My buyer wants me to submit a sample before committing to the offer I made him

[sampleculture]

Hey forum!



I have a gig where I offer to record the violin if someone provides me a music score for it. I have a buyer who wanted me to record music on a piece of music he has produced. I responded by making a custom offer where I would compose a tune myself. He has responded asking me to submit samples to go with his recording before he takes commits to the offer by paying for it.



From my point of view, I would still have to work at my end, and use up resources for the chance that the buyer might not buy, and the original service doesn’t claim to compose music in the first place. So I feel a bit threatened that the gig will get cancelled.



What advice can you’ll give me for this?

[alysmcdonough]

Send a custom offer for the samples or share your past work. Do not do anything for free.

[shiftypop]

Hello 🙂

Tell them, pay half for the unfinished sample and the other half to use the sample?
Usually, providing a sample should help to just make their mind up but you can usually tell if they’re really interested in your work or not.

As a musician myself, I find it easier working for someone who believes i can fulfill their order. It usually puts me off if they ask for a sample 😕 Though, last week I did do a 15 second sample for someone and it made their mind up right away and they went with it.
Sometimes risks are good to take!

How much are you charging for your work?
Negotiation for part-payment would be a good idea - never do anything for nothing!

[misscrystal]

“asking me to submit samples to go with his recording before he takes commits to the offer by paying for it.” He is asking for something for free. Don’t do it. Tell him you will do the work after he places the order.

[netzela]

I think it would be good to have couple of samples ready to send people who ask for it. So this would be part of your preparation for the Gig. May be one way would be to assemble couple of samples in a video with some graphics or white board presentation and upload it to fiverr so your buyers can listen before they buy and won’t bother you if they don’t like what you do. You can optionally ask the buyer to pay for samples but I wonder if that would work.

Of course this would more and more go away as you build good reputation on fiverr.

Good luck
Netzela

[designdecoder]

I had the same experience. I suggest if you have any previous portfolio, you can send him those to demonstrate your skills. I find most of buyers worry if you can do the job. Usually, I will send them my portfolio to show my skills and if they ask anything more, then I will say no, thanks. I find if they ask too much, there is chance that they won’t buy at the end.

Good luck!

[mary1979]

Never do customized samples. Your other samples should be good enough. There are people out there that are just looking for free work and don’t be a victim of this. My rule of thumb is to only send samples of my work that I have done that do not involve me working at all, just sending it over.

[sincere18]

Well, one problem I see is that on your gig you have no sample to listen to? Why not make a video that has a few samples of your violin music so someone can hear the quality of your violin and the actual recording they will get.

If you do not want to put a sample up on Fiverr, then you should have a few standard samples that you send to someone. Do not create custom samples, just use the same samples for everyone. But I think you should put some kind of sample in your portfolio instead of all the photos of a violin.

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @silberma1976: This would normally be disallowed unless you had special permission. You can only display samples on Fiverr, YouTube, Flickr and SoundCloud as far as I know.

[sampleculture]

Thank you all for the inputs. I’ve thought about what each of you’ll have said. I had originally agreed to do two revisions, included in the cost. I’ve just told the buyer this again, and requested him to commit because it doesn’t really work for me otherwise. Hoping that goes well :).

Thanks

[sanmeet]

Hello All 🙂

I had the same experience. one buyer told me for a sample for whiteboard animation video. i was wondering he did not reply me after the sample created. So i suggest to all of you do not give your service in free to the buyer. I have some long term good buyers. they never expect from me anything in free. Recommend firstly give custom offer to your client and then he accepted proceed further…if buyer asked for sample show him your past work. Good luck guys.

[noushadonattu]

Send custom offer in your costemers