Learn about the Dos and Don’ts when applying to Postings on Storyhunter

Quick summary of Storyhunter platform rules of conduct as they relate to applying for your next project: 

What you should do: 

• Familiarize yourself with Storyhunter’s Terms of Service, Service Fees, and Payment Terms before applying to any Project Postings
• Keep key communication about the project details and deliverables on the platform to create a ‘paper trail’ 
• Always keep contracts and payments on the platform and notify our Support Team of any violations: Support@Storyhunter.com

What you should never do: 

• Members of the Storyhunter community may not submit proposals or solicit parties discovered through Storyhunter to contract or pay outside of Storyhunter. Violators will be removed from the platform. 

Rules of Engagement: 

• Sharing your personal contact information with clients when first applying for a Posting will put your privacy at risk and may give an impression that you are looking to book this job off the platform. It will alert our Moderator team and may confuse some new clients
• Some projects do require in-person communication such as a meeting or a phone call. If prompted by clients, by all means, feel free to connect. But if during the phone call you discussed some major changes in the project or deliverables, please make sure they are documented on Storyhunter’s messaging board.

Why go through Storyhunter? 

We know freelancing is risky. That’s why Storyhunter guarantees payments to every single freelancer hired to do a project through the Storyhunter platform. Please go to the Terms of Service page to learn more. 

Additionally, when you do projects with us clients leave reviews. Those reviews appear on your profile page and our matching algorithm will prioritize freelancers with multiple positive reviews over profiles without any feedback from our clients. The more work you book through us the more work you will be offered. Also, your platform service fees will be going down. Read about it here. Clients who have a positive experience with a freelancer love to come back and book more jobs with the same person. 

Lastly, we do your marketing for you and you get to save both time, resources, and effort. We pay professional marketers, content managers, and even hire creators on the platform to promote Storyhunter to prospective clients. We offer our freelancers a chance to be featured on our newsletters (50K subscribers) and social media channels. Our account management team works 24/7 to ensure that postings that get published have reasonable budgets that correspond to the supply. 

What happens if I decide to go around Storyhunter: contract and payments? 

Disintermediation is serious: you will be violating our Terms and Conditions which will potentially result in permanent termination. Accepting payments off-platform voids payment guarantee that is backed by Storyhunter, it may significantly lower your odds of getting paid and jeopardizes your status on the platform. 

Who cares? It’s only one instance! 

Storyhunter was created in 2012 to serve the independent creator community. It takes tremendous resources to keep the platform functioning and improving. It takes a staff of account managers and sales representatives to negotiate deals with large corporations, onboard and educate smaller clients, manage everyone’s expectations and make it a successful experience for all. 

Storyhunter works hard to provide new opportunities for a huge community of freelancers: we have paid $50,000,000 to our members. So when some users take projects and payments off-platform, it negatively impacts the whole Storyhunter network. We don’t collect profit that helps us grow and attract more clients, our pool of quality work on the platform shrinks, we have fewer clients vouch for us and spread the good word, we get to offer fewer gigs in the future, etc. 

There are many financial and economic reasons, but most importantly it erodes our community. We are proud of what we do, we would like to do more for as many creators globally as possible. Help us support independent creators like you. 

What should you do if you suspect a client is trying to take the business off the platform? 

There are several ways to go about it. First of all, you should try to resolve it one on one with the client. It’s important to understand whether the disintermediation is intentional or maybe, it’s a lack of understanding on the client's part. 

If you suspect that a client is abusing Storyhunter’s Terms and Conditions, you can reach out to our support team at Support@storyhunter.com. We will do our best to tactfully resolve any issues and bring this client back on the right path.