Paying Writers Peanuts and Demanding High Quality Content is Being Ruthless

From the time you started writing, until now, you must have noted a rather disappointing change in content creation. Writers are getting low pay per article, and clients are demanding high quality content. Unfortunately, this is a disgusting problem that is here to stay. Also, some clients take ages to pay, others don't pay at all.

I have only one question as far as payment per article is concerned: do you think clients who pay low rates per article deserve high quality content?

 

No, lowball buyers do not deserve high quality content. And the writers who produce low quality content do not deserve to get paid. Yet, they continue to do business with each other.

BTW, this post really should be in the Copywriting section of DP.

 

It's all about competition and how much someone is willing to pay.

 

Wow you must have some serious pull around here!

Anyway OP writers agree to the rates when they sign on to. But buyer beware, you get what you pay for. I haven't got time to edit and check for spelling/grammar and general content. I require someone who will do the research and not plagiarize. Therefore I have and will pay accordingly.

 

I think much of it stems from two major problems:

1) Unrealistic expectations on the part of site owners. They are like petulant children, they want everything yesterday and don't understand that the people they hire have to eat too. You see this in all aspects of site development and I suspect it's why so many developers have gone to the "sleaze it together with frameworks who cares if it's useful to users" method of crapping out websites. In the same way many people writing content don't dot the t's and cross the i's... (uhm) because they know the client is probably just going to screw them over, or they didn't haggle enough on the pay to make that effort worth their time.

It's the difference between real businesses and fly-by-night mom and pop operations run by amateurs. Sadly, the number of people who know next to nothing about running businesses now trying to make startups thanks to "get rich quick" scams GREATLY outnumbers the number of potential legitimate clients.

2) People "writing content" who do not have sufficient command of the language they are writing in to be creating a blasted thing for that audience. This thread ALONE allegedly being about writers triggers my "Samuel L. Jackson just finished a Big Kahuna burger" response.

About two thirds the articles I see on websites now leave me with little reaction other than...

Hwæt elland aer ye fram?
Hwæt nic ne elland Ic æfre heard aðf,
Dón man cweþan Englisc in Hwæt?
Englisc, modor wyrter! Gedon eow cweþan hit!?!
Cweþan hwæt æftersonam! Cweþan hwæt æftersonam!
Ic durran eow, Ic dyple durran eow!

... and yes, that was English, just a few centuries out of date. It's called getting medieval on someones buttocks.

I think much of it is violating what was a hard nonnegotiable rule rule 30 years ago; writers should NEVER be editors. I saw this first hand at a former employers where the writers and artists took over the business, and it's been in the toilet ever since on quality AND affordability to the target audience... two things you CANNOT risk on something that has regular publications at $30 or more a pop in the age of digital distribution and BitTorrent. That they've gone and somehow deluded themselves into believing that full glossy cover to cover on 40 weight paper isn't costing them more than black and white on 10 to 15 weight newsprint.

Right now most of the proper process of writing -- having separate fact checkers, writers and editors -- has been thrown out the window and all lumped on one person's desk as "content writing". To be brutally frank that's 99% of the problem right there and it combines both of the two above points! Clients who won't pony up what's needed to do the job properly, and content writers bending over and taking it up the backside as they're a bit TOO desperate for that next paycheck.

The end result being akin to Christopher Walkin cameos in movies; "You do know you can turn down a role from time to time, right?" -- or how Hollyweird keeps greenlighting Ben Stiller, Ben Affleck or Wil Ferrel vehicles. A quick buck, take the money and run, who gives a flying purple fish about the quality.

Admittedly this isn't entirely new. Any time spent with the documentation and manuals IBM provided for their hardware in the '70's or '80's, much less Apple's idea of documentation in that same time frame reeks of a lack of talent, editing, or even sufficient knowledge to be writing on the topic in the first place.

It's just that instead of fly-by-night photocopies of type-written pages slapped together any old way, the same half-assed attempts at writing are now propagated via websites... Hardly a surprise then when second rate BDSM slashfic about a second rate TV show about sparkling fairy wannabe vampires ends up a New York Times best seller and has a movie adaptation.

The literacy rate may be going up, but I think the quality has suffered as a result.

Of course the idea of "paid content" by freelancers in itself seems flawed, but is typical of the fly-by-night practices made by alleged "businesses" run by people who know precisely two things about running a business...

... and Jack left town.

 

I need to go buy a lottery ticket!

And these people all vote...

The trend you describe quite well is not, unfortunately, relegated to the copywriting, business or entertainment worlds. This whole dumbing-down, doing as little as possible, understanding less, etc., is happening across the board. It's a general decline that has been happening for decades. I sound like an old fogey, now.

