Doing Something for the Benefit of Exposure May Not be Worth it

Providing a service or product for free for exposure, or spending money on something for the sake of the exposure, is often a glamorous lie.  In most cases, exposure does not actually pay any bills and most bill collectors will not accept it as a form of payment.

I feel new businesses and up-starts fall prey to this more often than established businesses do.  The more established businesses may have already encountered a few glamorous exposure lies and new businesses are often targeted.  When I first started freelancing during my college years, I was approached a lot about doing graphics for free with the promise of the exposure it could bring me.  After I graduated, I moved to Atlanta and struggled to get my feet wet with my freelance business there.  Finding clients was my biggest hurdle.

Because I was still relatively new to not just the city, but also the industry, I was met with offers of designing, again for exposure, rather than a monetary payment.  Slim budgets, just needing something temporary or right now, were often the reasons given.  Having something I designed in front of lots of people, etc and/or having my name or logo listed and credited with the work would “expose” me and bring me more business.  At least, that is what I was often told.  I do believe that in some cases, the person pitching this to me really believed what they were saying.  I believed it to and ended up doing a lot of free work that did not net me a dime.

From a business standpoint, it was a loss.  What I do takes time and effort and I charge for that time and effort.  Doing it for free, was basically a donation to someone else’s dream and cause.  The reason why I did not net from the exposure is not because I didn’t do good work, but because the audience I was being “exposed” to, was not my demographic.  It was not the audience that would most likely use my services.  I highly doubt that someone received a club flyer and said, “Hmmm…although I am a struggling college student, I am going to hire the person who made this flyer to create my brand identity for the company I don’t have.”  I received exposure, but not to the right people.

It has been a long time since the last time that I was approached to do something for free, for exposure.  However, a few months back, I was pitched by the marketing department of a local news station to purchase advertising space on their website.  “It will be great exposure and put your brand in front of more people,” I was told by the marketer.  It sounded glamorous, and like something I might be interested in doing at first thought, but as I began to ask more questions; I realized that it wasn’t really that great.

I would receive a business page on their site and one web ad.  When I asked where the ad would be on their site, I was told it would be buried somewhere deep in an obscure part of their site.  Not their words of course, but the reality of where it would be in my eyes.  I asked if the traffic numbers he told me applied to that page…he did not know and needed to ask a supervisor.  The final answer was, no.  The business pages did not have those quoted traffic numbers either and the video that would appear would be hosted on their YouTube channel and not mine.  All in all, there was no value that I would gain by paying for this advertising.

It made me realize that although I was no longer being approached for free work in exchange for irrelevant exposure; I had reached the next level of being asked to pay for irrelevant exposure.  The glamorous lie was no longer free.

Have you ever been approached to provide a product or a service in exchange for exposure?  Did you benefit from the exposure?