By Jeff Jamolod
Fingers hover over cameras, laptops, drawing tablets—chasing visibility’s false promise, blind to the exploitation lurking behind every “free collab” pitch.
“Dong picturi mi diri bayran raka namo,” they lure. You shoot all day, edit all night, only to pocket 500 pesos, like your sweat and sleepless nights are loose change.
While “exposure” gets dressed up as opportunity, or “sige lang, basin diay mapansin.” But for some or even most, it’s desperation: “Dapat trabaho jud ko ani kay wala ko makaon ugma.” This trap snares photographers, writers, illustrators, musicians and every artist in our gig economy, where clients wring out unpaid and unfair labor. Brands feast, their conscience clean because we “volunteered”.
The trap of exposure and lowballing goes beyond single projects. It festers from one gig to another. Creatives spiral into burnout, shattered confidence, erratic pay, and stalled careers. Mental health crumbles, relationships fray, and endless side hustles drain the joy.
But how do we build portfolios from poisoned gigs? What future awaits for us when we keep on settling for dead-end deals?
Freelancing organizations in the country are starting to create a movement. The Online Freelancers Association of the Philippines (OFAP) lobbies for huddles, fair rate guides, and gig protections within Visayas and Mindanao. The Filipino Freelance Journalists’ Guild (FFJ) via the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) campaigns for media-specific bargaining and anti-exploitation campaigns, expanding from Manila to regions, while the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition or Federation of Free Workers (FFW) calls for collective action against lowballs by organizing campus chapters.
What can we do now? Demand contracts with minimums. No exposure without equity. Reject lowballs publicly by sharing your “no” stories to avoid exploitation and exhaustion.
Freelancers’ work must be seen and respected as valuable with real wages. Exposure is not enough, but fair pay fuels the fire that lights that drive.
