Though I’m not often paid for writing assignments, I’ve struggled for years with problems of devaluing my work (and continue to struggle with it, though I am improving). From my perspective, unless the client is beyond thrilled with the work, I feel I can’t charge them anything above a minimum for my time, as there would have been at least 1 other contractor out there who could have done a better job.

I’m university educated, with a degree in my field of work, and I live and breathe what I do. So why is it so difficult? Perhaps I should start a donation/tip service, to let the clients give my work the value they think it deserves and not worry anymore about what other contractors are charging.

@ rbo – It’s not an uncommon struggle so I totally feel your pain. I think that the problem in an economic downturn is that sometimes clients don’t feel the need to pay a fair amount (because it’s a buyers market). But how to shift this paradigm? That, my friend, is the question.

I think my main issue has been breaking the mommyblogger ceiling. So many SAHMs accept nothing to pennies for what should be paid work, blogging, and that lowers the bar for a lot of the rest of us who make our livelihood from it.

My tasks for the remainder of this summer is to sift through all of the regular, tangible blogging jobs and add to my client list companies that pay what bloggers are actually worth.

Quality clients will pay for quality content that they can’t get elsewhere. That said, pricing for blog posts on most topics, even highly specialized ones, will forevermore be undercut by decent quality free content.

I don’t know any copywriters who make most of their money from blogging for customers (but that may be a function of less-than-optimal networking on my part).

White papers, web content, sales copy, case studies, reports for business, and yes, book chapters, can be very well-paid assignments, with writers charging anywhere from $75 per hour to $250 per hour (or even more for those at the top). But blog posts? Heck, I’m undercutting myself in that format most of the time, using them as profile pieces rather than money-makers. Just the nature of the game, I suppose.

BTW, unless Joe is actually your secret alter ego, you may have to fix that link in the first paragraph.

Thanks for the mention, bud.

Starting out as a writer, you often can’t help but undervalue yourself in hopes of building up a reputable portfolio. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help the writing community at large. I agree with Terra, writers need to charge what they are worth and stick to working for reputable companies.

I really try to set a price in my mind (depending on the assignment) and not stray from it. If it’s a worthwhile opportunity, they’ll be willing to pay you for your quality work.

You have some great points to consider here. Both my professional and personal blogs are not paid for in essence. I expect no payment for my personal blog because it is a test ground for WP extensions and a place that I push the limits of my dyslexia. [http://www.jaypiddy.com]

My professional blog is also not for money but the white papers and ideas on interactive advertising are used to demonstrate the knowledge and ideas of the field of my expertise. The my professional blog does in the end pay for it’s self by attracting people to my business.

I do charge for writing if it is project specific and there is an end client requesting the material. That is very clear and understood by all parties. The whole blogging thing has really diluted the market for writing the same as istockphoto.com did for photography. My thought is if you are asked to write a piece for a client then it is worth money. Both parties need to agree on the amount but it should be paid for pure and simple. Now whether that is by the story, word or page is up to the tow parties to negotiate.

Does that bring any clarity to the subject or more questions?

I will add that most professional services that involve expertise start at $75/hr in advertising.

But I have another question – WRT what Terra, Jonathon and JP were saying – what about bloggers who become SO GOOD at their writing that they actually make a living as writers (or who want to do that)?

That is, wouldn’t we say that blogging has in fact enabled writers?

A writer stands before the community, either cloaked in a pseudonym (ghost writer, corporate flack, or using a nom de plume) or else completely naked. Probably the latter is most of us. The work is out there, with our name on it, for the community, our friends and family, as well as for the client or publisher. Whether it is great art, skillful prose, or garbage will be the judgment of every reader. Tough, huh? What is it worth to expose yourself to that kind of scrutiny and potential humiliation? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. No one cares how you feel. The issue is: was it a good read, did you make the point, is the reader satisfied that you delivered what was promised?

The theme here is getting paid what you are worth. And the problem is that anyone who has half-way mastered the qwerty keyboard, and has ever received a B+ for composition in school is a writer-for-hire. How is someone who might want to hire a wordsmith to know who can do the job, and what to pay?

The fall-back is to pay the going rate for the number of words, or for the writer’s time. The problem here is that the client neither wants the writer’s time, nor words by the bushel. The client wants some sort of results. What that is worth depends, not on the writer’s skill but on the client’s needs. Hold that thought, I’ll come back to it.

If you characterize yourself as a generic writer, ‘the going rate,’ whatever that means to you and your client, is all you can expect to receive. Not only that, you are in competition with all those other people who have a qwerty keyboard.

