Recently I have been getting a few messages from people who were interested in using some of my work on their professional projects. The stuff they wanted to use is just purely for fun from my end but obviously they would want to use it for their commercial endeavors. This got me thinking as many times people would simply just ask if they can use it. Essentially for free. So it made me think, for yourself if you wanted to use someone’s work on your professional project would you approach them with some kind of compensation in mind or just ask as you may get it for free?
I would be inclined to say professionally you should offer something to show that you actually have the person’s best interest in mind as well as opposed to just hopefully getting a freebie of sorts as you use it for commercial endeavors. It does make me wonder if that could come back and haunt you where if for some reason whatever it is you did became a huge success I could easily imagine that turning into a negative where people would say you took advantage of people to get to where you are.
Some would call that just smart business in the sense of not having to spend money. But many times I think if you specifically want to use things for commercial reasons then it can be best to make sure people are compensated fairly too to prevent that action haunting either party in the future.