Views on new copywriters destabilising the market dynamics!

I have a thread that allowed clients to propose their own usual rates they usually pay writers.

Here's a list of contacts I've had so far in the past 24 hours from that
1) A $3 per 500 word bulk order offer for "regular" work
2) A $4 per 500 word offer to not only write but upload each piece to his Wordpress
3) Someone who gave me a very intense broken English lecture on how anything above $2.00 per 500 words was too expensive
4) An email for a $20 per article opportunity for a start up informational site
5) Someone looking for manually spun content (yes... people still get this crap for some reason)

Honestly, if anyone out there is hard up enough to take these opportunities, go to a place like Textbroker/iWriter. The pay is the same bottom barrel garbage but it's easier to find work and you don't have to worry about being paid. Just a fair warning for Textbroker though, the editors there take their job very seriously. They will demote you for a single out of place comma they don't like.

 

I really don't believe much in samples and portfolios now as they can be easily faked IMO. You can just pull off a few good pieces of the internet and cleverly rehash them to make them sound as something original. Even Copyscape Premium isn't able to catch such duplication and many times, the work passes on as unique. That's why, I suggest clients to get a paid trial article written before they decide to hire me. Still, there's a huge scope for forgery but the risk is reduced more or less. There actually isn't a foolproof way to ensure that the content you get has been freshly composed by the writer and that it's their original work. The client would have to be present in person at your desk while you're writing, but when they're miles away, it's highly unlikely they would do it.

You pretty much covered what I left out. When I said you should make prospects aware of the benefits of paying more and engaging good-quality, I didn't mean you should paint a too rosy picture or make exaggerated claims that your site will be up at top in SERPs within a week or so. People concerned *exclusively* with SEO are always in a great hurry to see their sites indexed. They usually implement measures (like a high keyword-density which is an overkill) that spoil the naturalness and flow of content and render it incapable of driving any real organic traffic to their websites. Strangely, they blame writers for the whole fiasco. Such people, for one, are among those I seldom like to include in my list of clients. What I meant was, when you're discussing the benefits of good-quality content with a prospect, you should make them understand that such content takes a little time to pay off - results might not be seen immediately, but that's no reason to be disappointed. Everything, as you said, has a process and takes time. Haste only makes waste.

On a side note, I've always found clients I've contacted directly a pleasure to work with. They understand what good-quality content is and value it truly. More importantly, they're ready to pay the right price for it. You'll come across them rarely through forums like this or through content-mills. What the post preceding this says about content-mills is reasonably justified by an article I read recently - http://www.makealivingwriting.com/write-content-mills-writers-true-stories/.

 

Consider any market – it was, is and always will be competitive. It's just a question of how fierce or mild the competition is. BTW, do you really believe all reviews and feedback out there are genuine? It's so easy to pay someone and get raves written! A savvy buyer would never believe outrightly and fully what only meets the eye and would always try a service out before flagging it as good/excellent or otherwise. As for pricing your work according to the market situation, I personally don't believe in lowballing just because my competitors are charging low. If I deserve to be paid a certain rate, I'm gonna stick to it 99 outta 100 times. Charging anything less is undervaluing one's own time, worth and ability. A prospect who rejects me today just because of my higher-than-average rates and settles for something cheap will sooner or later realize what they're missing. Many people learn it the hard and long way unfortunately. As I've previously said many times, it seems for a while that you're losing clientele, but some patience and perseverance is all it takes to land good-paying work. Lucrative opportunities are ALWAYS there; just that you're not able to see them sometimes – and more so if you focus exclusively on the low-end segment. Once you get a break, there's no turning back.

 

I think this problem will go away within the next 3 or 4 years. Google is doing everything to remove machined/manupulated content from top SERPs, thus making it harder for low quality to actually rise to the top and make any meaningful impact for people, who are trying to earn with it.

 

I agree.

I was very frustrated when I first started because what I was immediately exposed to were those content mills where they want you to "bid" for jobs. I couldn't fathom a world where writers were expected to work for LESS than minimum wage. As it turns out, I was looking for work in the wrong places while not making use of my pre-freelance experience and knowledge. Once I changed my approach and got some experience under my belt, things improved.

I used to think that the climate I encountered was the fault of the writers who accept these poor paying jobs. But that's neither fair nor honest. Who pays these people in the first place? Who creates the "content mills" that pocket most of the profits while paying naive newcomers peanuts? It's not that new writers are driving the writing market down; is that their ignorance is being used to rob them. Writers who know better often do better.

I'm just glad I figured out the con game well before I could get sucked into it.