My recommendation is to move away from that crowd (of losers). Now I’m going to subject you to part of my story. As a young person (back when using a keyboard was work fit for typists and guys had not learned to call it ‘keyboarding’) I was known to be a fair writer. I never imagined that anyone would pay someone to write, so I didn’t try to peddle words. I had film-making ambitions, and a hobby of astronomy. That landed me the job of lecturing in Canada’s first major planetarium — in Montreal. One day it occurred to me that I could be the author of a planetarium show. I did that for several shows. For free! Without realizing it, other folks noticed that I could do something for fun that they found difficult. So, my ‘voice’ was writing and producing planetarium shows. How may writers reading this are saying, “Yeah! I could do that.” My point here is that my niche market was fairly tiny, but the people who could pay for my services knew the value of my work, and could pay well. Having demonstrated that I could write, it was not difficult to have my own newspaper column (I loved doing that, but eventually workload forced me to stop that) and other writing assignments.

If all you want to be is a writer, all you will do is join the mob of writers. I think you need to be special. You need to find your voice. When you are the right person for a client, there is no competition.

As a writer, writing is your business. Like a consultant, or an actor, or any other independent entrepreneur, you have to run your business as a business. An advisor to actors teaches that an actor’s work is not acting, it is finding work. When the opportunity to act arrives, it is almost a bonus.

About writing, and the client’s needs: if you are confident that the client really knows that you are the person who will produce the required results, the only limit to what you can earn from your work is the client’s ability to pay. Do you want the gig? If you don’t, refuse the work and don’t talk price. If you want to do the work, you should be able to say to the client, “What I want from you for this job is $____.” That is what you will accept to do the gig. It has to do with your relationship with the client, and your interest in the job, and it does not have anything to do with your rate card.

Another piece of advice that a wise consultant taught me was: “if you accept small jobs you get small jobs.” You are not an employee. You must position yourself and your services in the market. No one else can help you with this. This is your business.

Let me finish this with a comment told to me by the great Canadian actor, Robert Christie. He said that there is a lot of talk about the value and worth of an actor. At the time, he was teaching acting in Toronto. “How do you judge the worth of the art and talent of an actor?” his students would ask him. “Easy,” he’d answer, “look at the income on your last year’s income tax.”

I actually think the Writers.ca price list can be low. However, it’s a fair list and you wouldn’t go wrong by bidding in that range.

Raul, I got my start as a freelance writer and I still do freelance writing. I know you’re familiar with Consultant Journal and possibly the posts there on setting fees. But feel free to email me if you have some specific questions – I don’t mind.

I understand that the situation is very different in academia, because getting published is almost a payment/reward in and of itself. The salary that you earn at the university, as you mention, is supposed to be all-encompassing for everything you do in that position, including research, teaching, and so on.

Since I am a freelance writer, I can speak a little more about what is the appropriate rate or price that a writer should charge for that kind of work. Honestly, there is no true guideline. It would be the same thing as asking how much an actor should charge for appearing in a movie. Someone like Tom Cruise can demand much more money than the struggling actor who served him a cup of coffee that morning. Is this fair? That’s up to debate.

The type and quality of writing will largely dictate the rate. If you hire an offshore writer who has English as a second language, you can probably expect to pay less, but the quality will not be the same as a university-educated native English speaker with specific expertise in your area of interest. Even then, the per-word rate would be different for a casual blog post compared to a comprehensive business report or a copywriting package. Think about how much advertising agencies charge to come up with a five-word slogan. That’s writing too.

On a side note, I completely agree with Terra. There are a lot of “mommy bloggers” and overseas writers who are charging much lower than what they should, lowering th bar for people like me who make our livelihood from writing online. For the average consumer, they see that one person is willing to write a 1000-word blog post for $1, so why shouldn’t all “pro” bloggers charge the same?

@michaelkwan – similar situation with overseas programmers and developers. However once I set up a meeting with somebody I usually successfully convince them that the quality is there, and they are dealing with somebody with the same North American business mindset.

First off, my comment to work in academia: the work you do for your salary is only a means to an end. The job of any professor who wants to be on a tenure track is to bring high-profile research projects (and the dollars that come with them) in to the university. Any writing/research/teaching you do is all part of the work necessary to build yourself up as an expert worthy of spending some large organization’s dollars. It’s not pretty, but it’s reality.

If you view other writing that way, as part of building yourself a reputation as a subject-matter-expert and well-regarded writer, than it almost doesn’t matter what you charge – the payoff is the reputation you gain (and the benefits that come with it – whatever those may be).

Then again, I also agree with Robert Ballantyne’s comment. You are worth what you can charge. Being married to an engineer (and knowing many more of them) I have heard a lot about the Calling ceremony and the Engineer’s Obligation – part of which is never to work for less than one’s worth, to protect everyone in the field and prevent a race to the bottom.

The only way you can ensure that you as a writer earns what you consider fair compensation, is to only accept what you consider fair compensation (which will depend on what the true end-goal of your writing is). Will people refuse to pay it? Maybe. But you are the only one who can devalue yourself. Offering low compensation doesn’t devalue writing work. Accepting it does.

