Frustrated as an American writer...

Many good points made by everyone.

Specialization is good too, i have made more money from my special skills than from general article writing. Discover your special/strong skill and focus on it.

My specialization/strong point is creative writing and writing/activities that require flair, creativity and imagination. [at least that is what i think]
I can't churn out 10 articles every day nor can i write top notch articles about topics like reverse mortgage or poker.

 

I totally agree. You can land great clients if you know how to market yourself - if you know how to package your services.

These .01/word writers will not slow down. Hence, you need to know how you can carve your own niche and differentiate yourself from them.

 

Not true. There are a lot of "big paying guys" here looking for quality writers. They just don't publicly advertise for them. And there are plenty of top notch writers here at DP... again, they're just not the ones you'll see advertising all the time to write cheap content. The writer pool has greatly improved here in the last year or two.

 

I did not meant o offend anyone in my original post. My point is one that many of you pointed out, some people have no business writing, regardless of where they are from, I was just basing on personal experience.

 

$0.01 per word writers aren't nearly as bad as those that will write 500 word articles for $2. I'm an American writer, and my rates vary from $0.01 per word to $0.10 per word, depending on the subject. What's frustrating to me is how cheap things have gotten in the couple of years I've been in freelancing. Last year at this time I was able to find many good paying article projects on places like RentACoder; now, most of them are ridiculously cheap projects. As bad as I want to increase my client base and earn a bit more money, I'm not willing to sell myself any cheaper than 1 cent per word.

Believe it or not, but the Content Creation forum really isn't that bad of a place to seek out more clients. Sure, you won't get high paying clients, but if you get decent paying ones and they spread the word about you, it can be a really good way to get more people interested.

 

What do you expect when you are competing with people who think that because they own a computer and can peck away at a keyboard that they can write copy? You see it time after time on here, thread after thread of new users saying that they want to make some quick money writing because they are off of school for the summer or winter breaks or they want a part-time job or have some time to kill at their boring job. None of these noobs talk about having any experience or knowledge of how to write effective copy because to them (and unfortunately to about 90% of the workforce) writing has been downgraded in its importance. Everyone has access to a computer and word processing software so now everyone thinks that because they can string a sentence together they must be a writer!

My advice to the noobs looking to make a quick buck writing copy for pennies is to get a job at your local fast food place. It pays better.

 

What is frustrating, though, is most of these people are non-English writers who think they can write decent stuff in English. I can understand, to an extent, the English student writers who want to make a little money writing, because they actually know English and can typically craft decent articles, but I don't know why non-English writers think they are good enough at a non-native language to write articles in it. I mean, it's like me writing articles in Spanish even though I hardly know Spanish. I'd never do that, so why does some poor writer from India do that?

The thing is, many people would rather pay for cheap writing than pay a little bit more for QUALITY writing. No good American writer will write a 500 word article for less than $5. It's just not worth it, because they could be working at McDonalds and earning more.

 

English is a widespread and near universal language. Unlike spanish or chinese.

Hence most people who have bits and pieces understanding of it, jump on the bandwagon.

 

That's definitely true, and that's what really sucks about freelance writing. It's like web design with all of the poseur designers who think because they can create a subpar web site, they can build a full web site for $20. If you want quality, you're gonna have to pay for it.

 

i have several 'weird' clients who are absolutely over the moon when they see the 1c/word articles. At the same time there are some who i can never satisfy with whatever i write. But, i think you are missing the point. I had a client who could hardly speak or write in English. Whatever i gave to that client was gold and he loved everything. Believe me, everything. If the people who are joining the SEO band wagon do not know the language themselves, do you think they are in a position to differentiate between an article written for 5$ or something written for 50$.

 

A lot of people here charging pennies per word are copying and pasting.

 

Absolutely. How else can they justify the low cost of the article?

It's too bad the employers that are hiring these people aren't wise or savvy with copyscape enough to see where the corners are being cut.

 

Like I said before, I charge $0.01 a word ($5 a 500 word article) and none of it is copy and pasted. I would think that those charging less than a cent per word would be more guilty of copying and pasting. Then again, I am able to put out 2-3 500 word articles per hour, so this works out to $10-$15 an hour, which really isn't that bad of a rate for working from home.

 

I'm also charging $0.01 regularly, and write at the same rate as mcar2185. $10-$15 per hour is a lot more than what my introductory rate at McDonald's would be, and since I'm only 15, I would be forced to work minimal hours, so this way, I'm making more money than I would be getting a "real" job.

 

Exactly. I believe that if you are a good English writer, there's nothing wrong with starting at a younger age and charging a cent per word. I started at the age of 18, and since I strive to get better at writing, I've only gotten better. For me, I'm undecided as to whether I'm going to be a writer or a Systems Analyst, so I like that I can go both ways with it at this point, seeing as how I'm building up a client base. I think if I knew that I could earn as much as the guy at Chrisblogging.com, I'd probably freelance write full-time. At the moment, my earnings are far less since I am still establishing myself.

 

So if I commissioned you to write three 500 word articles, one on macramé, one on the advances in deep sea oceanography and the other on foreign relations between African nations, you could write these all in one hour? 20-30 minutes each? How much of that time is spent on research? How much is spent on writing the article? How much on re-reading it and checking for errors?

I'm not trying to attack you. You can charge however much you want for your services, but I don't believe that you (or any other writer) can produce 2 or 3 500 quality word articles on subjects that you aren't familiar with in one hour unless corners are cut.

 

I forgot to put that I meant, for most topics, I could write that many an hour. Obviously, for topics like those you posted, I either would charge more (since it would require more research) or I would reject doing them. But for topics I know well (real estate, internet marketing, business, sports, music), I'm able to churn out quality articles in the span of an hour. It's all about charging according to how long it'll take you to write the article/ebook/whatever.

 

Thank you for the clarification but nevertheless I still think that you are undervaluing yourself. What you are giving the person who has hired you is your familiarity or past experience/knowledge of a subject for free. You are saying that it costs X amount to hire me to write 500 words in a quick turnaround time. All you are generating income on is your ability to deliver that content in a short timeframe.

For the short term this is fine if you want to make a couple of extra dollars but in the long run it's not a viable strategy. The problem is by the time that you are ready to increase your rates there will be the next wave of new writers willing to undercut your higher rate. Employers seeking to pay the lowest possible wage almost always won't stay with a writer that increases their rates. If you want to continue your income stream you will be left with two options: keep your rates competitive with the rates offered by other new writers or start from the beginning once again and cultivate a pool of employers willing to pay more for better work. It's a vicious circle and I see it repeated season after season on DP.

 

good post Chant, but what kind of strategy do you use to avoid that from happening? Do you just start high and refuse to work for low paying jobs?

 

I do agree, but here's the thing: when you're not very established, you can't just go after the bigger paying jobs. You need to build up some sort of reputation and increase your rates as you go along. Even if it means abandoning some clients.

Nonetheless, I'd still like to know what your solution is to this issue and how you find higher paying clients.