What price is the right price for articles?

I usually charge new clients 0.05 cents per word and my regular clients get my work at 0.03 cents. However, I have been stiffed a few times by clients who renege on the deal at the last minute. I have tried selling my articles online to cover my costs but buyers insist on negotiating and trying to make me compete with guys who work for peanuts.

I am a health care professional, native English speaker with excellent vocabulary and grammar. I ensure that a keyword tool is used on every article and I select keywords based on search volume + CPC. I submit the article along with a report on keyword density, search volume and CPC to save the client time from verifying it for themselves. I give every client their article in text or HTML format (as they choose) and I ensure appropriate H2 and H3 tags are put in for subtitles. For some good clients, I even throw in a free 400 word article on an article database with a backlink to their site.

In view of all of the above, is my rate a bit too high if I want to sell pre-written content? How should I be pricing content? I am sure this question has been asked in previous threads but I am looking for answers a bit more specific to the information I provided.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Really depends on the buyer, sounds silly, but if there's no market then you'll have to sell them cheap.

Like you say, a lot of the time you're going to have to compete with writers who create crap for cents, but you just have to try and find your market: the sort of people that pay $5 for a 1000 word article aren't your target market, so try putting in samples to prove the quality of the work, and I'm sure you'll find some clients

 

How long is a piece of string question?

 

Wow, that is an incredibly low rate for a native English speaker. I wouldn't settle for anything less than .10/word, and I even consider that the very low end of the pay scale.

If you're looking for a better place than DP to sell off pre-written content, I'd strongly recommend Constant-Content.com(affiliate link). Don't assume you'll sell every article you submit there, but I've found that 30% of the articles I publish are sold within a week of posting.

The way I see it, there are three benefits you can offer a client with your writing:
Cheap
Fast
Quality
You should never offer all three, and it sounds like you are (unless you are really slow at delivering). If you can provide quality content in a reasonable turnaround time, you should be demanding more per word.

 

Well, I am new to this game as a freelancer. Indepence = ignorance at times. Health and medicine have always been my game. Freelancing is more like brokering. You have to wheel, deal and demand. So I am still learning the ropes. The agents I worked with previously told me that 0.02 cents was the going rate when I started. I admit I did not do my homework and was duped into selling content at these prices (even less at times). Once I went independent, I found a host of other opportunities out there and I am learning everyday. Special thanks has to go out to other freelancers like you guys who have helped a great deal in opening my eyes to the game. And forums like DP should also receive praise for providing this sort of platform.

I just hope the newbies realise that as a native English speaker, you should not be accepting 0.006 and 0.008 cents per word.

 

We are a company dealing in content creation services and frankly speaking I feel that what you charge for your clients is quite right considering the overall market scenario. I am not saying that you don't deserve to get more, but if you do so then you really would miss a large portion of the market pie!

If you want to miss that, then you must already have orders from your market segment and must be sure that you would get them either recurring or new orders. Otherwise if you calculate in the end, you would be at loss! Just like pinch-penny said, Don't provide your clients all the three things. Just give them an option always and write your articles accordingly. If you feel some clients have potential to buy costly articles and they are recurring, then try giving them your complete service sometime for the same price and ask them if they would like such service.

This way you could get paid your worth as well not loose the 'other' important and large market segment. You see I don't think concentrating on ONE segment is a good idea. Always change yourselves according to 'that' particular segment when required!

 

Ok, by that I assume you are referring to "don't put all your eggs in one basket". Cover both the upper and lower end of the market. Maybe not lower but mid-level. My experience on GAF as a freelancer (yes, yes, I started on GAF) was that you will compete with hundred's of writers out there, most of whom are not native English speakers or professionals. I bit the bullet initially and took low paying jobs only and eventually outsourced some of my work to those whom were supposed to be 'experienced writers' on GAF. Horror !!! If spelling was correct, grammar was totally out of the window. And then the attempts at flowery language and literary 'spontaneity' as one writer called it is fit for a romance novel but not a health article. Maybe that is just my opinion.

Anyway, my point is that if a client was to buy a 500 word article for $1, great but do not expect flawless English. Even on my worst attempt, I could not mess up the language to that extent. So in all fairness, setting a higher rate is deserved. I was just concerned that my rate was too high. But after reading some of the responses from users, I realise that I might as well not negotiate on a rate to compete with the bottom sector of the market.

Hey, good luck to them and I hope that one day they will realise that for $1, they might as well post that same article on their blog, generate some traffic and earn more money through affiliate advertising. Once again guys, thank you for the feedback and input from different angle. I actually feel more confident about my future endeavors.

Specialy thanks to Kiteguy. Your posts on this and other threads were extremely helpful and inspiring.

 

The thing you have to remember is that there is a lot of money in the health niche: high CPC on adsense related programs, expensive affiliate products, that sort of thing. This is because it is much more specialised than just writing about blogging and the sort of niche that has so many different sites in it that it's overly saturated. So, what am I getting at? Specialised writing needs specialised writers, and for that you would have to pay more. Of course the exact amount you charge will depend on the quality of your writing, but I would expect you to charge more due to the niche.