Everyone – excellent commentary. That’s why sometimes I just don’t want to comment, I prefer to read how everyone responds and keeps the conversation going.

One question I’d like to pose, though – how to bring the standard UP rather than down?

Both Robert and Jen make the point that accepting low payment leads the profession/work to be undervalued (as I think most of who’s commented has mentioned, including Terra, Michael, Andrea, Jay and RBO).

So how do we engage in a race to the top rather than race to the bottom?

That’s the big one, and the difficult one. Especially for someone starting. It is easy for an old guy to pontificate. Here is the sermon for this evening…

- Value yourself highly. If you don’t no one else will.
- Do what you love. Life is too short to spend on stuff you don’t like.
- Keep learning. All the time. Probably the best way is to challenge yourself to do something you don’t know how to do; and through research, and trial and error, figure out how. I don’t have much faith in experts and gurus. Try to explore what has not been explored. Learning may not about taking courses, it is about growing personally. Courses are okay if there is a gem of new information for you in the course. But beware, courses tend to funnel you back to being a member of the mob of losers.
- Think about how you work and what processes help you to be productive. For instance, writing isn’t just filling a blank page with clever words. It is knowing how to think through the whole project, how to research efficiently, etc. Is is drama? You may be good with a short story; but do you know how build a complicated plot, create and resolve conflict, develop wonderful characters, and then lay out the meal for the reader with red herrings and well timed moments of crisis? And so on. Or, in the corporate world, can you write a media release that will not bore an assignment editor?
- Try to see the product of your work from the consumer’s (or client’s) point of view.
- You may love doing the work, but if it seems effortless, maybe you could take it to another level with more effort.
- when working with a client, your object is not to meet expectations, it is always to exceed expectations.
- whatever is is that you do, don’t wait for someone to promise to pay to do it. Be thinking about it and doing it all the time. Are you a writer? What did you write today? How did you challenge yourself. What are you exploring. This is leading to…
- find a way to make what you do special. And then work to be the best in the world at your way of being special.
- Choose the people you spend time with carefully. The club of losers love to hang out and complain. Let me be cruel about this. They will drag you down. Your time and your emotional energy are too valuable to squander in that swamp. Sure, spend time with the successful people, if you can. Your friends may be wannabes too, but you can see those who are going to succeed. They will challenge you, and they won’t tolerate your whining.
- learn to network, use the Internet and social media… anything to put yourself in touch with those people who will love what you can do and who will pay what it is worth. Don’t treat your network casually… eventually it will lead you to the gold.
- And then there is persistence…

* Churchill’s full text of an address to an English Prep School
Never!
Never!
Never!
Never!
Give Up!

* Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale: “Trying” is just a noisy way of not doing something.

Ray Kroc, founder of MacDonald’s had this framed message on his wall:

Nothing can take
the place of
persistence.

Talent will not;
nothing is more common
than unsuccessful men
with great talent.

Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is
almost a proverb.

Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and
determination
alone are omnipotent.

[...] on how people are compensated for their work. He still feels that everyone that you should get paid what you are worth, but what does that really mean? For a university professor, they are paid a single salary to [...]

Just as with actors, so too there are unions that set minimums for writers. Unlike Hollywood, you have the option to join them or to go it independently. In fact, one of the most powerful writer’s unions is the Writers Guild of America, which sets minimum prices on screenwriting.

Writers.ca means well, but undershoots substantially, especially now that the world is so digital you can as easily sell your words to the US or UK as you can to TO. Hell, most days they’re far more networked with Vancouver than Toronto, Centre of the Universe and All Media.

I recommend looking at the prices over at MediaBistro.com and considering them the going rate for professionals at the mid to upper levels. The entry rate for writers is, as you’ve noticed, zero (hello unpaid internships!). There’s a delta factor to the price, which is the perceived value of your talent. Not the ACTUAL degree by which your talent varies from the norm; the PERCEIVED degree to which you are better or worse. This, you guess or ask your friends to guess.

And in negotiations, the first person who says a number generally loses. Do not lowball, hoping to get the contract; contracts you can only get by lowballing are going to take it out of you in hand-holding and abuse, since there is no floor of respect when they’re getting you for peanuts.

This is a great blog post Raul. As you know, I just launched my start-up, and in early conversations with potential clients, the pricing issue comes up.

On the one hand, we’re really eager to have a first client, to get our tool into the real world making real change, but we don’t want to give it away for free.

In any transaction, there has to be an exchange – otherwise things can go weird in the relationship. But finding that exchange value — in dollars or otherwise — is always hard, especially since I think most of us tend to undervalue ourselves, as some have pointed out here.

Anyways, glad to read this and hear that others are thinking about this issue as well.