I know I cannot be the only other writer to get annoyed with this. But first, some background: With busy periods and slower periods, I tend to balance out my finances to allow me to take my slow months more or less off, with limited work. This makes up for the huge surge of client requests that seem to come in a flood half the year, leaving me in a frenzy to fill orders. I also use this time to build my work at lower-paying, higher-exposure sources, and work on my own writing. This including poetry, short stories and other fiction pieces. It is a nice way of doing things, and will hopefully pay off, in the long-run. But with Christmas just around the corner I am skipping my down time and trying to find a few new clients on DP. This is something I rarely do, and I now remember why. While there are some fantastic buyers here, who are reliable, pleasant and great to work with, there are a million who make having a tooth pulled seem like a vacation. Lately, my most common response to ads have been badly phrased, improperly written PM's that say something along the lines of, "u charge to much. i will pay u $0.70 per 100 words." I get this with alarming frequency. Why do they think I charge too much? Because there is a crazy culture on DP of dirt cheap rates by writers who don't seem to know they can charge more. But this is a topic that has been done to death. The point is, I charge a pretty low rate, and well under the industry standard by many opinions. I ask for $0.03 per word for content, with a $0.02 per word offer for long term clients who can offer me some stability. I also charge around $0.05 per word for most sales content. Will I take less for certain jobs? Yes, if the circumstance are right. Will I less than my bulk rate? Yes, if I enjoy the topic and the exposure is good. The point is, I maintain this standard. I also get a lot of work, enough to live off of the profits. Sometimes I make more one month than another (I have made $3,000 one month in the last, but I also once made $600). But I still find work, and I am so tired of being told that my rates are too high, and no one will hire me. Anyone with me on this? (( Apologies in advance for typos. I just went to proofread and I realized it is 1:30 AM and I should absolutely not still be awake. I am falling asleep as I type. ))
I agree, it's even more important to get work with the holidays coming up. Typically, January and June are my busiest months. How about you?
June - August is a living nightmare. January is usually pretty busy, though December and February are slow. At least, traditionally. I still get projects, but usually they are larger ones with hefty deposits, because only the outline will be done until the beginning of March, so it is more like them holding the spot until they get more information.
This is interesting to me only because I find DP is a substandard market for finding quality writers. I've tried many times in the past and find it a desert, frankly, for decent writing talent. We have a network of very content-heavy sites and finding compelling writers is always a challenge. My experience has been that most cut-rate writers are substandard. I want to pay as little as the next guy but dickering between the cost of a word and the quality of a piece is silly. I tried a writer last week here who swore she could meet our needs. She was very aggressive in marketing her prices but when I expressed no interest in even talking about that she felt she had me in the bag. She couldn't produce a portfolio of her work (typical here) so she offered to do a sample piece for me. I explained to her that I was totally unconcerned with SEO, keywords, etc and that I wanted her to write to readers instead of search engines. She expressed some relief at that, calling it refreshing here on DP, an assessment I sadly had to agree with. So a day or two went by while she pursued this opportunity before she got back to me with her sample. It was horrible. 400 words of completely useless, dry information that served nobody. I have to go elsewhere for the content I seek. This is a webmaster-driven site, most of whom no little of editorial standards, given the kinds of sites bought and sold here that I've seen. I come here for practical advice on common technical issues. But for creative works? Except for the occasional designer, there is a real absence of writing talent on DP. Just one buyer's opinion.
I have to agree with you, for the most part. I rarely seek work here, though I have found a couple of fantastic clients that I have maintained for the last couple of years. Once they get their hooks in a writer who actually produces what they need, they aren't eager to let them go! For the most part, I work on referral. I rarely actually seek work anymore, except when I am on my slow months, which happen. The buyers are as bad as many of the writers on DP. Perhaps we could help one another? I have an extensive list of published work for you to peruse. I will send you a PM, just in case you find yourself looking for someone with competence in the future.
What you are saying here is completely the way in which the industry is moving and i have seen the ups and downs of both sides of the coin. I have worked within the online gambling niche for a number of years and have a list of some of the biggest affiliates within the market that are not only happy to pay the rates in which i charge but also can appreciate the quality of the writing that is returned for their investment. The fact is that writing has become a much harder niche to compete in due to the number of "companies" that have seemed to crawl out of the woodwork in order to try to absorb some of the work that is available out there. Setting rates as low as $1 per 100 words does not only price me out of the market but means that website owners are left getting their fingers burnt by the odd few who produce substandard work but what can you expect when you are paying someone so little that it isn't worth the time to research the topic? I have done work for clients that have offered me $0.05 per word, meaning that i am able to actually invest my time into developing a quality of work in which i would place on my own sites. If website owners are going to continuously look to cut their costs by using substandard writers then that is their choice and from previous experience, they soon return with their tail between their legs. I have opted to reduce my workload by over half in order to concentrate on my own projects for a while but know that the moment i am able to spend all my time writing again, i can return to the past clients that i have had and they will welcome me back within moments. Just take the hit on the chin and try to keep busy elsewhere until you get the work that is worth your time. Not easy i know but $1 per 100 words is completely insulting and should warrant little more than an article placed through an article spinner.
