I was thinking today as a situation came up where a person requested for some video files which was easy enough as I just gave them the raw files that has been untouched. The person was shocked at how large the files was as he was used to video that came out of say a cell phone as opposed to an actual camera. The reason it got me thinking was that it almost felt like he was trying to indirectly ask if I could say edit it and compress for him to make it share friendly per se.
The reason this got me thinking as I remember an example way back of a guy who was looking to have a video created of his company for a competition. He actually knew people who ran a professional videography business but they all turned him down. The reason was straight forward where because that’s how they make a living they can’t just go around giving their services for free. I’ve seen another example of this where a lady wanted to create a webpage for her own charity and while asking web designers they all refused her for the same reason being they need to charge people since it is their work.
That’s kind of an important topic in many ways as a lot of times you can end up bankrupting yourself by always doing things for free when you should realistically charge people for it. I think for myself the main difference is if I offer you it for free then that is different then coming up and asking me to do it for free. Because that would mean I believed in the cause or I know that I am in a position to do so without it causing an extreme burden on myself.
Funny enough there have been actually a few times where I have been essentially guilt tripped to do things for out of the sheer benefit of the doubt and they never turned out good where the recipient turned out to be a scammer of sort. I get at times there are legitimate reasons to offer your service to a good cause where they truly need it. But overall from my personal experience if people are way too pushy then usually it’s better to treat that as a regular business transaction.