Clients Making Offers to Go Off-Site?

[ryanhealy]

Hi all,
I'm Ryan. Brand new here and so far loving it. Seems like an amazing place. I just put up my first three articles. Two were approved and one came back with some corrections needed. I've got a feeling the tight editorial process here is really going to help my writing. Anyways, on to my question...

One of the articles I submitted was for a public request. Almost immediately after it was approved, the user who made the request messaged me saying he really liked it, but could I offer him a discount, as the price I'd set was "very expensive" for him. This despite the fact that the price I set was right in the range he set in the request.

I offered him a marginal discount to be a nice guy, which would still result in me netting a per-word rate I could live with after CC's cut. He then came back and asked me how I would feel about working with him directly and stated that if I was interested I should contact him through his own website.

I politely declined as I don't think it's right to cut Constant-Content out of a potential deal that was only made possible because of them, but my question is, how often does this kind of thing happen?

I used to do rent-a-goalie here in Toronto, and you'd always get people trying to cut out the company to save a few bucks. There were also very specific rules against it!

I assume CC has a similar rule against taking deals off-site to avoid the commission, which I have no problem with. It's a dirty move to begin with. I just get the feeling that this user put up this content request specifically intending to either a) pay less than what he stated in the request or b) try to draw writers off-site to get a better deal by avoiding CC's 35% cut.

Is this a common thing with public requests?

Cheers,
Ryan

[jak]

You're right. There are rules against it here. I like your attitude.

I think it is quite common, but if you accept and CC find out, you'll be banned from the site. Of course, the customer would probably only want to pay you less anyway, so you'd probably be worse off without the opportunities here.