Because I didn’t want to hi-jack the op’s thread here I decided to pose my question in this thread.
If three and five dollar blog posts are quality, then why do people like shoemoney earn $500.00 per post or more? Is it because their clients are stupid or do they just have the money to throw away?
Why do companies such as Site Point pay their bloggers more than $3.00 or $5.00 per post?
I think it’s because they recognize quality and are willing to pay a fair price for it. You who are willing to accept less are doing so because you either have no confidence in your abilities or you just don’t have the ability. As long as you are willing to accept chump change for your work, you won’t find the clients who see value for dollar and are willing to pay for it.
I’d pay a good content writer as much as content is worth to me, so if an article was beautifully crafted, well researched, and plain solid, then I’d take no issue with paying a few hundred dollars for it.
If your site is pulling in enough revenue to offer authors more, then certainly offer them more. Better content is worth more, and better content is what usually attracts more visitors.
$15-$25 I might consider a fair entry price for a short, average quality post from an author who’s writing for you for the first time.
After that…maybe more for repeat authors who consistently offer good (and popular) content.
Then on top of that, there’s also the option of giving a small commission if the article does very well within, say, the first 30 days. That would be a small incentive beyond just the initial payment to maybe just put in that little bit of extra effort.
I guess that depends upon how short and I don’t believe you’ll find many takers for a “commission”.
Here’s how good writers work:
They write it. Then they read it and often rearrange it. They look for areas where bullet points would better serve the content and check to see if they can add a heading. When writing for the web, they find spots where generic words could be replaced with good keywords. Then they spell check it, grammar check it and check it against your style sheet (if you’re bright enough to have one). If they have time before your deadline, they let it sit for awhile and come back and read it again. Then, if no further change is warranted, they deliver it.
My point – quality takes time.
Your post sounds like you believe that when you hire a freelance writer, you’re hiring an employee. Take a look at some writer sites. Freelance is a business. As I said before, when you’re hiring a freelance writer, you’re purchasing a service. You don’t make an offer. The writer quotes according to the scope of your writing project (even if it is just one blog post) and the price points they have established for their freelance business.
Unfortunately, there are too many webmasters and blog owners who will settle for less than the best in order to fill a page with something cheap and quick.
I’ve worked both sides of the fence at one time or another.
The majority of authors that submitted content to the site I managed ended up being regular contributors. Very few were one-time authors.
Heck, we established a semi-private section of the forums for all the authors to toss around ideas and whatnot for new content.
That’s probably not the norm for most sites when you’re talking about freelancing, so, yeah, I suppose you’re right in saying that it sounds more like a group of employees rather than strictly freelancers.
As for the commission thing, it was more of a bonus, rather than part of the base pay for the post/article.
With some projects you are looking mostly for proper English and a basic sense of writing. In my experience, not every blog post has to be a masterpiece. A lot depends on your target audience and the purpose of the blog.
Also, a lot depends on the writer’s expertise. With all due respect, just because someone can write well, doesn’t mean he knows a topic well enough - and research doesn’t always cover it all (or it would take way way too much time to research it properly).
Let me try and illustrate. My topic is cats. I know only a handful of writers I would trust with writing in-depth quality articles/posts about cats. Almost always, I do my writing myself, and when I do hire, it’ll be a professional cat writer (from the cat writers association). Now, for me, or for a cat writer, I can write a top quality piece about cat behavior off the top of my head in 1-2 hours. Simply because I have studied the subject for many years. I would pay the writer the same fee I would “pay” myself - which is always in the $xx range. Do I expect a professional writer who’s not a cat expert to write for that amount? of course not! It would take them days of research to come up with a similar quality.
My point is, what I call “quality writing” is more than just stringing words together. It’s about one’s expertise in various fields. I guess shoemoney is such an expert on whatever topic they asked him to write, that he can provide content that a regular writer can’t. Still, way way overpriced, if you ask me. Unless the payment is for him to write/promote something on HIS blog, in which case it’s about the amount and quality of his traffic more than about the actual writing.
And while I’m on my soapbox here… It’s a free market. Publishers pay what they think will make their site profitable. A post on most of my blogs won’t make me more than $20 - even in the very long run. I can’t afford to pay a lot because it simply will not be profitable. I could either write the stuff myself, or I can hire someone who’s “good enough” for what I can afford. And as far as I can see, there is no shortage of decent writers who can string words nicely. Their hourly rate is still worth their time, apparently.
Shyflower, to be honest it’s the same as web design. You could pay someone $3 an hour to put together a website or pay someone $10,000 up-front for a unique custom made website built by a design studio. The simple fact is that the price difference is entirely down to quality, nothing more. Places like SitePoint want writers who can attract an audience, not subtract from it with shoddy poorly worded “generic blog” stuff. One way of looking at it would be the old medium of books… articles on somewhere like Sitepoint would be easily of the standard which a printed version could be considered of value, but you certainly wouldn’t take most normal low paying content and publish it in something that may become peer reviewed.
Here’s the point. When you pay someone $3.00 an hour, you are paying someone who is poorly skilled or just plain stupid, even if they live in a country where that’s a decent wage. Those who have decent skills to write and design can command more; as said by Force Flow “It depends on what the market will bear.” Believe me, the market can bear much more than $3.00 an hour. There are writers in many of the poorer markets who ask for and command as much as any writer in a prosperous market.
The main problems are:
There are too many who present themselves as freelancers that don’t have a clue about running a freelance business. They’re actually wannabees who think the web is a good place to make a quick buck and they make their bucks by plagiarizing the work of real freelancers.
There are too many web site owners who only buy domains to make a quick buck and they are ready, willing, and able to hire the wannabees, the simple minded, and the desperate. They don’t care about the needs of their visitors or of the “writers” they hire and unfortunately, they don’t care about the rights of skilled writers and designers.
Unfortunately, there are also too many so-called freelance sites that cater to both of these groups. So, as a result some skilled designers and writers put themselves in group one, at the mercy of group two. What I want to do with this thread is let them know they don’t have to undersell their skills.
Start treating freelance as a business. Act like a business owner instead of an employee.
Don’t let web owners tell you what they’ll pay. Tell them what you’ll accept.
Don’t accept less than a living wage.
When you ask for decent money, you find that you get decent customers.
Preaching to the choir, I’m always damning the likes of Guru and e-lance on the basis that they encourage the bottom dwellers of the freelance world… as in they outbid each other for the lowest price available… in a reversed eBay fashion. I would personally like to see ALL of those work bidding freelance sites banned on the basis that they promote poor competition, hurt the industry as a whole (in quality of skill-sets) and encourage businesses to outsource their work to the lowest bidder.
It depends on the monetizing effort of the blogger. If the blogger pays $25 for an article, and manages to generate $500 sales in product, there is a gross profit of $475.
There’s a trust factor involved… USUALLY, if I see a product or site being promoted on Shoemoney or JohnChow, I’m willing to give it a shot, even if I know it’s a paid review… Why? Because I know they’re not willing to risk their reputation over $500.
With random bloggers, you never know what you’re getting…
It’s a free market. Publishers pay what they think will make their site profitable. A post on most of my blogs won’t make me more than $20 - even in the very long run. I can’t afford to pay a lot because it simply will not be profitable. I could either write the stuff myself, or I can hire someone who’s “good enough” for what I can afford. And as far as I can see, there is no shortage of decent writers who can string words nicely. Their hourly rate is still worth their time, apparently.