After read­ing some of my arti­cles on how to find copy­writ­ing clients, one of my stu­dents, Jeff, asked me an inter­est­ing question.

He’s an aspir­ing copy­writer and wants to build his own free­lance copy­writ­ing busi­ness. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copy­writer, he told me he was think­ing about doing the same.

How­ever, he won­dered if he should ask for some­thing, any­thing, in return. In fact, here was his question…

“Mike, my friends have a very small busi­ness, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a ref­er­ence and in my port­fo­lio. I think this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to get more expe­ri­ence, but my wife wants to see some money on the table.

“I value your opin­ion. Can you help?”

Here was my answer.

Ask­ing for a con­ces­sion in exchange for offer­ing one is always the way to do it. While I believe your trade-​​off is good in prin­ci­ple, it’s still mea­ger. I would con­sider some money — or some larger con­ces­sion on the part of the client. Here’s why…

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Scotty Stevens asked me an impor­tant ques­tion. So impor­tant that I’ve decided to reprint it here, with his permission:

“How far would you travel to meet a poten­tial client, if they had the deposit ready for your ser­vices? My girl­friend thinks the cus­tomer is pulling the strings if they don’t at least meet me halfway. Before, I’ve always trav­eled as far as it takes, even if it meant dri­ving all the way to the cus­tomer, but is that set­ting a weak precedent?”

Good ques­tion, but it’s the wrong one.

“How far would you travel” is irrel­e­vant. A bet­ter ques­tion is, do they value your time? Do they respect it enough that they are will­ing to pay for it? In other words, are they will­ing to cover your travel expenses and pay for you to go out of your way for them?

If so, then I’d be will­ing to travel anywhere.

I would always con­sider trav­el­ling to meet a prospect if the project was large enough, and pro­vided they paid for what is com­monly referred to in this indus­try as “TMI” (i.e., travel, meals, and inci­den­tals). And in some cases, for my time, too.

(By the way, travel includes lodg­ing, and inci­den­tals include pho­to­copy­ing, long-​​distance calls, Inter­net con­nec­tion in the hotel room, car rental, etc.)

Plus, I would ask them for an advance so I can take care of my own expenses. I would avoid get­ting them to han­dle my trip on their end. I would want to have full con­trol over the choice of air­line, hotel, restau­rants, etc.

If you were dri­ving to meet them, then the client — or, in this case, the prospect — should pay for your gas, nor­mal wear-​​and-​​tear on your car (such as $[X] per mile), your meals, and any inci­den­tals. And lodg­ing too, if you were stay­ing overnight.

There’s a very good rea­son for this.

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We can­not depend much in most lines on the active help of job­bers or of deal­ers. They are busy. They have many lines to con­sider. The profit on adver­tised lines is not gen­er­ally large. And an adver­tised arti­cle is apt to be sold at cut prices.

The aver­age dealer does what you would do. He exerts him­self on brands of his own, if at all. Not on another mans brand.

The deal­ers will often try to make you think oth­er­wise. He will ask some aid or con­ces­sion on the ground of extra effort. Adver­tis­ers often give extra dis­counts. Or they make load­ing offers — per­haps one case free in ten — in the belief that loaded deal­ers will make extra efforts.

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