to start a business, you pay for it. My dad didn’t get free groceries for the first year because he opened a “new” convenience store. I didn’t get a free computer when I became a new trainer. My wife sure as heck didn’t get a free Masters degree when she became a new teacher.

47. Thank you for sharing. I had a similar experience with trying to sell my food column to other newspapers (it’s in two). They want the column but don’t want to pay.

48. Thanks Will. As a photographer, this is a huge problem for many of us and aspiring photographers too. Luckily I’m in a position where I can afford refuse to work for exposure, and though I have bills to pay, generally I refuse out of principle more than anything. Its a shame some people devalue creatives in society and are quick to make light of our jobs as “a legitimate profession” (i.e. The uncle at your graduation party “so what are you going to do with that art degree??”). It isn’t until they need a photograph, story, jingle, poster design, whatever, that they suddenly realize our value. If more people understood this and paid us what we were worth, our jobs wouldn’t be seen as “frivolous pursuits of the art world.” And would hold just as much weight as other “practical” professions.

49. I was just getting to the end of writing my first blog for Gamsatura when I read this and I find myself in a similar position. I’m going to post the blog on my own website and it would be nice if that attracted enough people. Sadly it doesn’t, and I really need the exposure. My game is stumbling through Greenlight and I need to find ways of getting it some attention. Writing this blog will, maybe, give my a little extra exposure, hopefully.
    The post is about 2500 words and it’s taken me fours days of writing and re-writing. It’s been a lot of hard work. Getting a bit a money for that would be wonderful (haven’t earned anything in two years 🙁 ). On balance, if Gamasutra making some money off work I do for free gets me some votes, kinda have to do it.

50. Writing has been my main source of personal income and I’ll soon need a job to be able to pay for household expenses because the annuity won’t last forever. Right now, Briana and I manage. We are able to pay bills and get food and gasoline with the annuity and her SSDI (she gets to have some “play” things with it that help me out, too). I’d rather have a job than not or have to find TONS of writing gigs. Six cents a word is RARE at any site. It shouldn’t be, though. Why don’t companies pay contributors what they are worth?

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