3 Reasons To Work For Free

With all this talk about the legality of unpaid internships, I started wondering where unpaid work (not specified as an internship) would fall in this argument. Where do you draw the line between doing work for free and for a fee?

Otherwise You Have to Pay Someone Else

Perhaps we draw the line between work that benefits us as individuals directly as opposed to benefiting another person. For example, most of us clean our homes, cook our own food, plant gardens, write our own resumes, do our taxes (arguably beneficial), raise our own children, and paint our own toes; all of which I consider “work” without being paid. Yet some people do exactly those tasks as paid work. Cooks, gardeners, resume-writers, accountants, nannies, and nail technicians are all paid to do exactly the same task we could do ourselves but for one reason or another chose not to. This point is pretty obvious though, because honestly, the only time and place that someone would pay you to clean up was back when you were 5 years old trying to earn your allowance from your parents.

You Don’t Know What The Hell You’re Doing

Or perhaps we draw the line at our perceived experience of skill level at the task at hand. Even if we’re doing work to directly benefit another person, say for example counseling high school students to get into college, giving some an awesome new hair-do, or photographing a friend’s wedding, there are instances where we’ll do that work for free. We may feel as though we don’t have enough experience to justify being paid for giving advice. We may need to complete a practicum or apprenticeship before we’re really qualified to cut someone’s hair for money better than they could trim their own bangs themselves. Sometimes we just don’t think that our skill or talent is good enough to charge a fee even if all of our friends keep telling us how amazing we are and that we need to start charging people (as is the case with thousands of artists and creative-types).

You Love It Too Much

Then again you may even be tempted drawing the line at the simple enjoyment level of the task. I think this is where most hobbies fit in because people are under the impression that if it’s fun, it can’t be work. This one is for all the amateur photographers, bloggers (if you’re still not earning an income from that), and geeky new social media kids who are just so stoked to even be doing what they’re doing that they’re not even thinking about money. Leaving a hobby as a hobby is fine, but…

Remember kids that just because you’re having a blast doing whatever you’re doing, that is certainly no excuse for not being paid if that’s what you want. In fact, we learned in an earlier post (credit to the comments) that you should in fact find some enjoyment in your paid job–maybe even a lot of fun!

For what other reasons have you worked for free? Has anyone ever asked you to work for free because they knew how much you loved it (and therefore would do it anyways)? If so, did you give in and do the work for free (or if not, how did you convince the potential employer/client to pay you)?