When it comes to freelance writing, there's "good free" and "bad free"

[This post has been updated] Montreal freelancer Craig Silverman has made us aware of a presentation this weekend at an event for Montreal freelancers by Montreal media executive and longtime freelancer Mitch Joel. He replicated his speech in a blog posting called "The part of social media that freaks out freelance writers".

He maintains that blogging frees freelancers, letting them supplement their writing and writing without anyone's permision, unedited. Further that bogs can help sell stories and, while making a freelancer a better writer (practice making perfect), establish a reputation.

The challenge is that you have to mentally get over the hump that you're writing for free, because you're not. You're writing to free yourself.

Silverman, who's prolific and successful and who blogs and tweets, added his own comments about Joel's views in a post on the Toronto Freelance Editors and Writers listserv (available by subscription only). He says there is "good free" and "bad free" for writers: Good free includes writing that builds your brand, helps a charitable cause, helps promote your other work (books for instance) and builds your credibility. Bad free is providing articles for for-profit publishers because they're too cheap to pay and producing posts or op-eds that don't offer the opportunity to promote yourself.

Too many writers produce free work that does little or nothing to hep build their brand and business. Be stingy about free, but know that it can be of use.

[Update: This provoked another interesting response on TFEW from veteran freelancer Kim Pittaway:

I'd argue that your paradigm applies not just to the stuff you do for free: it also applies to what you're paid to do. There's good paid and bad paid. Good paid gives you the chance to explore topics you're engaged by and work with editors who push you to do your best work. Bad paid sucks the life out of you as you churn out one more piece on a subject you couldn't even summon up the energy to not care about--and then tortures you even more by putting you through an edit with someone who doesn't know what they want and will ultimately end up reworking it in their own image anyway. Good paid puts your work in front of those in a position to assign more good paid work. Bad paid--well bad paid inevitably gets seen by someone you'd rather didn't see it, or ends up popping up at the top the search results when you Google your name. Good paid contributes to clarifying your "brand" (yup, there's no avoiding it) while bad paid makes people wonder "Wait, that's not the same Joan Smith who wrote that piece on X? Weird that she'd write something like this." (And I mean weird in a bad way--it's not always bad to surprise your readers, but it is bad to puzzle them.)

The challenge is that when all paid work is scarce, it can be tough to turn down bad paid work. My advice: that's what pen names were made for. If you gotta do it, make sure you sign it with the name of that jerk who bullied you in grade three.]