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A LONG-SUFFERING friend of mine shared this cartoon by The Oatmeal a while back and it spread like wildfire amongst those of us who identify as ‘creatives’:
Ring true? If so, the chances are that you work in the creative industry too.
There are myriad reasons why it has become widely accepted that in order to find gainful employment or succeed as a freelancer in the creative industries, you first need to give your soul away to the devil for free. Selling it just isn’t an option unless you can first demonstrate that you have sold souls before. You get where I’m going with this.
I know, valuing your work can be scary. What if they don’t want to pay for my services? What if they hire someone else instead? What if I negotiate myself out of the market? And, once you quash these fears, the burning, seemingly unanswerable question… What should I charge?
Valuing the worth of your own work can be difficult. For one, it’s a subjective process, and many of us tend to be our own worst critics. Negotiating is often something that creative types aren’t great at, generally speaking. But it’s important to establish your pricing structure early on. Are you going to charge on a value-based model or a performance-based one? The sooner you put aside some time to determine your worth and set your rates, the more time you’ll have to concentrate on going after those jobs that will pay dividends.
In saying that, I won’t assert that one should never work for free. But it is, as Angela Dorgan, CEO of First Music Contact, who offer free guidance and resources to people working in the independent music sector in Ireland, says, a case of holding true to the idea of a ‘value exchange’.
“You can’t pay rent with exposure,” Angela says. “But at the same time, if what you’re being offered once is a gateway into future earnings, then you should always weigh up what the value exchange is. For example, say a new filmmaker is asking you to put a track to their film and neither of you are getting paid; if you love the project and you love where they’re going with it, then that is up to you to see if you synergise creatively, and that’s always a lovely thing to consider.
“What you shouldn’t do is, if you’re asked for a track after a film has wrapped, and they offer it to you for exposure, and the lighting engineer was paid, and the caterer has been paid, and everyone else was paid and you’re not – then I would stand firm,” she says.
As Angela points out, there are, as with anything, exceptions to the rule. If charity gigs, mutually beneficial collaborations or large festivals with the chance to be seen by bookers offer you good value exchange on a specific occasion, then it may well be beneficial to you. Even lawyers and doctors occasionally take on pro bono work for these kinds of reasons.
But by and large, if you’re going to be a writer, photographer, illustrator, videographer, artist, musician, etc as your ‘actual job’?
You need to get used to saying “I don’t work for free.” Because exposure doesn’t pay the bills.
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& Fair play to Ryanair, good luck in the future
@Dominick Lavin: A “thank you” special dividend to loyal shareholders and staff who hung in there would not be surprising.
@Dominick Lavin: Just prove that people can take any abuse if you let them to save few bucks..
Not bad results for an airline which many posters on here over the last few weeks have suggested is on the way out or could go bust.
@Nick Allen: Well, that’s the first half of the year to be fair. The second half is where the mess up happened.
@Peter:
I am sure that with profits of 1.29BN in the first 6 months of the year and anticipating to carry 50m passengers (about 4 times as many as Aer Lingus will carry in a full year) during the second 6 months of the year that they may manage to keep their heads above water and avoid the debt collectors knocking on the door.
@Nick Allen: the part you’re missing is where the cheapest airline has to pay for a more expensive airline to carry their passengers and has to cover the extra cost on each and every one.
@Dave O Keeffe: Quick maths. 1.29bn profit, 20k flights cancelled. That means they have roughly 65k of profit to distribute to cover costs of each flight cancelled. Ryanair planes carry about 180 passengers. So if the cancelled flight were full that means they have about 350 Euro to compensate each passenger, just using the profits of H1 this year……hmmm I think they will be ok
@Mary Murphy: Quick maths. Ryanair flights are not full. H2 will show a massive fall off in capacity, revenue and load factor. I think we should wait for full year results before jumping to defence mode.
First half of the year?
The second half was the time that its staff abandoned the airline en masses for worker exploitation.
The interesting thing is that they are expecting the year profit to be as they thought or planned. That would leave any rational person to believe that they knew the disaster they were facing into in the second half of the year much earlier and factored into their profits for the year.
@Hank_Scorpio:
where does it say that?
@Nick Allen: it doesn’t but I have read various news articles about it today.
Well considering the disruption happened in the last 3 weeks of their half year results not a shock….
Despite all of the begrudgery this man is here to stay
How much of those ‘profits’ is money owed to passengers for compensation but were not paid by ryanair?
@Andy K: None. Any monies owed to passengers are accrued in the accounts.
That “despite” means absolutely nothing considering everything listed after happened in the second half of the year.
@Amy Wallis:
Obviously all the disruption caused damage to Ryanair but not in a direct sense. Given the enormous size of Ryanair the loss of revenue from those flights and cost of compensation will be a drop in an ocean to them.
It’s the long term possible loss of reputation that matters, and that would be difficult to quantify.
And I remember the state banks returning similar figures during the Celtic Tiger.
Fly Dublin to Barcelona with Ryanair or Aer Lingus for a family of 5 cost 1,500 in June 2018 , change departure airport to Belfast cost 485.00 . Rip off Ireland alive and well !
Lies lies and more lies…
@MickeyC: “Lies” are spelled “marketing” in capitalism.
Great news – well done Ryanair. Keep the success story going and the fares affordable
Was it iphone 4 that have a problem with signal unless you handle it special way? Was it iphone 6 bending in a pocket like some banana? All that issues never stopped Apple from selling them in millions…
These are results from the first half of 2017 – pre all the mishaps, so change the headline of the article
have your say