What annoys you the most about being a copywriter?

Yup. I tried it for a few jobs, definitely not a money maker.

So true. In the sales world, it's commonly known that you should charge what the market will bear and here at DP, that ceiling appears to be very low for a lot of people.

 

I blame it on the illusion of omnipotence that Internet creates. People expect to get rich quickly, but end up creating junk websites full of junk content, and then complain about the market, or the greedy/crappy writers, or Google. Nowadays, everyone is a webmaster, or a seo guru, or an affiliate marketing wizard.

 

In a free market there are 2 controlling factors on price- Supply and Demand.

When supply is too much prices go down – When demand is too much prices go up.

The “webmaster, or a seo guru, or an affiliate marketing wizard” are only making demand in the writing market which puts money into it. The writers/supply are the factor that is bringing the prices down.

In the market of global writers the supply is too much, there are more writers then jobs so prices are not that great for sure.

Writing is a skill that 80% of the global population has, Billions of people can write (not all of them well but that is another subject) so their will always be plenty of supply in the market of written material.

If writers want to place themselves in a market that has less supply they need to specialize in a field that has larger entry barriers then “general writing” “weight loss” and “dog walking”.

 

There is one factor that you missed - the middleman. I am not talking about a webmaster making websites for sale and outsourcing the writing part, but the writer hiring other writers for a fraction of the price he charges the clients. Both clients and writers lose in this case. As someone already named it, it's market abuse.

 

I do agree with you. In most cases, the way it is done is wrong, I know people that earn 1/4 of what the end user pays, but i guess they stay as 1/4 is better then nothing.

But that said, being a middleman is not without its risks:

The above is just an example. But I think this is a reasonable example of what can go on in the industry. For me, If I paid alot and got really low quality crap, I too would be doing a dispute / chargeback. How does a middleman recover from a chargeback? Perhaps by lowering wages?

 

A writer does not need a middleman to find a long-term project that pays low, but provides benefits, such as constant workload available, experience, his credentials next to every article. That is better than nothing. Working for middlemen, the writer remains anonymous. The middleman takes both the money and credit, stuffing his portfolio with the best he can get from $3 article writers. Clients who opt for middlemen... I would like to hear them explain why. The only reason I can think of is a fast TAT on large amounts.

 

When I was copywriting unclear guidelines annoyed me by the buyer. Any lack of communication can hurt the product.

 

I just stumbled upon this quote and I loved it -
“In any market, in any country, there are developers who make money. So I say all of this doom and gloom, but there will always be people who make money, because people always want homes.”
-Sarah Beeny

 

There are a few things that annoy me, not much though.

1. Clients emailing requesting something be done immediately is my main issue. I work damn hard as it is, I need some down time occasionally. I don't mind so much if they have been put in that spot themselves, I'll help out, but when I know they've sat on a scene for a month already and just thrust it in my direction the day before it's due to go live, that annoys me.

2. Changing goalposts is another thing that annoys me. I access a CMS for one of my largest clients with specific things to assign to my work, and there have been occasions where the remit has been changed for a collection of work. So I do it that way, then a month later they come back and say that it was a problem and to do it another way, as if it was my fault they asked me to do it that way to begin with.

3. Clients not paying on time. I'm very flexible with this, I have to be, but I don't want to have to be chasing clients for a month through an email address that they don't seem to even look at. It's very rare that this happens, and in several years of doing this I have only experienced one non-paying client that I let go. All others do pay eventually, it's just a pain to have to chase them, and I have to admit that when this happens I don't prioritize their work until it's paid.

So, these are the small things that annoy me, but I'm happy to be doing something I love and building my own business, it's far less stressful than anything I have ever done before.

On the whole discussion about whether someone can make money, you absolutely can. There is always a market out there, you just need to find the right audience. I have never found work through other sites like Freelancer, they push the costs down so far that you cannot possibly compete with a $1-per-500-work hack from India (no offense intended). You need to find the people who want quality, not any old tosh for next to nothing. That's what they're getting, they just don't have the knowledge to understand that they're being ripped off.

I see people in the affiliate world often complaining and saying that they're going to give up. What they don't seem to understand (and what was mentioned in the comment above by Vlasic) is that as people leave the business, the audience for those who stick around grows. The market will always be there, you just need to compete.

I wouldn't have quit my previous career if there was no money in this business. I now earn double what I was previously, and I'm expanding the business next year. It's entirely possible if you can find a niche as your core business and grow from that.

 

I'll be starting up as a middleman next year, growing a small team of writers to take on additional work that I currently have to turn down for lack of time. But, in my case, I understand what is needed to make a living, it's not in my interest to be losing writers because they're not earning. My cut of this extra income is going to be minimal, possibly 10-15% of the final price, the writer gets the rest.
The way I see it is this is an added income for me, all I'm being is the facilitator to provide my team with the work they need to grow themselves, my earnings from that project will reflect that.

I have yet to find a middleman service like this that is fair, they all seem to take a considerable chunk of the earnings for doing nothing more than connecting the client to the writer. My model won't be the same as theirs, because that doesn't grow the business or create a sustainable team capable of doing the work. Believe me, finding decent writers who can achieve what you need is extremely hard in a world where it seems more and more young people are leaving education barely able to write a coherent sentence, so when you get them you should hold on to them!