Irreverent Freelancer Kathy Kehrli has found yet another Get-a-Clue Freelance Request, which offers a whopping $5 for a 500-word article. I don’t know what’s more disturbing: the offer or that Kathy’s repository of lousy offers appears bottomless. She’s been exposing these requests for years and each time I think I’ve seen it all, she brings us one just a little worse than the last.
Obviously writing anything for $5 is a lousy idea. But inevitably, we have to make a decision – how low is too low for us? Here’s a no-nonsense way to gauge for yourself what your boundaries are.
Can you work for more elsewhere? For some reason, newbies especially don’t make this critical calculation. Will you make the same or more per hour than you would working a minimum wage job? No? Then why would you bother? Let’s understand that insanely low-paying job postings do not benefit you. Ever. Actually, it could tag you as an amateur, especially if you’re relying on gigs like this as clips. Legitimate clients are not interested in working with a writer who has slapdash clips that are obviously churned out with no real purpose.
What are your counterparts charging? Look around you. Ask questions. Take the advice of working, respected writers. Emulate the very writers you envision yourself to be. Charge like you mean it. You’ll lose the low-paying customers, but you’ll gain real clients and a lot more respect.
Did you find the job or did it find you? It’s the difference between being passive and proactive in your career. Usually (not always), when you cruise the Internet job boards (and don’t you dare pay to view job postings), the employers are finding you, seeking the lowest price and the highest talent quotient. It’s an uneven, unfair measurement of what you’re worth. No employer should set your price unless that employer is giving you benefits. You are a business – you determine what you charge. Otherwise, you’re giving control of your business model to someone else. Take charge of your own earnings – learn how to market yourself.
How do you determine your bottom line?
The whole reason I moved into copywriting from editorial was because I was tired of making 10 cents a word and fighting for the "higher" paying gigs of 25 cents a word. Now I bill by the project, but as long as I spec out the job correctly, I earn about $100 an hour. I'll accept half that, sometimes, if I want to fill space on my schedule AND if the client/project is someone/something I really want to work with.
If I go lower than $50/hour, it's just not worth it. The crowd that pays less than that is far more needy, demanding, and unrealistic, and they simply don't understand – nor have need of – my value proposition.
If things get slow and I can't fill my schedule according to the above criteria, it's time to crank up the marketing machine. And it's really weird – Peter Bowerman talks about this – when you ramp up your marketing, your phone starts ringing, even if it's unrelated to the prospects you're targeting.
I agree with Eileen.
I still occasionally take on a pro bono gig –but those are getting few and far between.
I also agree that the lower the paycheck, the more demanding the client in many cases. Those who are paying you what you're worth know they've hired a competent professional and usually let you do your thing and interact professionally.
Often, those who pay a pittance want to micromanage every keystroke.
Hence, aggravation fees.
A friend suggested to me that those insanely low job quotes are aimed at India. However, the danger is that someone might just go for it. I've been reading job specs on an internet board here in the UK and every sp0ec says, "This is likely to produce ongoing work, so please give me a low quote" – as if they're being generous in hiring you at all! And if you quote low, surely all that ongoing work would be low-paid? Who wants that?
There's a little debate going on at my blog about who gets paid more, writers and designers. As you suggest, I think it might be a sector-by-sector thing, I've definitely seen writers expected to work for very little in some sectors, while designers – because you can "see" their work and it involves special software and terminology that people don't understand – can charge more.
The trick is in finding the sectors where writers DO get the respect!
A friend suggested to me that those insanely low job quotes are aimed at India. However, the danger is that someone might just go for it. I've been reading job specs on an internet board here in the UK and every sp0ec says, "This is likely to produce ongoing work, so please give me a low quote" – as if they're being generous in hiring you at all! And if you quote low, surely all that ongoing work would be low-paid? Who wants that?
There's a little debate going on at my blog about who gets paid more, writers and designers. As you suggest, I think it might be a sector-by-sector thing, I've definitely seen writers expected to work for very little in some sectors, while designers – because you can "see" their work and it involves special software and terminology that people don't understand – can charge more.
The trick is in finding the sectors where writers DO get the respect!
My bottomless pit amazes me too, especially since I don't have the time that I used to to look for contenders. Granted, my readers sometimes forward suggestions to me, but most of my Get-a-Clues I uncover during my own limited job-posting perusals. I hate to think how long the list would be if I had more time to devote to the task!
Is it just the economy, or is it a trend that's getting worse and only stands to continue? I hope for all our sakes it's the former.
I think it's getting worse, and only partly because of the economy. The other part is that internet marketers are selling "how to become rich on the internet" info products. In them, they encourage wanna-be marketers to use cheap writers – they practically give them step-by-step instructions on how to find them.
I notice a lot of times the people who defend these low-balling jobs are the ones who have the desperate lives that seem to come out of a soap opera.
They say they have a ton of bills to pay, they can only afford one car, so only one person can work outside of the home and daycare costs are so high, they can't make ends meet. The person has to stay home with the younger children. Plus, medical bills are driving them to bankruptcy. So, they have no other choice than to take the $5 an article jobs.
