I’m about to try proving a point about your rates by taking you through France to get to New Jersey. Bear with me – it’s relevant. Somehow.
Image and brand – in some cases, they’re the same thing. Don’t think so? Ask Michael Phelps right about now. And Miley Cyrus? Both her image and her brand are hurting. Wells Fargo – fairly similar, but their image is as a wealthy financial institution – spending money lavishly (and yes, stupidly) is somewhat expected of them. Okay, maybe not so lavishly or stupidly as was revealed recently, but the idea is that they’ve built a brand of trust (there’s the root of their current problems) and an image of a strong financial foundation. While paying for a Las Vegas producer junket was an all-time asinine move just after posting $2.3 billion in losses in the last quarter of 2008 (and taking our bailout money), the image may not be as harmed by it because we are left with a sense that the bank is still strong despite all evidence to the contrary. The brand? Now I’m worried because if my money were with them, I’d not have faith that the decision-making process was trustworthy.
So why are Phelps and Cyrus hurting a bit more? Because their brands ARE their images. See, they’ve been promoted differently – Phelps as a hero, Cyrus as a wholesome Disney teen by-product. Phelps picking up a bong and taking a hit has a huge impact on his audience – young kids who want to be like him someday. Cyrus – not so wholesome to be making slanty eyes, especially when her audience is much younger and looks up to her.
That’s why I say be careful how you package yourself, including your rates. If you promote yourself as someone who is an exceptional talent, reliable, and worth the money, guess what? The work will come without you having to offer any across-the-board rate cuts. If, however, you put yourself out there as an exceptional talent, reliable, but not so sure in this economy if you’re worth what you think you are, there goes your image and your brand. This is a recession. What goes down will, eventually, go back up. If you were so eager to be the bargain in the bad times, how do you expect to convince clients that you’re worth much more in a strong economy? And if you join others who want to lower in order to pull in a couple extra bucks, how are any of us going to command the fees that we are worth when the industry has adjusted to suit lower rates? Worse, what if those lower rates are based on 50-articles-for-$5 jobs that plenty of uninformed freelancers took? Insert shudder here.
Is any of this getting through? Are you more willing to at least consider how this will affect freelancing? If not, can you at least see how it will hurt you? And it will. We’ve already seen evidence of it in the past few years as these crap jobs become more prevalent. They exist because writers who don’t understand the value of their skills take them. (If I had a rubber hose and enough time, I’d straighten them all out. Alas, I am only one soul with a peeve. And I’m kidding. Sort of.)
Last year I started the Writers Worth Day. It’s in mid-May and it’s just my little exercise in helping others value themselves and start valuing the industry they’re part of a bit more. For the second Writers Worth Day, what can we do to improve our industry and our own businesses? Any ideas?
Also, every nitwit thinks it’s easy to make a living writing, and there are far too many people who are hired for writing mill jobs with no qualifications, who don’t care to learn the basics of grammar and structure. They think $25 over six months is a good income. Do you know anyone who can live on that, in this country?
When employers see the low pay and crap quality everywhere, they start to think it’s the norm. They pull us all down.
Devon is in my head today. I was just going to say that the number of writers out there accepting scandlously low wages is driving down rates which hurts all writers in the end. I know these are tough times and all, but there is work out there and there are clients willing to pay. This is hard work, and we deserve to be well compesated for our time and effort as much as professionals in any other industry. Interestingly, I have a couple of clients who have actually been burned trying to go for cheap over quality in the past.
Kimberly makes a great point. How many times have we had to pick up the pieces for a client who went with the cheapest “writer,” only to find out that the work was terrible or even plagiarized?
Clients are hurt by low rates just as much as writers are. If a client is not able to tell good writing from bad writing (and some can’t, so they trust the people they hire), their reputation will suffer if they post poor quality writing. If a “writer” plagiarizes and a client then posts the content on his site, it’s not the writer who is going to get in trouble. The client is going to get a DMCA complaint letter and may even be threatened with loss of Web hosting or legal ramifications.
What we can do for Writers Worth Day is to let people who are in the market for writing services know this. I think we’ve all tried to let new writers (and wanna-be writers) know why they shouldn’t work for peanuts. Maybe if we all blog, Tweet, and talk about the negative consequences for people who hire writers for low pay, they’ll learn to appropriately compensate the real professionals.
Sorry for my long comment.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing up this issue of low rates for freelance writers. I just received an email from a new freelance medical editor who couldn’t decide whether or not to take an editing job that required her to edit reports, FOR FREE, for a “trial” period of time! As writers and editors we need to value ourselves and the work we do enough to say “No” to poor pay. If we don’t value our work, our clients never will.
Cyndy, I’m glad this post helped you make the right decision. If it saves one writer, it’s worth it!
I’m sick to death of “writing tests” or “samples” of how I’d handle a topic. I gave someone a brief “here’s how I’d fix it” critique last week – I attached a copyright notice. As expected, they went dead silent. Not only that, they got brief bullet points. No way I give away the farm!
Leigh, don’t you dare apologize! That needed to be said. And Kimberly and Devon, I’m glad I’m in such good company on this!
Lori,
I haven’t even considered lowering my rates. If I’m broke, at least I want to have time to enjoy it. 🙂 I’d rather not work than work for nothing.
Very excellent point, Lillie! Breaking your back for low-paying work is just senseless.