Writing is a Joke

Long story short, if they don't have time to do that research, then they're not ready to be in business for themselves.

I guess maybe you are right. At least now some are showing an interest. Thanks for your comments.

 

I'm old and cranky and don't really care about rules.

Here are some of my bookmarks:

Freelance Writing
freelance.wurk.net
The Golden Pencil
About Freelance Writing
Write Niche
Writers Row
Go Freelance
Work At Home Moms Who Write
Freelance Writing Gigs
Freelance Writing

 

Thanks for sharing Will.Spencer. There are many good sites and it never hurts to bookmark a few more. When I grow up on DP maybe I can post links too.

 

Just to show all of the writers that life's not all wine and roses on the publisher side either, I'll show you a little bit of the fun we deal with.

The assignment was "How do I Convert iTunes to MP3?" Make sense? It seemed pretty straightforward to me.

Here's what we received:

How do I Convert iTunes to MP3?

Can't we all just get along? Little did we know that this little phrase would apply to so many David and Goliath scenarios? It appears that the recording industry and Apple computers are taking the offensive on the music recording issues of the day. The recording industry has become disenchanted with people downloading music from the internet or off of CD's without paying for it. In many cases, the recoding industry has even begun to take illegal downloaders to court.

A Changing World

The world is changing with each and every new electronic device. Companies and government are trying to keep pace with laws and regulations but they are not moving as fast as the technology they want to regulate. Mean time companies feel that they are losing out on potential revenue. Music artists feel that they are losing their rights to profit as well.

To Slow to Help

The general off-shoot of all this is that the way people view the old rules is fundamentally changing. The old ways are not necessarily the way to look at the new and changing world. Unfortunately, the pace of technological change is just so fast that the old slowpoke ways of government are becoming even more antiquated then they were to begin with.

If the music issue is to be solved in any form that will be relevant for a significant amount of time government and the music industry had better start thinking 15 years down the road instead of crying about a music rights issues that are so two years ago. What industry and government are crying about now has been passed by. The pace of change and is on to new things.

The Face of Change

The face of change just goes ahead and changes when you are talking about the way consumers respond to industries attempts at concealing technology. Apple had tried to keep their iTunes from being used on anything other then their iPods without royalty payments by using an AAC file format. Apple maintains that this is simply a management system they use. Most agree that this is simply a smoke screen to keep their products in the forefront while getting the recording industry their share.
Convert to MP3 from iTunes

This may be fair for Apple, the recording industry and those with iPod AAC file formats but what about those that do not have those systems or would like to burn CD's? If you happen to fall into this category try this; in iTunes right click on a music track, click on convert selection. Here it might say convert to an AAC selection. Igor this as the iTunes format is already in AAC. Instead try Edit/Preferences/Advanced/importing and change to MP3. You may or may not need the advanced option. So you give it a go and get a bunch of uninformative windows. Take out your CD and import it into the iTunes. Now, convert it and you should be ready to go. Unfortunately you'll have two copies of the CD in iTunes but you know what to do there. If you have a stack of CD's try some software it will speed up the process.​

We publish Writing Guidelines. This article clearly isn't what we're looking for. And yet, someone turned this article in seriously expecting it to be published.

 

Wow Will.Spencer. That's uh, a good way to make a point.

You can tell this is a Writers' thread just by looking at the lengthy post. hehe

 

There are some desperate people out there. I'm going to try to not be one of them. You need to charge a decent rate for your work.

 

Its better to have faith in yourself and wait for the opportunity, than to run around for peanuts.

 

And it's better still to have faith in yourself and work for the opportunity. Waiting won't get you far in freelance writing, but hard work and confidence absolutely pay off.

 

Thankfully I'm not a writer or never hired one. But I truthfully believe that a rate of $5 per 100 words is decent. 1 cent per 100 words is ridiculous, I could never lower myself that badly to pay that low.

 

yeah only cheaters do that..

 

Ok here is my 2 cents..

You can sum up this thread in one sentence: dont write articles for 1-2$/500 words.. join "our team" and demand 20$/500 words.. because we want to earn more and you are ruining market... (only one person mentioned about that. someone could live in a country where people earns 10$ a day..or even less ). One more thing.. "topic of a article".. also noone mentioned about it.. if u would like to get more than 1-2$ for article about... hmm.. lets say: New Bratz toys.. then think again.. because you will find dozens of people who will be glad to write quality article for that price...
You are telling new writers to do some research.. and im telling to do some research also.. but to people who wants to buy articles.. you dont have to overpay..

