Giving your work away for free is not always the best way to express your empowerment. While it certainly has its advantages at the right time and place, for some people it is a crutch that enables poverty mindset. 

When it comes to giving your work away for free versus having people pay you, some people believe that your options are very black and white. You can either live your purpose and be charitable. . . or you can make money.  You can either do good works by helping humanity or you can walk down the road of selfish profiteering. The middle ground never seems to be an option. 

 Not far from this stumbling block lies the throngs of  do-gooders who fall into the trap of giving away their best work for free because of their ideas about money or ideas about their capabilities. They may lack the confidence to stand up for their work or they just don’t have the know how to put up a boundary between them and those who lean on them for free service offerings.   Because of their kindness, they don’t want to turn away people who need them. They want to live in their purpose but because of their attitude they can’t make enough money doing what they love to rub two dimes together.  

Live your Purpose while making money. What if you knew without a doubt that you can make real money for using your gifts, your skills and your talents while merging that with helping those you are meant to serve? What if you could do that without turning your back on your beliefs? Would you take that step to monetize your work fearlessly and with conviction? 

If you’re not getting paid for your purpose or at the least getting paid for doing what you love, then you are missing a very important key to your overall financial success and happiness.  Don’t short change yourself.  Finally put a limit on how much work you give away for free. The following tips can help you change the overall direction of your financial flow in your purpose or life mission. Sounds good? Let’s go! 

Get Your Mind Right 

It is now common knowledge in the personal development world that while 20 percent of your success comes from personal effort, a whopping 80% comes from mindset. What you believe to be true about yourself, the world around you and your potential for success has a large impact on your outcome. Before you even think about taking that step forward into launching your work for hire, you need to get your mind right.  Why is this important? Because faulty belief systems, aka limiting beliefs, often hinder our courage to take bold steps and can easily dissuade us from experiencing our fullest potential. With some inner work, you’ll find that what you believe to be fundamentally true about who you are, about what you are meant to be doing and what your capability is  for doing it are all integral to your success.  

• Identify the doubts you have about the value of your work and getting paid for your work. 
• Identify any limiting beliefs you may harbor about your talent and skill.
• Find logical answers that discredit your doubts and adopt them as a part of your new belief. 

On a business level, in order to stop giving your work away for free, appropriate planning and analysis should be the way forward. One of the first questions that you need an answer for is whether your work should be monetized. Not only should you have a solid analysis of the demand for your work but also keep in mind that some services in the philanthropic arena just feel wrong to monetize, so steer clear of anything that disrupts your integrity. 

• Identify whether your opportunity is viable. 
• Evaluate current market trends. 
• Evaluate your earning potential.