So, I get this email from a FLCW the other day: “I’m embarrassed to say, I have several work samples posted on my website that I didn’t get permission from the clients to use. I realize this is not good business. Do you get permission from every client, even if the piece was posted/published in the public realm?”
My reply? No. Call me crazy, but in my estimation AND experience, this is a non-issue. If I do a B2B or B2C project (virtually all my work) for a company – by definition, one created for public dissemination – I can display it in my online portfolio.
Only once in 15 years – many years ago – did I ever ask permission to use a piece. I was told I couldn’t and given no good reason for denying my request (the pieces were part of a customer newsletter!). So being, I suppose, a bit anti-establishment, what I took away from that unsatisfying encounter was NOT that I needed to ask each time, but rather that I’d never ask again. And knock on wood, in 15 years, I’ve never had a problem.
Sure, if it’s internal (i.e., proprietary and potentially sensitive, though not all internal communication is proprietary), you shouldn’t post those unless you “sanitize” the sample of all sensitive/identifying language, but you’ll know what those situations are.
As I found out, if you ask permission, there’ll be those clients whose anal legal departments have to justify their existences by making grand proclamations about what you can and cannot do with something you created for them. And for no good or logical reason other than they can. Why bother, when chances are literally nil that they’re ever going to know or care that you’ve posted them?
And what’s the worst-case scenario? They tell you to take it down. Think they’ll slap you with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit for posting a sample thousands of people saw? Not a chance. If they decide to be a—-oles about it, they’ll start with a simple “take it down” request. And you take it down. End of story.
She wrote back that she was about to met with an IP (intellectual property) attorney and would ask about it. Straining to not be a smartass, I wrote: “What do you think an IP attorney is going to tell you? Their very professional existence is predicated on coming up with every conceivable thing that could possibly EVER go wrong in a million years. That’s what they’re paid to do. Which, in our case, has virtually no relation to reality.”
She reports back later: “As you suspected, technically we are supposed to get permission from our clients to use their copyrighted material on our websites. It gets stickier if private citizens’ names are used (e.g., in testimonials) as that gets into publicity law which is akin to privacy law.
Same thing for employees featured in the pieces; they would require separate permissions in addition to the company permission. She recommends a form or a letter asking permission to host the pieces on my website to promote my own portfolio.”
There you have it. Sigh. I suppose this is where I’m supposed to say, “Well, defer to legal counsel.” But you know? I’m just not worried about it. At all. If there was ever a more textbook case of the old saying, “Easier to ask forgiveness than permission” this would be it. So, let me have it. Here’s your chance to tell me I’m full of it.
Do you ask permission before posting samples on your web site?
If you don’t, have you ever had a serious issue arise (aside from “take it down” requests)?
What’s your policy on the issue?
I don’t exactly ask… I usually just state in my client agreement that unless work is done under an NDA, I retain the rights to use the work in my portfolio. It’s never been an issue for a client and it’s probably because I treat it as a requirement on my part, not a “if it’s ok with you and if you wouldn’t mind too much” type of thing.
For repeat clients, I just mention it once the first time, not on every project.
If the client agreement is informal in e-mail (like a virtual handshake), I include that “portfolio” requirement in a quick list of what we’re agreeing to.
I am respectful of the fact that if I’m working on a book, for example, I can’t post the whole thing. I’ll just include a few pages. In one case, a client simply asked that I include the copyright page as part of that which was fine with me.
I’m also editing out a couple of things from time to time before I include something in my portfolio, like a phone number that might have been included in the project. Long story, but I realized that some of my work ends up in all sorts of searches and I decided that I would white-out certain things in a few circumstances. But that’s just me… it has never been a client request.
I did have a potential client state that any work done for them would not be allowed in my portfolio. For whatever reason, we never did work together, but I would have been ok with his request because he’d be an exception.
In cases where a client does say no to including the work in your portfolio, make sure that you get something else in return like a testimonial or referral. Hopefully you’d get that anyway, but most clients will be more receptive to something like that if they’ve just denied you the use of the work in your portfolio.
I agree this is a non-issue. If you post a copy of everything you write on your web site for the next 25 years, it’s unlikely you will have one occasion where a client will notice — let alone complain.
That’s one thing I forgot to mention… I agree with Joe in that your client probably won’t even know your project for them is on your site (or remember saying it was OK if you had an agreement.)
Your client has so much going on, checking out your website every few months is way, way down on their list if it even makes the list to begin with. This issue just isn’t that important to them.
If they did visit your site before hiring you, they probably already know to expect their project to be a portfolio piece. They likely judged you by looking at other samples you have there.
And a positive for them is that having the project on your site is a bit of free publicity for them.
In all my agreements is a clause that says I retain portfolio rights to all copy. Once or twice someone has asked me to waive that requirement, and I did. Also, if someone does ask that you not post it online, you could still email it as a sample upon request.