This all said, we could take the optimistic position that this is a result of the fact that soon machines will write copy, create movies, write insurance policies, serve meals, make things, etc., so the whole trend towards ignorance and sloth on the part of humans will be made up by technology. Feel better? Neither do I.

Anyway, there are good, smart people out there to do business with, they just are a little harder to find these days.

 

it all depends with the writer. Everybody knows and understands their worth. If a client somewhere is offering too low rates an I feel it is not good for me, then I should not apply for the job. If you apply it means that to you that is a good amount so you dont need to complain.I personally think that the writers are the one to blame for accepting such low rates. They ere the ones who encourage the clients to pay that way. The clients should be given a quality that they pay for.Thank you

 

This is true. But, don't you think coding websites from scratch take time?

 

What most clients do not understand, and most coders refuse to bring to the client's attention, is that IT IS ALWAYS CHEAPER TO DO THE JOB CORRECTLY THE FIRST TIME. If you can't afford the cost to do it right the first time, HOW will you EVER be able to afford to do it right the SECOND time?

So, what happens is that the client pays for a sleaze-ball website, then pays more to fix it, then pays more to fix the fix, then pays more to fix the fix of the fix, ad infinitum. How is that better than taking the time and paying the money to do it right the first time?

 

This phenomenon is by no means limited to website design, of course. Last year, I was involved with a company that was one of the largest Avaya partners in the world. Designed and installed telecom and data installations for businesses, government, nonprofits, etc., sometimes with up to 200,000 endpoints. It was absolute suicide to bid an RFP correctly (i.e., would meet the client's needs and work optimally); your bid would not be anywhere near all of the low-ballers. So the game became to set up a minimal design with the intent to win the bid, become the incumbent vendor and then modify the spec (and up the price way up, of course) as part of the ongoing maintenance and upgrade process in the years ahead as the client realized the limitations of the initial, minimal design. Way more costly and painful for the client and it is how that industry works. I am glad to be out of it, quite honestly.

 

I took the liberty of correcting your post.

 

Which is what I'm always on about with the "credit mentality" that's taken over every aspect of society, since as @jrbiz noted, it's not just the industries I used as examples in which this is occurring. People are effectively programmed with the idea that credit is a sound practice; it certainly is for the people lending, but far less so for the people borrowing. The whole notion of "pay more later for something you can't afford now" is so disastrously flawed, it's why when people defend credit as a necessity, I kind of shake my head in disgust.

Since as Henry Kissenger said, America has gone from a nation of savers to a nation of debters; a situation that has only gotten worse over the past four decades or so since he said that. It's why I did a spit-take when Obama called credit the "lifeblood of the economy"... While most of the time Peter Schiff is something of a crackpot, I've got to go with him on this: It's not the life blood, it's ****ing CANCER.

Particularly when used for wants and not needs... See scam artists like Rent-a-Center and how they typically have more locations in poor neighborhoods than the affluent, doing everything they can to squeeze blood from a stone whilst keeping the poor even poorer. Now I know what you're thinking "But I need a bed!" -- so take that $50 downpayment, go to a discount store like Ocean State Job Lot and get a air mattress, sleep on it for three months saving the same money you'd give the rent to own scam, and then buy something ten times nicer! "But I NEED a refridgerator" -- sorry, but a reefer is not a need; there are plenty of foods you can store at room temp for a few months, again saving up for the fridge instead of spending ten times as much for one.... and as much as it might sound crazy, the same can be said about automobiles; it takes only $2000 a year to keep a car on the road if you plan properly and actually maintain the blasted thing (like say, oil changes, brakes, tires) so you do NOT need to spent five to eight times as much every three blasted years!

"But I want something new!" is not a legitimate reason if you took care of the old one and it still works. Sadly, most people do not take care of things and beat them into the pavement because "I can just get another one in three to four years". The laugh of that being if you can make it to five years and do this amazing thing called saving money putting aside the same cash as a payment, you can buy one outright. Something that in this day and age makes car dealers think you're a drug dealer when you go in to pay cash for a new vehicle.

... and of course the real evil of all this remains that it's just paying more for something you can't afford, letting the rich blatantly and openly steal from the poor, in the process driving up prices and profits. Insurance has much the same flaw as it treads into the territory of "Who cares what it costs, just borrow the money". If we didn't have insurance, health care might actually have to charge what people could afford -- hence why I don't consider manditory fed assisted insurance to be health care reform or even socializing health care. ... and I'm actually in favor of socializing health care, shame neither Dumbocrats or Republitards understand what that actually means. You'd almost thing both sides of the debate were heavily invested in insurance companies or the health care industry and looking for ways to pocket more money whilst screwing over Joe Sixpack and Susie Sunshine.

