Stop Writing for Cheap Just to Get Noticed

New freelance writers often mistake writing for cheap as a viable way to break into the freelance writing world. I think it works for a select few, but not for many. It’s like the hundreds (probably thousands) of reality tv show contestants who hope to further their singing/acting/modeling/miscellaneous entertainment career. It hardly ever works. It the same for freelance writers charging low rates.

Let me tell you my story. When I first started writing, I was writing for a penny per word and sometimes less. I didn’t think I had to accept these low rates to get established, I thought it was all that was out there. The first time I increased my writing rates it was from 2 cents a word to 4 cents a word. I thought I was doing great. In retrospect, I could have been doing so much better than that, I just didn’t realize I could.

This is what I can tell you about those penny-per-word jobs - they won’t get you established. They’re not credible and chances are, they’re probably not giving you credit for your work. So when you need writing samples to get higher paying jobs, you don’t have any.

If I were doing it all over again, I wouldn’t take on those low paying jobs. Instead, I’d take some time to figure out the niche or writing type I wanted to specialize in. I’d create an online portfolio and a blog on my niche. I’d write 5-10 blog posts on the blog and use those as samples in my portfolio. If you need to show off a type of writing like sales copy or press release, you could create samples based on a mock situation (it’s how you’d create a portfolio in college anyway) and put those in an online portfolio.

Accepting low rates for your writing doesn’t get you established. Of the successful writers I know, there are only a few (less than 5 including me) who got started on the low end of the paying spectrum. That says a lot about the need to be cheap to jumpstart your career - there isn’t one. I’m telling you this because it took someone else telling me to get me to stop accepting low wages and start getting paid like a professional writer.