Would you write these samples? Possible scam?

While the company is in the right to see a sample of your writing, be careful. Don't just send them a free copy. They may just magically decide to use it themselves and not pay you. So if you ask about it, they'll give you the "Oh, I thought you said I could have a sample" excuse. Instead, point them to your website with the sample.

Before proceeding any further, I would recommend you check out Angela Hoy's site Writer'sWeekly.com on freelance writing. She and her husband are no-holds barred about blowing the whistle on companies/organizations taking advantage of writers. Check out her site.

 

If you don't hear back from the company, you can always use Article Checker to find out if the sample is being used.

 

If they burn you just write negative reviews at all the review places.

A lot of the review places rank high in google.. and fast.

Could be a good way to get your work out there on the first page or second page of google.

But I hope it legit and you get a good job.

 

Screwed them...

Most of the companies just looking for free resources and they didn't intented to pay you so.

Just follows your instinct, mate

 

The fact is that I've heard similar cases like yours before related to me by a good friend of mine. They will just simply use the article and sell it off without even paying anything. If they are really interested in your service, then why not propose something like giving a discount on the sample article offered much less at a lower price. Just be careful. It hurts to get cheated.

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Once you learn that your answer about whether you should write a free 1,200 word sample article becomes an easy decision.

 

Thanks to everyone that contributed to this thread and some of the other copywriting scams threads.

I recently got an offer to write from craigslist.org that fits all the patterns of these scams. After doing some research on DP, I required payment up front and that was the end of the emails.

 

I don't give free samples when asked. Instead I show my previously written work. There are very rare exceptions where I will provide a couple hundred words, but never a full article for free. There are FAR too many buyers out there that do just that. They ask for samples, collect several dozen and then disappear and use them. I just got duped here the other day in content creation. Guy said he'd pay good for 700 word articles. Several of us wrote them for him and now he has disappeared. Grrrrrrr.....

 

Dont give free samples. I encountered the same, but I found the company is not quite reliable and scamming other innocent sellers. Better you ask them, whether the samples are paid ones or not? Good Luck !

 

I agree. No free samples.

In fact, I don't write samples. I refer them to a site where there are 49 of my articles published on an array of topics. What is good about this is that all my articles are together and not scattered so it makes it easy for them to compare the articles.

If that is not good enough then I suppose that is too bad then. Sure they can see from there what they want to know. These articles are rated against other writer's articles relating to the same topics as well, so I can not see why I need to do a sample.

 

I totally agree that giving free samples is a bad idea.

As someone who hires many writers over the course of a year, I never accept pre-written samples though. I can't tell you how many times I've been sent a really high quality sample, only to recieve articles that upon completion are clearly not written by the same writer. It's a surefire way to waste time when you're hiring many different writers over the course of a year.

I always ask for a paid sample based on my keywords and specifications. If the quality of writing is not what I'm looking for, I simply take the loss if the content can't be used.

To me, this is more cost effective because as we all know time is money.

 

With this I agree 100%!

Those clients who are willing to pay for a test sample are those who are serious about having quality work.

I see writing free test samples as a gamble and if you are professional, you don't gamble with your work. Simple as that.

A wise old man once told me:

"no matter how hard financial times may be, if you do quality work, you will always have work. There will always be work for quality workers, regardless if you are a street sweeper or a salesman..."

 

See, when I am looking for people to come and work for me I prefer to see what they can do now rather than seeing what they have done previously, although I don't completely neglect what they have previously done as it still shows what they're about.

The reason being is that I may have done all of these designs/codes ten years ago and may not be up to scratch nowadays as I was back then, also, getting them to give you a live example shows that they are able to work with just a few details given in order to finish sufficient work.

I usually give the same piece of work to both or all of the people wanting to work and say that they need to come up with their own theme in order to show me what to do, something in which I don't need to have other than to test their abilities to see if they're competant enough to work with and for me.

 

Moley - If you want custom samples, I sure as heck hope you're being professional enough to pay for them.

It doesn't matter if a design or code was done years ago or now. If anything, it would speak to their experience. And there's a really simple solution -- ask them when it was done.

If someone demands free work up front for job consideration, they're not worth the writer's consideration. You should NEVER have to pay in any way for consideration for a freelance job (and that's what giving your time away for free is, since you're sacrificing other potential billable time).

 

Of course i pay for examples, I wouldn't expect any less. - a negotiated price between the person and my company.

I understand that previous works do show experience, but, I think that it can't be only based on experience, as there are always new and exciting talents coming up that have yet to work for a number of years and I do sincerely believe that if they have potential then they need to be given a chance somewhere, why not try and mould them into your own?

 

That's perfectly fine then, and not the scam variety freelancers are often exposed to. We're often asked to write free custom samples (in situations like the one you described). The "client" gets free samples from several writers and then publishes one or more of them without paying. Then they don't actually hire anyone (since they got the work for free). Unfortunately it's pretty common, especially in places like DP. Glad you're not in that group.

 

Personally, I think you've been had. I hope they do come back to you but I wouldn't write a custom 1200 word sample for anyone! If calling them to chase doesn't help, put this one down to experience and don't fall for that one again. Good luck.

 

I sincerely hope you're not naive enough to just take my words as gospel, I'm not saying that I was lying, but, you knoww what I mean, you've had no proof from me and there is no way to prove I'm telling the truth, not that I have any reason not to tell the truth.

 

Well Moley, she is not working for you and this is an open thread. So she is just being polite, I would say.

As regards OP - The maximum I would write as a 'sample' is 500 words and that too only after the client has made an advance payment of some kind. People are right – I would rather be putting in extra effort for my existing clients than waste time with someone who is not satisfied after reading my existing samples. Just to be fair, I usually link to or copy/paste samples that are relevant or at least close to the subject matter of the project being discussed.

In short - heck no! I wouldn't write a sample like that. You've been taken for a ride. We have all had similar experiences. Just learn from it and move on. Not much else to do.

 

That is true, all of us in this trade have been scammed one or other way. How does that saying go?

"If taken once it is your fault, if taken twice it is mine..."

We as writers must learn to regard our writing as a business.

If you had a clothing store, you would not give clothing away to clients to see if they like it or it fits them, would you? So why must an article writer "shop" give away merchandise to see if the client is happy with it first?

We all know you can go back to the shop for a refund if the expectations was not met after the purchase has been made?

One thing I usually do if I am looking for an article writer is to have a conversation via IM. With a little bit of common sense you can easily see from the conversation you are having if this person is educated and capable of writing.

This is more valuable to me than a sample article. Through this conversation you can see if the person have the right language skills, what type of language he use, the attitude you are likely to deal with and many more.

Think about it...