Guest Post | Words on the Page

Writers Worth: Eliminating Freelance Competition

Posted on May 24, 2017May 10, 2017 by lwidmer

Competition. It’s something I’ve said doesn’t exist in freelance writing. We have colleagues, some of whom actually share the same specialty or niche, but since there is a seemingly limitless supply of work for the actively marketing/networking freelancer, that shouldn’t matter. It hasn’t in my orbit, and I know at least three other writers who…

Writers Worth: It’s Nothing Personal

Posted on May 23, 2017May 22, 2017 by lwidmer

Writers, rejection happens. A lot. Even when you’re ten years into your career, you’re not about to please everyone. That’s Anne Wayman’s message in today’s guest post — her second here this month. Anne, a veteran writer and someone who’s taught many of us to let go of the emotional baggage we writers tend to…

Writers Worth: Your Freelance Writing Formula

Posted on May 22, 2017May 16, 2017 by lwidmer

It’s hard to believe this is the last full week of Writers Worth Month! We’ll still have posts through May 31st, so check back every day. Still, it’s fine to show up here every day and read about how worthy your skills are, blah blah…. Today, we’re actually going to calculate it. And Cathy Miller…

Writers Worth: Your Freelance Writing Value

Posted on May 17, 2017May 16, 2017 by lwidmer

I remember the moment I connected with Sharon Hurley Hall on social media. I was giddy. I’d stalked followed Sharon for a while and liked everything she posted. She’s smart. She’s successful. She’s professional. I wanted to know her — hell, be her. When you read her post, you’ll want to be her, too. How to Value…

Writers Worth: Doing What Works for You

Posted on May 16, 2017May 11, 2017 by lwidmer

Joy Drohan is a writer whose example you should pay attention to. I met Joy a few years back when Jake Poinier and I held a webinar. Joy was the one who contacted me afterward, and we became friends. Then she did something crazy: she asked for my advice (and took a bit of Jake’s advice)…

Writers Worth: It’s Down to Words

Posted on May 15, 2017May 11, 2017 by lwidmer

I met Dana Ford on a LinkedIn forum, but it wasn’t until we interacted on Twitter that I really got to know him. In fact, when my dad’s illness was diagnosed, Dana was the first person in my email to ask if I was okay. He was quick to offer a shoulder and a sympathetic…

Writers Worth: When to Call Bullshit

Posted on May 12, 2017May 8, 2017 by lwidmer

When you ask Jennifer Mattern for a guest post, what you’re not going to get is a cookie-cutter, rah-rah, you-can-do-it, smoke-up-your-skirt kind of post that cheers you on and encourages you through positive reinforcement. What you will get is a direct, no-bullshit post that tells the raw truth, even if it stings. Jenn doesn’t tell…

Writers Worth: Being Worthless

Posted on May 11, 2017May 10, 2017 by lwidmer

Last week, Mika Doyle made me cry. I had just finished reading her guest post, and I couldn’t help but think “She gets it.” Because she does. Mika, whose introductory note to me included this post (thank you again, Paula), knows what it’s like to struggle with feeling worthy in a world of people telling…

Writers Worth: What You’re Worth

Posted on May 9, 2017May 10, 2017 by lwidmer

In the freelance writing world, if you’re lucky, you come across a person like Anne Wayman. Anne was one of the first people I met when I started freelancing full time. I remember happening upon her freelance writing channel on About.com, and I was instantly smitten. Here was a woman who not only provided plenty…

Writers Worth: Helping Clients Understand Worth

Posted on May 8, 2017May 2, 2017 by lwidmer

Since Paula Hendrickson is the pushy type (why I’m doing a month of Writers Worth and not just a day), I’m able to be pushy right back and get a post out of her. Actually, that’s not true. Paula volunteers it. Right there is why I adore her — she’s not afraid to push me…

lwidmer

May 8, 2017

Paula, thanks again for the guest post. I appreciate your words of wisdom.

And I love this approach — if you can’t get the job posters to stop asking for the world and offering pennies, you can sure reach out to the writer-facing resources that promote this crap. Amen.

1. Paula Hendrickson
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  Like you said. I can be pushy! I only subscribe to a handful of places that have job listings, so I haven’t seen any worth complaining about yet.
  
  One was close, due to a “generous” (their word) 8-cents/word rate, but they also offered a bonus. While it sounds low and not a job for you or me, the base rate plus the bonus might be acceptable for a beginning writer. (It might be good candidate for This Job Not That Job.)
Cathy Miller

May 8, 2017

I’d like to think, Paula, that all the campaigns against the content mills had some effect. At least Google eventually stopped filling their search results with them. When I first started freelancing, I didn’t know what content mills were. I did apply to Demand Studio but when I saw what they were about, I walked away without ever using them. Even with my lack of freelance business know-how, I recognized a bad deal. And trust me. In those days, I did more than my fair share of undervaluing my worth.

That’s why your campaign and Lori’s to encourage writers to understand their value is so important. Your business starts and ends with you.

1. Paula Hendrickson
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  You’re right, Cathy. People are more aware of content mills these days. But it seems there’s a new wave of independent “content marketers” (in quotes because they don’t get that the only way content marketing can really work, long term, is with informative, well-written content) trying to fill their empty web pages as cheaply as possible.
Anne Wayman

May 8, 2017

Paula and Lori, here’s where I play devil’s advocate. Although I totally believe every writer should be paid well, back when the content mills were just getting started, I started lamenting their poor pay. I got my comeuppance when a woman who lived in the mid west commented that the $2 or $3 she made every time she wrote something was a huge help to her family.

