Thank you for your comment, Sharon.

I've probably mentioned this before, but about 15 years ago a trade publication I'd contributed regularly to for a couple years was bought out. I'd been earning 50-cents per word under the old management. The new editor wanted to assign me a 600-word piece (with 12 sources, if I recall), and oh, the rate was down to 10-cents a word.

Money was tight at the time, but I didn't hesitate to say no. I told her she wanted too many sources for such a short article, making it too much work for a mere $60. She countered by claiming it was "easy" work. I wished her good luck with it, because I sure wasn't going to do it. Even at five times the price I would have refused to cram 12 sources into 600 words.

Cathy: no worries on the misspelled name…there are 10 diff ways to spell it. How often does anyone strategically plan their freelance debut? It's usually a final straw sort of situation: "can't take the commute, politics, boss, or all the above one second more" moment.

Eileen: low budget clients almost always = high volume stress…isn't that the truth?

Susan: I may steal that line…it's really good 🙂

Jake: I sometimes wonder: if every freelance writer was faced with the responsibility of being the sole family breadwinner, would we all be much further along in rate levels as a profession? So many do this part time or for extra cash, which may not carry the same motivation to demand liveable wages.

Thank you everyone for your comments.

One more reason clients should be wary of writers who accept the $20 jobs: Those writers are lazy. They either don't want to put forth the effort to market themselves and find better gigs or they don't know how to do it, in which case they're too lazy to educate themselves and learn how. If those writers are lazy when it comes to their own business (or hobby, in many cases) why would the client think the writer would put time and talent into the gig?

My a-ha moment was when I did my research and found writers who were making $100/hr or more. So I learned it was possible to make livable rates. Then I went on to learn how 🙂

Also great is the Demand 5-year stock chart. I've read that publishers are starting to wake up to Demand's drawbacks. Goodie for we professionals!

It's so simple: You get what you pay for. Great post, Sheri.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=DMD+Interactive#symbol=DMD;range=5y

It took a while, but the market finally recognized them for the garbage they are. I just wish I'd been smart enough to short the heck out of their stock.

I never had an option/temptation to lowball, because I was the sole wage earner in our household, with a stay-at-home wife and two kids under 5 when I started out freelancing. I'd been in editing and publishing long enough to know the rates that I needed to survive.

So, for me it was generally easy to say "no," although in the lean times I took some assignments that were crappy, simply to get SOME money coming in. The worst was a piece for a local sports rag that paid something like 15 cents a word, and the editor was a complete tyrant. I told her to GTH after the second round of revisions.

Your point about the struggling client is an important one. When you take a lifesaving course, the first thing you learn is "if someone starts to drown you, get the heck away from them." Same thing applies to clients, and you can't feel bad about it.

I recently used it with a Fortune 100 company that was haggling with me on the price of a white paper.

My competition came in at half of my quote. However, this person had zero experience with the complex topics at hand.

I landed the gig, and delivered a first draft that SVP said was "really great." Later I learned that they'd haggled because they always had problems with writers turning in projects that were off the mark and that they had to rewrite.

That's when I put that line to work 🙂

They are now one of my anchors.

But I was willing to walk away from the job rather than cut my price in half.

Great post, Lori and Sheri.

They probably don't value Mabel much, either. 😉