Once you have that fiscal irresponsibility in place, it "trickles down" into every aspect of both business and personal finance -- exhibiting itself quite clearly in a lack of work ethic, failure to understand personal responsibility, and the oh so ever-present "Now Now Now" mentality.

Which is why software projects I worked on in the late '80's and early '90's I'd have had a staff of six and a year to complete, said software being so robust there's no reason for it not to be in use today despite the dated hardware (See my double entry accounting package that many mortuaries still rely upon - now running it in DOSBox on modern hardware). Today if you got a contract for the same project they expect it done by one person in a week, for you to nursemaid it for free over the coming year, and for it to be pitched in the trash in a year because some artist walked into marketing with a goofy picture of something that "looks cool".

THEN people wonder why most startups fall flat on their face in 6 to 18 months.

 

Here is my take on this question:

Buyers: If you pay peanuts, EXPECT junk. If you pay well, DEMAND excellence.
Writers: If you produce junk, EXPECT peanuts. If you produce excellence, DEMAND fair payment.

In my book there are ONLY THREE (3) LEGITIMATE uses for credit.

1) Emergencies, REAL emergencies, NOT FAUX emergencies.
2) When the COST of the credit is RADICALLY LESS than the GUARANTEED profit from an endeavor. Example, I have used credit to buy PRE-SOLD items that I am doubling or tripling my money on, but IMMEDIATELY upon sale of those items I PAY OFF THE CREDIT LINE.
3) To keep a line of credit "alive" for one of the above uses.

A potential 4th, though debatable, reason would be for a dwelling or other real property WHEN THE COST OF RENTING excessively exceeds ALL COSTS OF OWNING, including insurance, taxes, upkeep, cost of credit, cost of property, and any other costs of owning versus renting.

Exactly.

LOL. Reminds me that I slept on a mat (1" thick) on a floor for years because I was too cheap to buy a real bed.

A reefer is NOT a NEED. It is a RECENT invention. Humanity got along without reefers for MILLENIA. In fact, when I was growing up we had an ICE BOX. Once a week I pulled a wagon 1 mile to the ice house, stuck a quarter in the slot, got a block of ice, and then hauled it home.

I have a reefer that quit working months ago. I have not fixed it nor replaced it, yet I am getting along just fine without it. Gotta be a simple fix, broken wire, switch, or whatever as it suddenly stopped working like the plug was pulled. Just too busy to worry about it.

I think your number of $2000 per year is high. I spend about $1000 per year to keep my mini-van on the road, which includes insurance, license, oil change every 3000 miles, transmission fluid change when needed (about every 100,000 miles), tires, and all repairs. Gasoline is the biggest cost but is not a maintainance item. Current van was bought 7 years ago with 176,000 miles on it for $2,000 from original owner with a 1" stack of receipts, mostly for oil changes and minor repairs, nothing major. Currently has 416,000 miles, gets 22-26 mpg, and has never had a major repair, only wear items and consumables.

If it is a "want" and one cannot pay cash for it, then it should CONTINUE to be a "want" and NOT a "have."

I posted the above comment on another site discussing the current trade deficit. But, as you know, trade deficits are another symptom of our get, get, get it now society. Sooner or later the whole Ponzi scheme will collapse and we will go back to the stone age.

 

If you go to a five-star restaurant, do you expect (and receive) a different experience than when you go to the local fast food joint? Boy, do I hope so! Every industry has low & high paying opportunities. Remember to that writing is a competitive business - many people dream of sitting in Starbucks, typing away at their laptop instead of being stuck in a cubicle (they seem to think this is how it works, it's not really what happens most of the time...). There are also plenty of sites out there that have the stones to ask you to write "for exposure only" and NO pay.

I think you need to be practical and think about the question you are asking. You simply wouldn't expect a five-star experience from a fast food place. Yes, a meal to fill your belly but not something with all of the bells and whistles. Make sense?

 

If a writer agrees to a price and takes on an assignment, said writer must have the integrity to perform the work at the best of his/her capabilities instead of intentionally producing lower quality content to "match" the agreed rate. If a writer feels the rate offered is too low, steer clear. It's as simple as that.

As for rates in general, I don't see much difference. The market continues to be dominated by low-paying clients, but there are still many well-paying, decent and polite clients out there.

 

I believe this is wrong. I used to work as a freelance writer online and would steer away from clients like this just because of a few bad apples in the past.