Why I Don't Write Free for For-Profit Companies (and Why You Shouldn't Either)

In this article

• The rule, stated plainly
• What free work actually does to the writing market
• An analogy nurses will feel in their bones
• What 'exposure' really delivers (and what it doesn't)
• How to recognize the offer when it shows up in your inbox
• Why I treat nonprofit work as a different category entirely

I have strong feelings about this one. Let me tell you why.

Conventional advice for new freelance writers includes some version of the following: when you're starting out, take some unpaid work for-profit companies offer you. Get clips. Show what you can do. The money will come.

This advice is half right. The half it gets wrong is the half that hurts new freelance writers the most, and the half that quietly hurts the entire writing industry.

Here's the rule I follow, and the one I teach.

The rule

I don't write free for for-profit companies. Ever.

No exceptions for "good exposure," "a foot in the door," "a great opportunity to build your portfolio," or any of the other phrases for-profit companies use to get free work out of new writers.

If a for-profit company is asking you to write for free, walk away. Not just because the offer is rude. Because the offer is structurally wrong, and accepting it sets you up for years of underpriced work — and worse, makes that the norm for every writer who comes after you.

This isn't only about you

Here's the part the conventional advice chooses to ignore. When freelance writers accept free work from for-profit companies, we don't only undercharge ourselves. We devalue the entire writing market.

Each unpaid for-profit project teaches the buyer that this category of work doesn't have to be paid for. Each writer who says yes confirms it. The pricing pressure compounds across the industry. Clients learn to lowball. They learn that if they ask enough writers, eventually one will say yes for nothing or near-nothing.

So the underpaid writer in 2026 doesn't just cost themselves a fair rate. They lower the floor for every writer pitching that same client in 2027 and 2028.

This is why I get angry about it. The damage doesn't stop at the writer who accepted the offer.

Imagine if this happened in nursing

Try this thought experiment, because I think it lands differently for us than for non-clinicians.

Imagine if hospitals could legally recruit licensed nurses to work for free. "We don't have a budget for nurses on this unit, but it'll be great experience." "You don't have a lot of years in yet, so you should take the volunteer position to build your skills." "We'll feature you in the staff newsletter." "It's a great cause."

What would happen to nursing wages?

They'd collapse. Within a few years, hospitals would have full units of unpaid nurses, and the paid nurses would either accept the new rate or leave the profession.

This is exactly what's happening in freelance writing right now. Every for-profit free-work arrangement chips away at what writers can charge. Every writer who accepts one helps it along.

Nurses understand exploitation when it's pointed at them. I'm asking you to recognize it when it's pointed at writers, too — because once you become a writer, it's pointed at you.

What "exposure" actually delivers

The standard rationalization for taking unpaid for-profit work is exposure. The argument: a publication with reach, a company with brand recognition, a client whose name on your portfolio will open doors.

Here's what exposure actually delivers, in my experience.

The clip exists. The byline appears – if there is one. The portfolio gets the link.

And then nothing happens. Because why would it?

Real freelance writing leads come from outreach (LOIs, queries, networking, referrals), not from clips on portfolio sites. Editors and clients hiring freelance writers don't browse portfolios looking for fresh names. They hire writers they already know, writers their colleagues recommend, and writers who reach out to them directly.

A clip from an unpaid project is a clip. It is not a marketing engine. The exposure promised is exposure to portfolio browsers who don't exist.

How to spot the offer in the wild

For-profit companies asking for free work tend to use a small set of recognizable phrases. Once you've seen them named, you'll spot the move from a mile away.

"We're a startup, so budgets are tight right now." Translation: we have funding for the things we value. Writing isn't one of them.

"This will be great exposure for you." Translation: we have reach. We're betting your career growth is worth more to you than your time is.

"Once you've worked with us, more work will follow." Translation: we want to test whether you'll work for nothing. If you do, we'll keep doing it, or we'll offer you a rate so low no self-respecting writer would take it.

"We're trying out a few writers and will pay the one we like best." Translation: we're getting four free articles, picking one, and discarding three writers who have just done unpaid spec work.

"This is for a great cause." Translation: this for-profit company is hoping you'll confuse them with a nonprofit. They aren't a nonprofit.

The nonprofit exception isn't really an exception

There's one place I write without payment, and it's a different category of work entirely.

Nonprofits.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit is structurally different from a for-profit company. The mission is the product. Budget constraints are real. The exchange a writer makes — writing in exchange for a published clip — is fundamentally different from what a for-profit is proposing.

A for-profit asking for free work is asking you to subsidize its margins.

A nonprofit asking for free work is inviting you to participate in mission-driven work they genuinely can't commission at market rate. I treat that as an in-kind donation: my time and skill, donated to a cause I support, in exchange for a published clip I can use to land paid work.

The difference matters. One is exploitation dressed up as opportunity. The other is reciprocity, structured as exchange.

The real cost of saying yes

The hidden cost of unpaid for-profit work isn't the time you give away. It's what saying yes once teaches you about your own work.

The first time a writer accepts unpaid for-profit work, they have implicitly priced their writing at zero. The second time, it's a habit. By the third, they're operating from the assumption that their writing's market value is somewhere south of free.

That assumption haunts the rate they quote on the next paying project. It haunts the negotiation they don't make. It haunts the rate increases they never request.

Don't pass that test. Don't write for free for for-profit companies. Don't accept the framing. Don't accept the offer.

Your writing is worth paying for. The buyers need to know it, and you need to know it too.