Isn't hard earning a living off writing these days...

Excellent advice... it might be slow to earn enough to replace client work completely, but your own sites and informational products are an excellent investment in yourself.

 

There are many great people here. It's like any other large community. You have those who only want the best, those that are middle of the road and those just dabbling or getting started.

 

You make a good point marketjunction.

I charge $xxx per thousand words and am inundated with so much work I have to turn clients away.

I have spent thousands of hours honing my skills as a writer and, despite that, still sweat over each comma and full stop in my output. There are publishers who realise that paying for good content will reap dividends for them and distinguish their sites/publications from the pap out there. To give an example, I wrote an article for one client which was recently referenced on the BBC site and he received thousands of visitors.

I would encourage the best writers out there to not devalue themselves by charging low rates.

 

Its true! What happens is sellers start competing against each other money wise not quality wise and keep setting their prices lower and lower to make a quick buck and some buyers done release that they are comprising quality at the same time. No one I know is going write or put there heart in to write a good quality piece of work for a few dollars. Funny thing is im going to say " that my 2 cents" lol

 

Haha.

I take pride in my work, and I also take pride in the fact that I do not go below my bottom line. I know what I have to earn to survive. I would never accept the type of jobs associated with most webmaster forums if they were paying anything less than the minimum rates I charge, because it isn't worth it to me.

 

The bliss of my ignorance lasted about two weeks until I started thinking that all the work I was doing had to be worth more than what I was getting paid. Then I realized that I'd have to write more than 6,000 articles to quit my job and maintain my salary. So I started reading, researching, and networking and found out that I was right.

 

Great job Latoya It takes a lot to break away from the plethora of low paying jobs out there and figure out what you're really worth.

 

What your ability is or isn't and what the value of your work is or isn't matters very little. The focus needs to be on the bottom line. Read that again and get back to me. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Who cares if your article is "worth" more or much more than you charged. All that says is that you're someone who needs to get an education in business.

 

Jason, the writer doesn't have to give a rat's arse about the client's bottom line. If a client can't market and monetize the content they buy effectively enough (assuming we're actually talking about high quality content), that's not the writer's fault. They don't need to care about the financials of the client. They need to be able to present benefits to the client, but the client also has to understand that it doesn't end with simply buying content and throwing it up on the site (unless they don't care about quality writing, and only care about SEO with Web research and keyword density... still could be more effective with high quality pieces that naturally attract backlinks and repeat visitors though).

Writers only really need to know how to effectively market themselves to the right clients. People who can't monetize their sites will pay pennies, they'll get lower quality work, and that's precisely what they should get. When they're serious about using the content effectively, they'll get serious writers to work for them, and they'll be able to pay them.

 

Um, I was talking about YOUR bottom line. I'm not even sure how you jumped ship on that post since I was talking about writer's ability and an article's value.


and then I finished with this:

Remember, above someone was talking about how they know their writing is worth much more than they charged. And it's a common theme that seems to be going around.

 

Then I apologize... it sounded to me as though you were talking about it more from the buyer's perspective. Of course, you already know you have a way of confusing me more than most.

 

Sorry about that Jenn.