Wow, thanks! Didn't realise I'd made that much of an impression Seriously though, it's no problem, you seem like a nice guy, so I'm just offering my opinion

 

Once you have a few clients who will give references, I'd start charging more - a lot more than you are at the moment. There are buyers out there who are looking for quality writing, and are willing to pay a sensible rate for it. With those clients, if you set your prices too low, they will assume that your work will be poor, so pricing is almost part of the 'image'.

That's my impression, anyway.

I started out at one cent per word, and I thought that was far too cheap! I still have a couple of long term clients that I write at that price for, but only because they provide steady work. The rest of the time, I set my prices higher, and get most of my work from Journalist forums, book publishers, and word of mouth.

I find GAF / eLance, and other places just too full of people who charge low rates (either because they don't care, or because they live somewhere that means they can afford to), and I just can't compete.

Good luck with your writing.

 

There is no right price. If you are happy that's all that counts. No need to lower your prices to accommodate a few more clients. Use any spare time for some other productive pursuit.

 

Lightless if full of...light on this one.

Your price, whatever it is, is the price. Period. If you can't get your price, then you are dealing with the wrong clients.

Now, you have to have a good reason for quoting the price you do, or you may find you never get the right clients. As long as you are giving quality, error-free, thorough work, you should not have a problem finding clients that can and will pay your price.

 

I agree with lightless and Y.L. Prinzel. And being happy with your price means not only being able to earn enough to live off (if that is the reason you write), but also being able to earn what you think your time is worth.

DrGreg - By the sounds of things the time you put into your own work as you described justifies earning at least a little more than 'peanuts'

 

It depends on how fast you can type, as well. If you can pound out more words per hour, you can do it at a slightly lower price.

 

Ermmm... not strictly true. If your articles are good, sell them for a fair rate. Chefs wouldn't sell food cheap because they made it quickly, so why should you?

 

I don't think that your typing ability should be a factor in the price. Some people type slower than others but it does not necessarily mean that slow typers would produce quality work. Quality is the key here and not quantity. I am questioning whether package deals and additional services should warrant a higher price in addition to the niche market that I cater for.

 

PPL will take advantage of you if they can/you let them.

Charge what you think you're worth. You want to work it out?

Buy a healthy domain name and create your own health blog. Post your articles on there and when you get a pagerank or 4-5 you go to the buy and sell section and sell 10 one way links for $100 each, sell them for $50 if you think $100 is too much. (one way links, they will be jumping out of trees to buy them off you.)

So without any traffic, your site is making $2-4k per yr. 52 articles, one per week.

selling 52 @ $1 articles = They pay you $52 while they make $2000-$4000
selling 52 @ $3 articles = They pay you $156 while they make $2000-$4000

They aren't doing you any favours. Now work out how much of that pie you think you deserve.

 

Excellent advice Matt. But building up to a PR 4 or 5 would take some time, wouldn't it? I am cautious about buying reviews with links as Google may penalize me so I am taking my time building up my blog and working my way up the Page Rank system. Any tips with that regard for a newbie?

 

What I was saying is that your time is what's at stake here. People who can put out quality stuff more quickly can afford to be a little bit cheaper because they get a higher return on their time anyway.

 

I'll give you 3 examples.

regular, everyday wordpress blog. Posted about 40-50 articles that i had laying around doing nothing, all obviously on topic, page rank 5 at the first update, didnt touch it for 3 months it dropped to page rank 0, threw up a few articles (mostly prewritten pressreleases sent to me) ahead of next page rank update got a 3. And i promise ya, i threw up nothing but cr@p articles. Not even worth 1c per word.

I made a 1 page blogspot blog, posted 1 @ 90 word article and got a page rank of 3, never touched it again, it was just an experiment.

Third blog, which i deleted right before the update, broke my heart i tell ya, anyway, i previously posted 14-15 articles on regular wordpress site and had a pagerank of 4, then transferred it onto a proper domain name site and like i said, deleted it before the update with about 40ish articles. I'm guessing i would have got 4-5 on the page rank. Funny enough, the sitemap was enough to get me a page rank of 1 despite the site having no content.

It does not take long to get page rank.

ps, the 40-50 articles just laying around, on gambling, I added some affiliate links to the articles and have been paid $300 and that will continue to make money forever. Nice little bonus every now and then.

 

Here is another view to your question: generally speaking and here on DP you don't sell your articles for more. With regards to the price per word nearly all of the employers looking for content on here only care about how much it will cost. It is a race to the bottom and it is getting worse.

You registered just last month but I have seen posts left by people similar to you before Dr Greg in the past two years that I have been a member here, including a few written by myself similar to yours. DP employers don't want to hear about whether you are a good native english writer or if you have experience in a subject or will add anything extra of value; all they care about is how much and they will judge you by the writer charging the least amount for their services.

So to answer your question, if you are looking to find better rates for your time and effort, my advice would be to stick to being a health care professional and make money freelancing offline. Honestly. It will save you the frustration of seeing your bottom line rate eroded by the next wave of content writers registering in 2009.