It may sound harsh especially for small brands with no marketing budget to spare but the fact is that unpaid collaborations are not fair on anyone. Surely anyone running a business – big or small – can see that without income there is no business. And while many content creators only work on their blogs or social media as a hobby, some of us make a living out of it.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I would think that visiting the Outlandish Blog showcases clearly that this site doesn’t run itself. There’s a lot of time and effort, as well as money, that has gone into building, maintaining and growing this site.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong and just in my own, biased bubble. After all, I built this Blog from scratch with my own fair hands, so it is my baby. Perhaps it’s just me who sees the quality and the integrity of it all because I created it.
In any case, I stand behind what I said; as an entrepreneur (especially), collaborating for free is not viable at all. And I’ll go even further: I don’t think anyone should need to collaborate for free! Regardless of whether they’re creating content just as a hobby or as a way to make money.
Allow me to explain why! (Beware, this is going to get spicy.)
Why Unpaid Collaborations Are a Pain in an Entrepreneur’s Ass
I repeat, I know times are hard especially for sustainable fashion brands. Many of those brands are small and struggle to get traction in a market where ultra fast fashion rules. As such, marketing isn’t the first thing they need to or can invest in. I get it!
But I really hope that these brands also understand our, the content marketer‘s side of the story. Unpaid collaborations are an inconvenience and unfair for content creators who rely on their online platforms as an income source.
And even if one isn’t relying on their online platform as an income source, creating content is hard work (it is!) and free labor is still slavery. I may come across as angry, but that is because I am angry!
I will not apologise for that because you would be angry too if your skills and expertise were disrespected, underrated and taken for granted like this. Which brings us to the first point:
1. Time is money
Surely this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone in the 2020’s!? Creating high quality content takes a lot of time and effort; it’s work. The people who doubt that, make it publicly known that they have no clue what they’re talking about! As such, no, these people are not entitled to an opinion on the matter.
Creating content that resonates with audiences (which surely is the whole point) requires:
- doing research on the topic at hand
- writing/scripting the content
- filming the content or taking photographs
- editing the content (video editing and spell-checking require actual skill, in case you didn’t know)
- checking and optimising SEO for the content
- promoting the content on social media and online forums
All of the above takes hours, even days. Now, would you like to do as much work for no payment whatsoever? Of course you wouldn’t, so why the hell do you expect content creators to do so??
And that’s not all! All that time spent creating content is time away from other projects, advertising and growth activities like sales, networking, etc. All things that are necessary to bring in cash so that even us lowly content creators can stay alive. Is that too much to ask?
2. Undervaluing our skills and expertise needs to end
Content creators have been shunned from the beginning. This is predominantly because it’s a women-led industry in a world where misogyny is running rampant. But guess what? That doesn’t mean that there would be any truth in this doubt! Quite the contrary:
Content creators, whether we’re talking about bloggers, TikTokers or Youtubers, bring to the table:
- niche knowledge on a variety of topics and make it easily available for large audiences wherever, whenever
- audience-building skills, like marketing, sales, networking, cross-cultural communication, etc.
- skills to collect and analyse data and analytics, as well as use that data to optimise content strategies
- content-production experience and expertise.
That list consists of skills from multiple different vocations. And you expect these multi-talented professionals to gift you free labor? Talk about being disrespectful!
3. Unpaid collaborations = unequal exchange
Brands that suggest unpaid collaborations expect content creators to put in a full day’s work for all the gains. Gains like visibility online, reaching new audiences, professional marketing efforts, and authentic credibility. And they expect all of this in exchange for a piece of clothing.
We covered the biggest issues with this approach in the previous two points, but here’s one more major problem: gifted products don’t pay the rent. Go ahead and try to suggest to your landlord to accept a bag of gifted fashion items in exchange for a roof over your head. Let me know how it goes!
In addition to such thinking being beyond idiotic, it’s an extremely unequal transaction model. All the benefits to the brand with no corresponding benefit for the creator… Are you kidding me?!
4. Product-based collaborations create financial instability
Continuing from the previous point, while we can’t eat gifted products or use them to pay rent, product-based collaborations cause even more issues:
Life is pretty impossible without a stable income, but product collaborations also affect things like taxing, budgeting and business planning. That’s something that most people don’t even know about. Of course it depends on the country that the creator lives in, but many countries do also tax gifted products, etc.
How is the content creator supposed to pay those taxes if there is no income apart from products? Also considering that these are often products that aren’t that valuable. The work that a content creator puts into promoting the gifted products is much more valuable.
So, why do so many brands think that content creators shouldn’t be paid for that work?
5. Normalising unpaid collaborations promotes exploitative practices
Content creating is still a relatively new industry and unfortunately millions of brands have already normalised unpaid collaborations. It’s natural for a new blogger or social media creator to accept products as payment. It gives them the impression that they’re doing the right things!
That isn’t necessarily the case, though. I have certainly been used multiple times by brands when I was starting off. The thing that I don’t understand about it is that the brands didn’t benefit from those early collaborations either…
The more content creators accept unpaid collabs, the more normalised it becomes. That’s why it’s so important that such a valuable women-led industry got clear with how how worthy it is! Women need to learn to prioritise themselves and their businesses to be respected as they should.
It’s not all about money either: continuous unpaid work erodes motivation and can lead to unfounded feelings of inferiority. Mental health issues ensue… Unpaid work, no matter what sort of work, is not a fucking joke!
6. Lack of professionalism
The last thing that gets my goat about unpaid collaborations is the apparent unprofessionalism of these brands. They expect professional-level work and results without professional-level compensation. And knowing this, every time I get an email that follows the lines of:
“We haven’t allocated any budget for this collaboration”
I immediately lose all respect for that brand. Clearly y’all don’t know how ‘doing business’ works! As an entrepreneur myself, I would be completely embarrassed to even suggest something like that. Why aren’t these brands embarrassed??
In addition, many brands target very new/small content creators with not much traffic (like me 8 years ago). While this is good training for those who are starting off their content journey, it doesn’t really benefit the brand and is still unfair for the content creator.
Surely the point of brands collaborating with content creators is to ensure better reach and more sales, right? As such, one would assume that these brands would try and find relevant creators with established sites/platforms.
An established creator obviously means that time and effort has been spared. So, why shouldn’t the brand spare a little effort as well? Or maybe I got this all wrong thinking that monetary benefit should be the goal of both parties…
How to deal with unpaid collaborations?
I’m exhausted after writing this… Clearly there was some anger that needed to be let out. To end on a more positive note, let’s see how we can avoid being scammed by these unpaid collaborations and unprofessional brands in the future:
- Content creators must accept that content creation is an actual job that requires genuine skills and expertise; as such, it’s worth the money!
- To determine fair rates content creators should base their prices on their own experience as well as their channel’s/website’s scope and audience size.
- For security and peace of mind signing a contract especially for longer collaborations is recommended! Such contracts should include deliverables, timelines, prices and content usage rights.
- When you encounter brands that are not prepared to pay for your time and work, be polite but firm: decline the offer but keep the door open in case they reconsider.
As an established content creator you are valuable and partnerships with you should reflect that! We all know that marketing is useful and costs money. Why would content marketing be any different? ♥
Follow me on TikTok and get to know me better by listening to my podcast, Random Rambles. If you wish to work with me, check out my services here!