@BlackIceCreations: It might come across as a surprise, but there are writers (sic) who are willing to undertake 500 words' articles for $1 apiece.
Not a shock to be honest.... But i am yet to find a writer who charges that cost for quality, straight to the point and informative content... If you know any do let me know and i will jump ship and use them myself...
Assuming there was one, Plus assuming I knew him/her, And assuming I passed on the information to you... I humbly turn around... please kick the biggest ass on his derriere
Yes, there are some who do. That is because they don't yet realize they can charge more, and that their work is worth more. Eventually, they will figure that out and raise their rates. If they don't, they have only themselves to blame...I am living proof that you don't have to settle for substandard pay if you have a good grasp of your chosen language and some creativity.
There is little bad-clients and lot of good ones. However, if there is a lot of good ones, where are they? Good clients already have their freelancers working for them. They will only need new ones when they need more work or their writers quit. Bad clients can't make good relations with freelancers. They are always looking for new ones and think that $1/article is the norm. There are 100 good buyers, there are only 10 requests per month from those ones. There are 20 bad buyers, but they result in 30 request/day, enough to make you feel that DP is full of crap. I got two clients in the last month, for an hourly rate of $35 and they are old members with no iTrader. They paid up-front. There is really good buyers here, but finding them might be a little tricky, though.
That's it, right there. Many webmasters who hire, *cough* "writers" *cough* land up having mediocre, to downright sloppy, boring content. There will always be decent-paying jobs out there for good writers. Heh, you should see the warrior forum. Oh, boy. There are too many over there hiring themselves out, and they couldn't write their way out of a paper bag.
Yes, I have to agree that this is the way the industry is moving. It's like anything else: If a factory in Mexico can produce an automobile tire for a third the cost of an American counterpart, business is generally going to go south--no pun intended. This is a free market, and God bless that! Our focus and drive must be on finding the new market, the high quality market for our higher quality writing. "If it were easy, everybody would do it," right?
I can't remember how long ago I started writing for online venues. I don't know how many of you writers here are published in print, but I come from many years in high end newspapers, magazines, comics, and more. When I look at the copywriting industry on the web I find a massive amount of people who should be nowhere near a keyboard. I also see employers who have no clue as to how to hire someone and validate their prowess. There is more emphasis on keyword cramming than the fundamentals of what creative writing is all about. As for pricing, you get what you ask for. Sure there are those people who will charge prices lower than a snake's butt in a wagon rut, but they may reside in a country where 50 cents a day feeds ten people. You can tell by the idioms used in the copy. The people that hire them are on the low grade scale of publishers and deserve what they get. The bottom line is professionalism must be your standard of excellence but survival is the call of the day. It would be fine to have an industry standard and board of standards but we're in a global community on the web and rife with crime to rival the avarice of old. Welcome to the swamp of humanity, the Worldwide Web.
Greg, with all due respect, I would like to ask you to name such country from where you feel any writers are working and who are you trying to target here? You may have made some points really clear but sincerely you have no idea of what the global arena is doing if you think there are writers and their families of ten people who survive at 50 cents per day. Please write something specific to the subject..... Thanks
About every 6 months I stick my head back in to the Digital Point copywriting forum to see how bad it is. This place has got to be the worst place on the web to find a copywriter and for a copywriter to find a job. People are on here that think that they are a copywriter because they have a computer and a keyboard. Their english language skills are atrocious, but worst of all, they haven't been trained in how to shape copy so that it converts a site visitor into a paying customer. And the employers that are willing to pay a buck for 100 words? You're getting garbage. You're too lazy to write your site's copy yourself, but you're too cheap to invest in getting copy that will sell your website to a visitor. You're cutting your own throat and you don't even see it. I get copywriting jobs from clients where I get paid what I'm worth, and it's in the thousands of dollars. I get paid that money because what I write works for the client, and they see the results. Once you're proven as a copywriter that delivers you don't have a problem with employers trying to buy your services for spare change. It's too bad the cheap skates on here don't break the cycle. There are a ton of people on the internet that think that they are shrewd businessmen when in fact they're just playing the game and not walking the walk.
It isn't the ones who can't write and or who sell their crap for so little that gets me. They're just stupid. Mentally slow, even. It's the ones who CAN write proper English grammar, but they couldn't write copy that could sell a space heater to an Eskimo that annoys the shit out of me. The warrior forum is filled with them. I wish it wasn't so, but.... At least here there aren't so many fakes. Now watch some fool come in and say: "What's a space heater?" lol
[Now watch some fool come in and say: "What's a space heater?" lol ] Ummm, something you take with you on your trip to the Moon to keep you warm??