Tired of low rates? Convince them to pay more.
I used to get upset by all the low paying gigs I saw advertised on the internet. I’d think, “I could make good money freelancing if only people were willing to pay more for good writing.” Then, it finally dawned on me that minds could be changed.
There are quite a few reasons that people advertise low rates. Sometimes, they’re just plain cheap, but sometimes they don’t realize what they could get if they just paid a little more money. That’s where your good marketing skills come in.
Don’t let a low advertised rate stand in the way of getting a gig you want.
Pitch to them anyway. Stress the benefits of hiring you and the type of result they can expect from hiring you. State your rate and explain why you charge that rate. Reiterate your unique benefit once more before closing out the message.
You’ll probably get a mixed response. Some webmasters are deadset on paying a low price and won’t budge. Others will see the value in hiring you can pay the higher rate.
The closer your rates are to the advertised rates, the better the chance of convincing the client to pay more. For example, if someone’s advertising $.02/word, you’ll have an easier time convincing them to pay $.05/word than you will $.10/word.
I like to check out the hiring webmaster’s publication to help decide if I’m going to try to persuade them to pay more. If there are no ads, the webmaster might not be generating enough income from the site to pay more.
Do you ever apply for gigs even though your rate is higher than what’s advertised? What do you say? How’s your success rate?
Hi
I know what you mean, and I have made a commitment to myself to not take less than what I determined to be my rock bottom price. It can be hard at times, especially if it is a bulk job, and you just look at the total price. Of course that means more writing for the writer, and we deserve to be compensated for it. I still don’t get the concept of I should charge less if you want me to write more, I still have to do all the writing.
I don’t try to get jobs that are way below my rates. I never figured it would turn out well and would probably be a waste of my time. If someone is advertising a low price they are probably not going to budge. Now I have had people approach me and want to offer me less than what I charge. They can clearly see my prices on my website but that never seems to deter some people.
However, on the plus side..I think the days of people expecting cheap content is coming to an end. I believe a lot of website owners/webmasters are starting to see just what the “value” is of ultra cheap and most of the time “bad” writing.
Giselle
Hi Giselle- I know what you mean about bulk work. Buyers have the tendency to think of writing as a product rather than a service. It’s not less work for me to write more articles, so I’m inclined to charge the same.
But, with bulk orders for articles within the same niche, there’s often less research required because you’re writing several articles on the same topic. You’d do more research if you were writing the same number of articles but on different topics. That’s how you can justify the discount.
I do give a small discount (10%) sometimes for orders over 10-15 articles and sometimes for repeat customers.