It starts out in the usual way — either it’s an email from a stranger sending an article pitch (not bothering to notice I’m not a magazine staffer), or it’s a LinkedIn connection that turns into an ask almost immediately. Last week, it was in my email. And one email stands out.<\/p>\n

The guy asked me if I would consider him for a job at my company. You read that right — my company. Yes, I have a company name, but I don’t publish it, so he was clearly shooting in the dark. I informed him of such. I said, “I don’t hire freelancers as I am one myself.”<\/p>\n

Ah, but our intrepid friend wasn’t finished, no no. He responded within minutes:<\/p>\n

\u201cOk.\u00a0But should you have surplus work or referral I would very grateful.\u00a0Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I bet you would. But that’s never happening.<\/p>\n

That, my friends, is the ask you as a freelancer should never make of another freelancer:<\/p>\n

[bctt tweet=”Asking another writer to pass along their #freelancewriting work is poaching. And lousy marketing.” username=”LoriWidmer”]<\/p>\n

It sure is. It’s also a good way to build up a network of writers who will avoid you at all costs. Here’s why.<\/p>\n

As a freelancer, I work damn hard to build client relationships. I put the time into finding the client, and I put the work into making sure they’re satisfied. There’s a trust that develops, and that’s not just a cool little bonus. That’s by intention.<\/p>\n

And now this stranger comes along and asks me to just hand over that trust and let him have at it. Because he needs work. Because he asked.<\/p>\n

Not a f**king chance.<\/h3>\n

When you ask a writer to give you their extra work, you’re asking them to let you poach their clients. Not that you’ll get the chance — most established writers aren’t going to hand anything over without knowing what kind of writer you are and whether you can be trusted.<\/p>\n

For the record, the guy in question mentioned the phrase that guarantees he’ll never get a thing from me — “100% plagiarism free content.” If that’s your main selling point, you need to work on a lot of things, the first being your common sense. But I digress.<\/p>\n

I’ve had friends ask the same thing. That one’s tougher because these are people you know. But do you know their work ethic? Only two requests in my 22 years of writing have been taken seriously. I know both writers personally, and I know their work ethic (one because he was a freelancer for the magazine I worked for). I would give both of these writers any leads I could if they fit. I have. But it’s not overflow work. I refer people to clients who need extra help, or to clients who don’t fit what I do.<\/p>\n

And there’s the other point:<\/p>\n

The writing focus must fit.<\/h3>\n

I’m in a very specialized field. Maybe you are, too. Even if you’re not, you know your clients’ needs. You know how to please them. Any writer — friend or otherwise — has to have the same skill set or the same ability to do the job. I know plenty of great writers. Most of them wouldn’t fit what I do. I sure wouldn’t fit what they do. A stranger asking to write “100% plagiarism free content” is never going to fit with my client, nor do I think they’ll fit with yours.<\/p>\n

The skill set has to match. It has to. Otherwise, that writer isn’t going to deliver. I learned that early on when I assigned a piece to a writer and never saw it. When I contacted her six weeks later, she said, “Yeah, that was harder than I thought, so I decided not to do it.”<\/p>\n

There’s also something to be said for being professional enough to state that directly instead of being chased down at the last damn minute. But again, I’m digressing.<\/p>\n

Don’t ask for overflow work. Don’t ask for someone to share their client list with you. Don’t ask strangers for favors. Build relationships with other writers, but most importantly, build them with the very people you hope will be your clients. It’s on you to find your own work. Referrals come from being a good resource to others, and by delivering great results for your own clients first. If you do that much, you’ll never need to beg others for work.<\/p>\n

Writers, how many requests like this do you see, either online or in your email?
\nWhat’s the worst ask you’ve ever received?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happened to me last week. Twice. To be fair, it happens to plenty of established writers pretty regularly. I’m no exception, believe me. It comes from friends, but mostly it comes from strangers. It’s unpleasant no matter who it comes from. I’m talking about someone asking for my “overflow” work. Let’s just skip the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-8346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-freelance-work","tag-finding-freelance-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8348,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346\/revisions\/8348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}