I can certainly understand financial hardships, because I was there as far as needing to take a job- any job, but I soon realized that it ended up costing me more than my bills etc. were doing in the first place. Not just money-wise, but also experience-wise as well. I couldn't use those particular jobs as references to the real paying clients. And I learned more about writing for the web by writing for the higher paying clients than the low-ballers. Working for pennies did me absolutely no good whatsoever.
Here's the number one thing that bugs me about these lowballers: integrity. You want people to value you and value the product or service you are promoting with your $5 articles … and if you're an internet marketer, you're telling other people how much money they can make if they buy your product/service … but it's perfectly okay to make profits by exploiting others? You think somehow you are exempt from paying a fair wage? Hyp-o-crit!
Eileen, you are so right. These marketers are looking to pinch every penny they can,so they dangle their $5 an article jobs, like a piece of meat, to those who are desperate to find work.
"You want to stay at home with your children, don't you? We'll pay you chump change to write for us and you can fulfill that dream."
Eileen's comment about the get rich quick schemes reminded me of something. A few years back, before I ever heard of SEO content, I'd seen an ad for "article writers" at a reputable writer's site. I e-mailed in a quick reply, just in case.
I get a couple of enthusiastic e-mails back, and this woman asks if I had time to speak with her on the phone that weekend. Why not? Her e-mails had said they were starting a website about food and kitchen things, cooking gadgets, etc…and I love those things.
Then the call. She says how she and her husband went to this seminar on starting your own business – running articles about niche topics, and generating click through affiliate marketing revenue. Well, d'uh. No wonder I never heard back from them after quoting my prices! They weren't looking for article writers, they were looking for content generators.
Okay, so if I have more typos than normal, blame it on over-exhaustion. I've been helping an older neighbor with a garage sale. Day one I made $10.75. Today, day two: $0. By SEO standards I'm well paid – we just didn't have enough views today to generate any income.
(On the upside, I discovered the neighbor had a gorgeous 1923 Rookwood vase that's been stored in a cupboard for, oh say, the past 86 years. She was going to slap a $5 price-tag on it. If she's able to find a dealer willing to offer a fair price, she said I get half. Finding and recognizing that vase took about 10 seconds. That's a decent payoff – if she can sell it for even near what it's probably worth.)
I commented on Kathy's post the other day, but it didn't "stick" for some reason. All of the requests she finds to blog about make me mad, but this one in particular got my feathers in a ruffle. Not sure why.
My bottom line is whatever doesn't make me sick to my stomach when I agree to it . . . fortunately, I rarely get anywhere near that line.
Wow! Great discussion, everyone. Eileen, you make so many terrific points I can't even begin to address them all. Let's just say AMEN for Eileen. You're right and I'm now following you everywhere. :))
Amie, I know why it bugged me more – it included a new area, press releases. It's bad enough when people write "articles" for nothing, but they're spreading out into new areas and insulting an entirely new crowd of writers.
Paula, what a find! And I love that you compared your yard sale earnings to SEO article pay. Hysterical!
KEB, welcome to the blog. 🙂 I think the sector idea is an interesting one. The trouble is that there is no sector I'm familiar with that isn't going to require actual work – but they do lure us with that "More work to come!" line. It never does, does it?
Wendy, can I just use you as a PSA for writer's worth? :)) Excellent input – exactly what new writers need to hear.
Devon, that aggravation fee has been a godsend for me over the years. As you know, I've put that into use many, many times.
Kathy, I've noticed that, too. I suspect the predators are out now that they smell desperation. I'm sorry – I don't care how damn desperate I become. These are not "jobs." They're organized exploitations.
Oooooops. My bad. Kathy's latest post was on a SEO article. I was remembering the post that referenced press release writing. Either way, they get the blood boiling.
I don't think it's the economy. You look at the corporate execs who use "the economy" as a demand for "flexible wage negotiations" — which means union-busting, cutting worker salaries to nothing while execs walk away with millions.
Don't fall for it. Stick to your rates.
I agree with Wendy — the desperate tend to fall for these low paying joss. To a point, I'm sympathetic. But when you refuse to break a cycle of abuse — and these low wages are a form of abuse — there's nothing anyone else can do to help you.
The writer has to make the choice to stop going for these crap jobs and move on.
No, the economy may play a small role in it, but I think the culprit is the idea that anyone can make residual income from a "marketing" website. These fools put up how-tos on the Internet – put up a site, fill it with ads, find someone to write cheaply, and make money, money, MONEY! And we are the targets of these wanna-be millionaires. These are people often untested in business. They put up insulting offers at the instruction of the latest snake-oil salesperson, and don't know enough to behave like humans when the writers take offense.
That's my view of it.
Good article. I can understand the desperation of up and coming freelancers, but there must be a limit. Maybe this flood of overly cheap freelance copywriters has devalued the trade of copywriting in some people's aspects. I saw a job advertisement for an in-house copywriter in Australia, from a well established and apparently successful web design company. They were offering $20 per hour for an experienced local copywriter, with a portfolio. It was a casual position (i.e no guarantee of any hours, let alone full-time, no sick pay and no contract). In this area, $20 per hour is pretty much the going rate for almost any type of unskilled casual work. The most worrying thing is that this web company appears to have filled the position and judging by their portfolio, have on board a relatively competent copywriter.