Fiverr Pro advice: Do -not- blindly sign NDAs!

[rrauwl]

Some Fiverr Pro advice:

Folks, I know that you want to get to work and that some clients expect their own non-disclosure as part of the package.

But please, PLEASE read the damned thing first!

Just had a client make a proposal for like $125 and ask me to sign an NDA.

Maybe they were just using a boilerplate thing that is intended for full time employees. Or maybe it was intentional. But my two years of contract law finally proved to be useful, because it was filled with other stuff.

One section described in detail how I couldn’t take any other work from anyone ‘in technology’. For one year. Regardless of whether or not I had active work with them.

Two more sections talked about how any other work I did for the next week… on ‘their time’, on my time, in any location and for any reason… became their intellectual property in whole.

An NDA should be about non-disclosure only. It shouldn’t also be a non-compete. It shouldn’t also be a rights transition agreement for work they haven’t paid for.

So please, don’t ever blindly say ‘yes’ to additional agreements a client sends you. They can contain some pretty messed up and completely out of scope stuff. Read and understand them.