How to Vet a Company Before Agreeing to Work With Them
The other day, I shared how you can respond to offers of paid work, from sponsored posts to freelance gigs. Before you agree to do work for any sex company, it’s important to make sure they’re the kind of brand or business you want to be associated with.
It’s possible that you don’t care, and only want to get paid. But when your name is attached to content, affiliate offers, or in any other way to a company, it’s best to know who you’re getting involved with.
We all have our own personal criteria and set of morals and ethics to follow as smutlancers. What I deem unacceptable may be perfectly fine for someone else. We can like different companies and work with different brands. All that matters is that you feel good about your decision.
Before you agree to work with a company, here’s how you can vet them.
Check Their Website
Go to their website, and take a look around. What kind of language do they use? Are they sharing information you think is good or accurate? Is this a place you feel comfortable (potentially) sending your audience? You can choose to reject the offer of business based on what you find on their site. If you’re a writer, maybe you can offer your services to create better, more sex-positive and inclusive content for them — for a fee, of course.
Google Them
I like to make my own mind up about companies and brands, but I also like to know what other people think or say. Do a quick Google search. If they’re truly awful, there’s a chance someone has written about it. Not finding anything doesn’t mean they’re legit, though. Don’t skip this step — if you’ll Google a person you plan to fuck, you can certainly Google a company your name might be attached to for a long time.
Ask Around
Feel free to reach out to other creators or bloggers you trust. I’ve messaged sex blogger friends to get their opinion or see if they’ve worked with a company. And I’ve had people ask me for my opinion, too. One blogger reached out to me and was surprised when I told her I’d received the same exact email. (It’s a common thing among certain kinds of link-buying “opportunities.”) Certain offers get sent out to dozens of us at a time and it’s possible to learn how to spot these kinds of “offers”. Until you do, it never hurts to ask.
Ask Plenty of Questions
A few months ago, I spent a solid week in a back and forth conversation with a “scout” looking for freelance writers to create content for what seemed to be a decent sized website. The approach wasn’t a method I recognized – one freelance writer reaching out to another – but the website seemed legit. But, for a freelance writer, the person contacting me was really light on details.
So I sent an email asking what I consider the “basic” questions. How much is the pay? How are articles pitched and published? (All while thinking, “Why haven’t you told me all of this upfront?!) After days of struggling to get a straight answer, I declined the offer because I didn’t like the terms they were offering. But there was another reason…my instincts were screaming at me to run in the other direction.
Trust Your Suspicions
You might do everything and come up with no hard proof. But something doesn’t feel right. It niggles at you and makes you hesitate to agree to anything. Listen to that feeling. If have a bad feeling, even if you can’t explain it, trust it. That’s probably your instinct screaming at you that this is a shady company or person. (The feeling you should ignore is “Why did they ask me?! I’m nobody?!” Definitely ignore that one.)
Just because you reply to an email or discuss a paid opportunity with a company doesn’t mean you’re required to take the job. You can withdraw yourself at any point. If you feel uncomfortable, walk away and consider it a lesson learned for the next offer that comes along.
But before you agree to work with a brand, company, or person you don’t know (and have never heard of), make sure you vet them. You won’t catch every bad player out there, but you’ll weed out more than you realize.
Do you have any methods to vet companies who claim to want to hire you? Share in the comments below!
