This week, I have been accused of, multiple times, well, the same thing that all freelancers of my age who generally do work for the youtube community are.
“WHY ARE YOU ALL ABOUT THE MONEY ROB!”
“We are looking for passionate people, who will do work for us for free”
“I WILL PROMOTE YOU ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL”
If you think this is 100% directed at you, or somebody you know, you’re wrong. Believe me, I get so many of these stupid requests.
It usually starts out with them buttering me up (note that I am not directly quoting anybody). “Hey Rob, I just came across your youtube channel, and I fell in love with your work”. Aww, sounds nice. “I’d like to order something”, okay, then just go to lasixfive.net, and click “contact”.
“BUT WAIT I HAVE TO PAY MONEY WHAT! O_O!”
Yes, I am not your slave. I don’t do work for you for free, with no compensation other than a few inactive subs from one shoutout video you made that got 20 views. Its called ‘capitalism’ something that got us all out of dirt holes, and made the current life expectancy 80, no matter how many people deny it.
-The software I use costs money. A few people have told me that I should just pirate the programs, but that’s stupid. Pirating is for morons. I’ll expand on that. First, there are a few free/cheap alternatives to photoshop, and some cheap ones to after effects. And if you’re willing to pirate, without your conscience saying ‘hey, that’s kinda wrong’.. you have no idea. As somebody who knows how to code HTML, some javascript, and a unique language called skript, you have NO IDEA HOW HARD IT WOULD BE TO CODE A PROGRAM LIKE AFTER EFFECTS, PHOTOSHOP, OR CINEMA 4D. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Lastly, is a metaphor-ish thing I like to use. Just because you can’t afford a Ferrari, does that mean you should steal one? Just because you probably won’t get caught stealing a program like photoshop, doesn’t mean that you should.
Note: I have friends who pirate, and I disagree with them, but that obviously that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. I have friends that have completely different political views than me as well.
-Making this stuff takes time. Do you think I whip this stuff up in 5 minutes? I don’t just press a button, and whip up a intro in 5 seconds. And even if the actual process takes an hour, it takes a while to come up with ideas for things, colors that match, using the right plugins, etc - especially if somebody says ‘make me an intro pls’.
-Who do you think you are? If you can go downtown to a restaurant, and ask for a meal worth 11$, and say you want it for free, will they give it to you?
Thats it, thanks for your time.