Peter;
I don’t either.
However, I have complied (to remove it) with situations where my page was coming up higher than the company I wrote it for on Google.
Ask for forgiveness later is my theory.
Mike
Hi Peter,
I always ask a client before I post a sample of their work, if only for courtesy’s sake. I’ve never had a problem asking, except for one instance where my client said I could use items for my portfolio, but preferred they were not posted on the web. I’m much more comfortable with this than risking alienating a past client (and potential current/future client…)
The other thing I think is worth mentioning here is that you should be careful reposting web content. Google and other search engines could see it as repeat content, and you will risk hurting your client’s Google rank. I would recommend either simply linking to the website, or if you truly want the words on your website, take a screenshot and save it as an image file. (Note: PDF won’t work either — Google can read PDFs!)
Great piece — I’m very glad to hear other people’s take on the whole thing!
~Graham
No, Peter, you’re not full of it. As a practical matter, what you’re saying makes complete sense. And this is coming from someone who used to practice law.
As you said, no one’s going to sue you for putting a writing sample online without first asking you to take it down. So it’s kind of a no-lose proposition to put it up.
I would be cautious about internal or potentially confidential communications, though. If some kind of confidential business information or strategy is revealed, that could be pretty damaging and taking it down might be akin to stuffing the toothpaste back into the tube again.
I do exactly what Peter does. I don’t ask if I can post samples of work I did for clients on my web site. I sanitize the samples by removing company and personal names and contact information. I have not posted anything marked proprietary, but if I sanitized it thoroughly enough, I don’t think I’d hesitate, but it would have to be a sample I’d really want to post. I have not run into any problems with this method, and my repeat clients haven’t seemed to mind or even notice.
A lot of the work I do is ghostwriting, so my name is not attached to the newsletters or articles. I didn’t think I could put these examples up because of that, but then it limits an online portfolio. What do you think?
Thanks to everyone who’s weighed in here – really good stuff. Obviously, a lot of different ways to skin the cat – some have it as part of their agreements that they can post samples, some don’t mention it at all (my camp), others ask. Again, no hard and fast rules about how things get done in this world of ours.
As several folks echoed from my original comments, DO be very careful with sensitive/proprietary information. Posting that without asking or sanitizing it can definitely get you into hot water.
Pam, as to your question, that’s an interesting one. Given that ghostwriting is predicated on the perception that the person’s name on the published article/book is the author, it could be potentially embarrassing to blow the cover by posting it as your work. In that case, I’d definitely ask permission AND offer to sanitize it of identifying information. Shouldn’t be too difficult to swap out identifying details with more generic ones… And if we’re talking about long documents, obviously only use excerpts (and ones taken from the interior of the document, as opposed to the lead page, could make it less identifiable).
PB
Pamela,
Anne Wayman at The Golden Pencil did a good blog post on ghostwriting that you might want to check out: https://tinyurl.com/4ttdob
Her blog has a lot of useful advice for writers.
Debbi
Peter,
I post samples of everything except ghostwriting — I think it would be wrong to expose that relationship. I do, however, mention on my web site that I ghost-write for an executive of a major company. I figure that’s enough. People can always ask, at which point I would tell. Leave the lawyers out of it. I think most clients understand that having their materials posted on yet another web site could be a helpful thing. I do avoid, however, integrating samples into the web page design so as not to showcase clients’ trademarks. I keep all samples as downloadable PDFs.
I’m with Peter – Just use common sense and you should steer clear of trouble. If there’s any vibe during a project that raises a mental red flag when I’m getting ready to post the sample, I stop and consider. If it seems likely there’d be an objection AND it’s worth it to post that particular piece, then I’ll check with the client. Otherwise, up it goes.
I’m definitely with Peter on this one – I never ask for permission to post samples of my published work on my web site. In fact, to do so never even crossed my mind. As others have mentioned, the only time I could see it being a potential issue is with internal corporate communications materials or ghost writing. I do, however, ALWAYS ask permission to publish a client’s testimonial on my web site.
Thanks for your responses re: ghostwriting!
Good question / thought-provoking answers…
One solution: instead of posting the sample itself on your website, if the piece is actually posted on the company’s website, you can simply link to your sample.
The client certainly can’t complain because all you’re doing is listing the type of project with a title on your site and then linking to the client’s site, where the full sample is there for the world to see.
For example, if you wrote a magazine article or an About page, just link to it (especially if you have a byline). It should suffice for your portfolio.
I try to do that whenever possible.
Of course, if the sample isn’t running on the client’s site…back to square one.
> One solution: instead of posting the sample itself on your website, if the piece is actually posted on the company’s website, you can simply link to your sample.
Certainly a valid solution. Although personally (and I’m not even sure why) I’m a little hesitant to give anyone a reason to leave my site even if I’m just opening up the sample site in another browser. Somewhere along the line, someone must have burned it into my brain that you keep people on your site as long as possible and don’t distract them with jumps to other sites. But again, that’s just me.