I was shocked. I realized I had no idea at all what any writer’s worth was to them in terms of dollars earned. Although I did suggest to her that if she was consistently earning $2-3 an article she could probably earn more, I also realized it isn’t up to me. I can and do encourage writers to charge what they’re worth, and to examine their assumption about that worth regularly. In my experience most under charge and for me it’s been a learning curve.

So I don’t and won’t do as you request – although a survey of how boards choose would be interesting.

hugs

1. Paula Hendrickson
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  That’s a good point, Anne, and it’s precisely why I decided against suggesting any minimum standards when contacting the site owners.
  
  Years ago I remember one site owner defended including some lower-rate jobs on her listings (“low” being $10/hour or maybe a penny per word) by reminding us that costs of living can vary greatly from one community to another, and less experienced writers need to start somewhere. If I recall, she wouldn’t include jobs with hourly rates that were less than the national minimum wage.
  
  The only site owners who will be hearing from me will be the ones who include listings that are clearly exploitative.
2. lwidmer
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  Anne, excellent point. Though I still have to ask why she didn’t think she could make more with her skills… that’s where too many newer writers fall into the content mill trap. They don’t trust in their own abilities enough to go beyond the low-paying stuff. It’s cyclical, and while it may be helping their financial situation in the short term, I think they avoid looking at freelancing in the long term. Contentment helps dig the rut they eventually find themselves stuck in.
Sharon Hurley Hall

May 8, 2017

What a great idea, Paula 🙂

1. Paula Hendrickson
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  Thanks Sharon. Of course, I haven’t seen any blatant posts this week to follow up on. (I don’t dig for them, either. I’m just talking about ones that cross my path.)
Jenn Mattern

May 8, 2017

Thanks for mentioning the AFW job board Paula.

I do accept very low-paying gigs there, but as you say, they’re labeled as such. Visitors can see the pay group before ever clicking on an ad, so they can quickly skim for ones in their target rate range. I’ll also be adding customized displays soon allowing people to filter the job board to view categories and rate ranges they want while weeding the rest out.

I also don’t add any during curation. When they’re posted it’s only if a company pays to advertise it there. The way I see it is if they want to pay to be labeled in such a way, I’m fine with that because I hope on some level it shames them by showing them just how far outside the professional norm they are. Similarly, I’ll put listings in that I curate that don’t list pay rates, but I won’t allow advertisers to post those. That’s because the ads have to give me reason to think they probably cater to mid-level to pro writers rather than being volunteer gigs or on par with content mills.

My board used to have strict minimum rates. I was the first in the freelance writing industry to do that — something that’s since been copied and dropped in numerous places.

I stopped doing that because any rate chosen was arbitrary. And I remembered writers trying to “unionize” to demand minimum professional rates at the time — only their own idea of a professional rate was insultingly low. It would have told clients that pros that me, who had been around for a while and had expert knowledge in a specialty area, were basically screwing them over because some writer with an English degree decided $100 per blog post was actually what they should be playing. Those writers meant well, but they knew so little about freelance marketing that they themselves were clueless about what actual professional rates looked like. They were limited based on what they’d seen publicly advertised.

Between seeing that unfold and not being able to support it, and hearing from quite a few international writers in my community who were quite happy to accept $25 per quick blog post (I think my minimum was $50 at the time for beginners), I dropped the minimum. It wasn’t doing my readers justice, and they were adults capable of deciding for themselves. So I focused more on giving them the info they needed (rate ranges) while making it clear where those rates fall in the grand scheme of things. Basically, helping them make more educated decisions without those arbitrary limits.

The other issue as a job board owner is a simple, but unfortunate, one. Most of the best freelance writing gigs are not publicly advertised. And they will never be. Now, I curate listings in addition to accepting them directly. But I feel for job board owners where the primary purpose is an income source for the site. No amount of asking them to post higher-paying gigs is going to increase the number of those gigs available to post. Wise clients don’t post job ads. They ask for referrals. They find top contractors via search. Or they tap internal networks. They don’t need to advertise, and they don’t have the time to be bombarded with applications and pitches that result from that, many of which come from unqualified writers. The more they pay, the worse this is for them. (One of my clients — a small business — advertised on just my board once and told me he received hundreds of applications and was too overwhelmed to want to do that again. And that’s a small board.)

So while I agree it would be great to see better paying gigs on job boards, that’s just a bit of background from someone who runs one. Things are never as easy as we’d like them to be, that’s for sure. 🙂

1. Paula Hendrickson
  
  May 8, 2017
  
  Interesting POV, Jenn. I wish other people who ran writing-related websites were even half as conscientious as you when it comes to posting job listings.
2. lwidmer
  
  May 11, 2017
  
  Thank you for weighing in, Jenn. It’s a really tough line to walk, and I agree with you that any minimum you place on what to post would be too arbitrary.
  
  What makes it hard is that some writers will accept lower rates (hence the reason for this entire month). It could be because in their region, that low rate would work quite well. But I see that as a BS excuse or someone who’s uninformed. We work nationally, not regionally (or not very often). The idea that someone in Council Bluffs, Iowa can’t demand the same rates as someone in Manhattan, on the surface, seems logical. But they can if they’re working with companies that are used to that rate.
  
  Good points you bring up, and an interesting twist to the discussion.