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Is It Unprofessional to Send a Client A Sample of My Work In Image Format?

by tedwood
16 replies
This one has puzzled me for a while now. In a sense I have one half of me saying "Better play it on the safe side, you don't want them stealing your work" and the other half of me is saying "What!? Don't you trust your clients or something!?".
As you can tell the main reason I send my prospective clients samples is out of the idea that if they had bad intentions from the start they may just steal my article and publish it without my approval.
What do more of the experienced members of this forum think?
#client #format #image #sample #send #unprofessional #work
  • Profile picture of the author Roland Hop
    I don't see why that would be a problem. But send it as a .png so it doesn't artifact the text if you did it with .jpg.
    I can understand how sending your work as a picture can sound rude to someone who is looking for a contractor. But you can also send the work as a .pdf that is protected. Of course it's not too hard to unlock a pdf but it's not that hard to rewrite the text from a image either.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Solem
    I always posted example of work that I've done on my website and listed the link - but didn't directly link to it from my site.

    If you're sending examples of work that you've done that's not already an existing website, I think an image either via pdf or just uploaded as a png would work, unless you need to show off some kind of special functionality you're selling.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author tedwood
    Thanks for your responses guys. It's just that i've done it a few times now and I'm not getting the response rates I want. It could just be people that are playing me around though. Will have to try out this new method now.
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  • Profile picture of the author warhammer
    PDF is the way to go.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by tedwood View Post

    I have one half of me saying "Better play it on the safe side, you don't want them stealing your work"
    Prepayment is the solution to that, rather than sending people any kind of "images".

    Originally Posted by tedwood View Post

    the other half of me is saying "What!? Don't you trust your clients or something!?".
    I suspect the real problem here is that you don't trust yourself to explain to them that your terms are "payment in advance", and you imagine that you'll lose them that way. You won't, if you're confident and professional about it. (It's actually easy - try it! People know that you can't buy anything online without paying in advance. You can't buy anything from any website without prepayment. Why should articles be any different?).
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  • Profile picture of the author tedwood
    Hi Alexa. I do stick to the prepayment concept, the problem comes when I have a client that wants a free sample. I totally understand that they want to see if my writing style will suit their niche and current websites content, so it's not a problem. It's just I'm not too keen sending them their sample in a document format because they might not order in the end.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by tedwood View Post

      Hi Alexa. I do stick to the prepayment concept, the problem comes when I have a client that wants a free sample.
      I'm not quite with you, Ted ... why is that a problem? You must have a ready-written article you can use as a "free sample" to send to people who want a "specimen", even if you don't have a website showing examples of your work, surely?

      I hope and trust you don't mean that clients are asking you to write a sample just for them, free of charge?! Those are not people one would want as clients. :confused:

      Do you have a little website, Ted? It's really quickly and easily done, and might solve a lot of these difficulties for you? (And it makes you look more professional, which changes how people react to you and what they ask you for, too! Just a suggestion ...).
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  • Profile picture of the author Emilis Strimaitis
    Post your article on EzineArticles or Squidoo and link from there. If your article will be used any way, everyone can see the date article was published and you can proove that they stole it from you.
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  • Profile picture of the author tedwood
    Yes I do have a website - Freelance Content Writing but It's only been up for a week and I'm only advertising it on a few sites with digital point being included. At the moment I'm using warrior forum to promote the thread that I've made in the services section.

    In all fairness to my clients I've actually just written a sample for them as soon as they've given me some titles because my portfolio doesn't cover a wide range of topics yet. Even if they decided they didn't want the work I could put it towards a PLR pack or try and sell it to a webmaster.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by tedwood View Post

      Yes I do have a website - Freelance Content Writing but It's only been up for a week and I'm only advertising it on a few sites with digital point being included.
      Ooh, well done ... good! Please excuse my doubting tone: I had guessed wrongly that because your sig-file link was (very reasonably!) to Warriors For Hire, you were going to say "not yet"!

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    • Profile picture of the author genietoast
      The ones on your site are just fine.

      If you want...

      Post a sample of your work on ezinearticles or Hubpages and provide a link for your client to click and see.

      Even better, send a link to content on a former client's website. That way the new client can get an idea what your written work looks like when it's published.
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  • Profile picture of the author DontWorryBeHappy
    Depending on the work and amount of money involved in the transaction I would say pre-pay is the way forward or at least an up front payment. Typically 50% is acceptable. If you are using images then PDF is the way forward you can also add a background if using normal imaging software that says sample, making it more difficult to be copied.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tina Golden
      As long as you have some samples on different topics, there is no reason that a client should need a niche specific sample. I recommend against giving out free custom samples because in my experience, the only ones that have ever requested that do not order. They just take the article and run - particularly over at Digital Point.

      I would tell them that they are free to order just one article to ensure that your style will suit them and let them pre-pay for that one article. You could always offer a discount rate for that one article.
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