And this has been touched on, but I get a lot of hits to my site where people were searching for something related to my client. That’s good, free traffic that I wouldn’t get without the full sample on my site.
But you are right… it certainly can get around a situation where posting the material on your own site isn’t going to fly for some reason.
Thanks Jesse,
Linking to a sample on a client’s site is one possible solution, but in my experience, it’s rare that the client does post the piece on their site. After all, most of my projects are brochures, direct mail, newsletters, etc., and those seem to rarely be posted. The only exception is case studies, which often are, but I’m with Mike: why bother doing that and have them leave your site? And more importantly, to my original point, it’s not something that’s ever been an issue so why take some “safer” fallback position to prevent a scenario that’s virtually never going to be an issue? Just one man’s opinion…
PB
Thanks to Debbie for posting a link to my ghostwriting post on claiming credit… for non ghostwriting stuff I do exactly as Peter does. Love the company I’m in 😉
Here’s the link to my blog where I reference this discussion.
My pleasure, Anne. You have a great blog. A must-read for anyone who writes for a living.
“One solution: instead of posting the sample itself on your website, if the piece is actually posted on the company’s website, you can simply link to your sample.”
There are a couple of drawbacks to this approach. One, as someone else said, it steers the visitor away from your site, which is rarely a good idea. Second, the customer’s site could take down the material at any point, leaving you with a broken link. But mostly I don’t see the advantage of linking because it’s correcting a problem that really isn’t a problem in the first place. If I made a list of things to be concerned about on the typical day, whether a client would complain about my posting material I wrote for him on my own web site would probably rank 16,595th. Hmm, or maybe a little lower.
I agree with Joe that using live links isn’t always a good answer–because I’ve used them in the past and found out much later that the content was removed or the url changed. For websites, I use a .pdf copy of the site–but then I read earlier in this post that someone said not to use them due to a duplicate content issue with Google?
I’ve never had a problem with a .pdf before, and screenshots always come out blurry for me. Does someone have a good solution that stays sharp?
I also don’t ask about using the work on my portfolio, since I have a clause in every contract that states I have the right to use the material for promotional purposes, but if a client asked me not to, or if the material was proprietary, I would certainly comply with their wishes or sanitize it.
Apryl http://www.aparcher.com
This is interesting – I have never asked before because I always thought of it as free advertising for the client. I may start asking out of courtesy if it is something specialized.
Great topic!
I’d like you to discuss this topic again, but in reference to testimonials, please. When someone sends a complimentary email to me is that “fair game”? There’s a problem with using names and job titles, with permission, when the source moves on to a new job and the info is old but you don’t know that. How do other FLCWs handle that to keep their sites current? Are initials, job titles without permission, still too personal? But without any real indentifying info as to the source, the testimonials are virtually meaningless. Also, internal client surveys. You survey a company about the writing project you’ve done and get good feedback. Would other FLCWs post this, even if all identifying info is removed, but in terms of the subject and your client list elsewhere on your site it’s pretty clear which company was surveyed and whose comments are whose? How do other FLCWs handle these issues?
In my case, I don’t post a testimonial unless I have permission.
One reason for that is because some companies have policies against their employees making public statements made about third parties. While rare, it can become a legal concern. I used to work for a company that had such a policy.
Obviously, if I asked for a testimonial and they send one, that is their permission. But I’ve had some cases where someone wrote a personal thanks that was so nice I asked if I could use it. I don’t consider it “fair game” to use without permission, but that’s just me.
I use the full name of the person giving the testimonial because it does help remove any speculation whether the testimonial is legitimate.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mike.
I never ask for permission for samples. Most of my work goes on the web and I will link to the location and then make a .pdf of the article or content I created in case the url changes or is taken down. But Google duplicate content is highly misunderstood and a .pdf on my website is not going to make anyone’s pagerank go down.
My policy is if it is a big name it goes on the portfolio page online. Smaller work doesn’t give me the same credibility and having too many names seems like overkill to me. I’m all about building credibility with a few big names.
My testimonials don’t use full names, but if someone asks I have already checked and my editors are happy to get on the phone with someone and tell them I’m fabulous 🙂 I mention this on my business card as well as on my site.
As a relatively new freelance writer, I was a bit worried about this subject, so this article makes me feel better. Taking a deep breath…thanks!
Thanks Sharon,
Glad it helped!
PB
Another good piece that I’ve only just read! Like you Peter, I generally don’t ask and I’ve never had a problem.
One caveat, though. Be very careful if you’re showing any part of the work which includes a picture. If the image is a licensed one from someone like Getty, and you haven’t licensed it, even if it’s only the tiniest thumbnail or heavily cropped, you may end up getting a very nasty letter complete with a demand for a large sum of money. Getty and others send out many thousands of these letters to try and intimidate people to into paying (which is another story in itself).