I’ve been an active member on the Warrior Forum for a while now, and getting some pretty good information there. (*Warrior Forum is a place for internet marketers to discuss issues, brainstorm, and swap ideas.)
There are many writers there who are charging $3 – $10 for 450 word articles, some are even charging that for 1,000 word articles.
In my usual predictable way, I found myself trying to convince them to charge reasonable rates for their services. One reason for this is the fact it impacts all writers all around the world.
Anyway, I’ve had someone get quite upset about the posts quoting my current rates. He finds $50 for a 300 word article (or $75 for 450 words) to be ‘quite disgusting and over the top’. Personally, I take offense at the other end of the scale, where writers are charging such a pittance for their hard earned skills.
I don’t understand why anyone would charge such low rates. If you are doing this, please don’t. Yes, I know, we’ve been down this path before.
I’m pretty much repeating what I wrote on the Warrior Forum: I am working 1-2 days a week on my copywriting business, and sometimes only for a few hours a week. I am earning several hundred dollars for those few hours. I’m happy, and can’t understand why others are upset and offended by what I’m doing.
The bottom line is, my clients are paying these rates and are happy with my work. I wrote a sales page for one client just two weeks ago. He’s now asked me to write another sales page for him. If he wasn’t happy, he wouldn’t do that.
In the scheme of things my rates aren’t high. I am now charging $350 for a sales page. I was charging $280 but was told my rates were much lower than the rates everyone else was charging. So I put them up. I’m still getting the work.
Yesterday I had three emails asking me to do copywriting of one sort or another. One has already come to fruition. We’ll see what happens with the others.
The bottom line is I’m happy to get as little as an additional $200 per week from my copywriting. (More is good, but I can live that that amount too.) With everything I do, I don’t want to do this full-time. I love writing non-fiction books. I love writing articles, and I love teaching writers how to earn decent income from their writing.
These are all things that make me who I am. I don’t feel the need to justify any of that to anyone. Why are people upset that I command – and get – the rates that I feel comfortable with, and the rates I feel my work (and results) deserve?
Clients would not come back to me time after time if they weren’t happy with my writing.
It made me stop and think that perhaps my rates were too high. But only for a heart-beat. I’ve worked long and hard to get where I am today. My writing has improved tremendously over the years, and I’ve studied and practiced to get to this point.
What I realised after pondering this for several hours was that these other writers were feeling threatened. Some of them have told me they’ve learned to write faster so they can earn more money.
OMG! Are they serious? I’m generally a slow writer, but I can churn this stuff out fairly quickly. $75 for a 450 word article equates to about 35 minutes of work – a little longer if I have to research the subject.
Sales pages take around 2 hours; often less.
I only take on work I can complete within a decent time frame, and will never take on something I have no wish to do.
Yes, I’m lucky – I have other income streams. And this is exactly why I try to impress on all writers the need for more than one income stream. If you only have one stream of income (i.e. copywriting) and it suddenly disappears, then you have nothing.
Til next time (and the next rant <g>),
Cheryl
