Is it ever worth offering your freelance services for free?

When first starting out in business, many freelancers come under pressure to provide services at a below cost price, if not free altogether. Obviously making services free will lead to a full order book, but will this strategy pay off in the longer term?

Free publicity

Providing services at no cost is a great way to establish yourself as a freelancer, build out your portfolio, and make some initial contacts. It is also a valuable networking technique, helping you to meet and work with key movers and shakers within an industry who can introduce you to new opportunities.

The wrong sort of clients?

The biggest danger attached to providing free services is that your customers will not truly value your efforts, even if they accept they will have to pay something in the future. Any price is more expensive than no price, and therefore these customers may not understand the time, effort, materials and resource costs that you incur every time you work for them.

Worse still, some clients assume that free work means that you do not place any real financial value on your own time, making it incredibly hard to negotiate a fair rate in the future.

A free trial?

Offering a free trial of a service can often be a good way to demonstrate the benefits to a client who may not otherwise be willing to commit to a longer-term contract. However, do proceed with caution. Some unscrupulous businesses use this technique to get work done without any intention of offering future projects. You should always carefully vet companies making approaches to determine whether they are serious about working with you (and paying you!) after the trial expires.

In some circumstances free work can deliver useful benefits. Don’t forget, however, that for your freelance business to succeed, you need to make sure you are generating enough profit to justify the amount of work you are putting in.