Picture by [meme]
Today was the first day I have ever turned down a job because I felt it would be unethical to complete. I have been freelance writing for eight months now and have had to pass on some jobs because of time constraints, but never because I disagreed with the morals of it.
Today was different.
The crazy thing is, I was going out of my way to help somebody out. A young man posted a link to his sales letter on the Digital Point message board about two weeks ago asking for a critique. I looked over it and noticed spelling errors, poor structure, and overall lousy writing. So I sent him an email offering to re-write the letter for half my regular rate, since he mentioned he was low on money.
Well, we talked back and forth and I ended up agreeing to complete the letter for FREE with a payment plan set up once he was selling his eCourse. I had him fill out my 5 page questionnaire, send me loads of info, and even send me the eCourse itself.
The project was low on my list of priorities, so I never got around to it until this morning.
I sat down and started going through all the information. “Ugh,” I thought to myself, “I don’t know how he expects to sell this course - I could find this information for free on the internet.”
Click…the light switch in my head turned on.
I copied a sentence word for word from his course and typed it into Google. Sure enough, there was a match. He copied his entire product from a free website and was intending to sell the information for $49.95.
My heart sunk…
I sent him an email explaining that I was not willing to write sales copy for somebody who was not only plagiarizing material, but also intending to sell another person’s work for their own profit. The crazy thing is - on his current sales letter he explains how much trash there is on the internet these days.
Well…it’s people like him that make the internet trashy, it’s people like him that cause others to question online credibility, and it’s people like him that make it harder for great products to sell online.
Have you ever had to turn down a writing job based on ethics?
Popularity: 25% [?]
That is truly disheartening and sad. You obviously did the right thing. I have never been put in a situation like this, though I have turned down projects that countered my personal values, such as adult and political sites.
Isn’t it shocking the lengths adults who know better will go to to cheat?
I’m glad you spelled out exactly why you must refuse the job. That’s such a tough conversation to initiate but so, so necessary. I had to do that with (gulp) my supervisor once. I actually had to refuse more than once before Supervisor accepted that, yes, I really expected that those citations would be left intact and visible, and no, I really didn’t think it was OK to move them to a later (unused) slide in the presentation.
You did the right thing. You wouldn’t have felt right had you gone ahead - even had it paid.
I’ve turned down jobs myself. Ones that are steeped in religion (the intolerant kind) or ones that were anti-divorce or anti-abortion or anti-gay marriage. Sorry, but where I’m from, we’re really big on respecting everyone and their choices.
I’ve turned down jobs that were dangerous for the health of others. An article exploring Resveratrol but only the positive side? An article promoting 5-HTP? Um, no.
I have kept jobs on dangerous topics like the Resveratrol and 5-HTP, though - because had I not written the work as objectively as possible and with an underlying message of “caution”, the client would’ve gotten someone else to write pushy “TAKE THIS!” crap.
Hang onto your ethics, Chad. There are enough people out there that don’t have enough.
Janet - It was definitely a strange thing to deal with, especially since he seemed like such a nice and appreciative guy.
AnnaLisa - Interesting, I’ve noticed a lot of people hide their citations. To me, it looks better if you admit where it’s from. Not only do you have the info, but you also build credibility by showing off some research.
James - Thanks…as a religious person myself from a rather conservative background, I agree with you. It’s sad to see how judgmental people can be. Regarding health products, there’s definitely fine line especially when it comes to promotional articles or sales letters.
I would have done exactly the same thing if this was my client.
Luckily I haven’t come up against a suitation this bad, but I have been handed small snippets of plagarized copy halfway through a project. In that case I called it for what it was and the client agreed to remove it so all worked out well in the end.
I went and checked out his site again the other day…he’s loaded it with the worst copy I’ve ever seen. At least I can feel good in knowing that nobody’s buying his plagiarized product.
Oh - and welcome to the blog Janet, great to have ya! Your website is probably the cleanest, most appealing site I’ve seen for a copywriter. Great job!
Hey thanks Chad - great to find this blog and thanks for your comments about my site. It’s definitely a work in progress. I take a bit of pride in being my own coder-monkey, but then again, I should probably be spending more time working on copywriting.