Now im waiting for threads like: hey, its sick.. im doing logos/banners for 10$ and some ppl are doing it for 1$. My banners are really high quality.. and thiers not.. ( because i live for example in tokio.. and cant imagine how ppl can do it for 1$..). So buy from me not from them....

 

Basically, to sum it up a little better:

1) Don't work at slave rates like $0.01 per word
2) Deliver quality content if you want to get repeat clients.
3) The notion about people in third-world countries ruining the industry is totally false!

 

Most people don't have any idea what to charge for their copywriting services. If I write articles, it is solely to promote my self and my services. I guess there is a market for cheap writing, but I would think that most copywriters undervalue their work. I do mostly direct mail pieces, catalog copy and fundraising materials and prices start at $1000PER PAGE! If you want to be taken seriously as a copywriter, start by finding out what to charge for different types of copy. Bob Bly of ctcpublishing.net offers a "Copywriters Toolkit" on his website to help out newbies and Chris Marlowe of freelancersbusinessstore.com has the definitive book on pricing on her website. Just add the www in front of the business names.

Happy New Year from Irishcopywriters!

Charles

 

You definitely get what you pay for. I'm surprised anyone would write for $1 or $2 no matter how bad the writer is!

 

I really can't understand why any decent content writer would charge less than $5 per article. The two mom writers I usually do business with are backed up for the next two weeks selling articles for 2 cents per word.

 

I would suggest that if it is a non-contract bound deal and if the company seems to have a future or is already established, you should take the offer and write them one article. Having concrete proof of your writing proficiency in front of them (assuming you are good), they would want more from you. This is the moment you start laying out demands in the most humble way possible. If it doesn't work out , then its their loss.

 

I've seen the same good points made on nearly every writer's forum I've been to...in fact on just about any forum where there's a section for writers, and frankly, I don't see an answer in sight.

There will always be people wanting to pay as little as possible and quality be damned, and there will always be people willing to write for them, for whatever reason.

It's up to the individual writer to determine how much they're willing to write for and then be happy if the client pool is a bit smaller. Personally, I put too much time into my articles to sell them for a few dollars. Maybe too much time, but I'm working on gaining speed without sacrificing quality and originality.

True story here: I have a client I started writing for a little over 6 months ago. I was new to Elance and because of that, kept my bids relatively low. I ended up writing dozens of articles for him for $8.75 each.

As I gained some experience, I raised my rates to reflect that and acquired some new clients perfectly happy to pay that amount, and I realized I was working far too cheaply for him. I hesitated to increase my rates because, after all, it was steady money, he was a good client, I'd learned what he wanted and I really didn't want to lose him. I figured if I went up on my rates he'd go elsewhere.

I finally decided it was worth the risk and crafted a diplomatic message explaining I was raising my rates and I knew there were writers out there that would do the job for less. I even told him I would understand if he opted to go with one of them.

I couldn't believe his reply. He told me he knew he wasn't paying me enough and while yes, he did use cheaper writers, he wanted me to continue, even at double what he was currently paying me because it was apparent to him that I take a lot of pride in what I do and he liked that.

The reason I'm sharing this is to offer encouragement to those of you who are hesitant to charge what you know in your heart your writing is worth.

If you don't stand up for yourself and say "I should be making more for the work I produce", NO ONE ELSE will say it for you, even if they know it to be true.

Honey

 

I had a poor experience recently which reminds me that it is important how you raise rates.

I bought 246 articles from a writer and he raised the price after I paid for the articles and before he delivered them.

I am looking over the portion of the articles which he did decide to deliver. They are worth more than what I originally paid for them. At the current time, I have no firm idea how many articles will actually arrive, so I can't tell if they are worth whatever my current cost per article will end up being.

They look good, but predictability is very important in a business relationship and I don't have that now.

The writer and I are currently renegotiating rates. I just need to be sure that he will stick with whatever we agree to.

 

Will,

So you had something in writing stating you were ordering X articles at $Y each, paid for them up front, and then the writer told you they wanted more money if you want the articles?

If you had a contract for a specific number of articles at a specific rate, they really don't have any room to re-negotiate. If it was just a casual discussion, you paid for a few and those were delivered, and now they want to charge more for future orders, that would be a different story.

Changing rates is definitely tricky sometimes. Usually I try to be lenient with new rates and past clients, especially if they were regulars and I can still work in their projects. What you're describing (as I'm understanding it at least) seems really odd. I hope you work it out.

 

Yes. I ordered a list of pre-written articles for one lump sum payment.

Luckily, I was able to explain why it wasn't acceptable to change rates after payment.

All of the articles were delivered today.

After the articles were delivered, I sent a large bonus payment. The content is really good.

There are always challenges with doing business cross-culturally.