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| | #101 |
| SEO D'Artagnan War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2009
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Revealing thread. Basically a few people claiming that a Big Mac is the same as a sirloin steak at a high end restaurant and doing so without sitting down in the high end restaurant. If Lisa is rated as the number one writer at RAC and there is no difference then why aren't many of those 2 cent a word writers pushing her down the list? Judging by the market their customers should be over the moon over their $10 articles and they should have far more votes. Must be a reason. |
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| | #102 |
| Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
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This is a eye-opener as to what fees you can get with the right reputation in the right market. Believe it or not it is often a emotional reason by client paying top dollar, not ROI. Here,s a story to illustrate. A well known [outside IM world] b+ copywriter positioned himself to be very picky who he takes on. Results in people litterally begging to have him at least look at their projects. It happened more than once where his clients never sent out his copy. It was like some weired conquest where the buyer bought bragging rights to have this copywriter work for him. This weiredness happened over a decade ago. Fees were like 15 grand plus if I recall correctly. So don't get your thinking as to what someone is prepared to pay limit your income. Ewen |
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| | #103 |
| Active Warrior Join Date: Sep 2009
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I occasionally outsource to writers when I am snowed under or feeling lazy. I buy a very specific type of writing - link bait. Not just any old good article, but things that have a GENUINE chance of going popular on the social networks. The cheapest writer I have found charges about $30 for the article and I still have to edit the hell out of his stuff. If someone thinks they can write link bait for me at 1 cent a word and has examples of their 1 or 2 cent content hitting the front page of digg, I certainly haven't been able to find them. |
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| | #104 | |||||
| Advanced Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: alicubi super pluvia
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There's an enormous difference between someone who has taken the time to educate themselves on the options available, and someone whose ONLY concern is price. Price shoppers (generalization alert) are usually not thinking about ROI. And most of them wouldn't be able to evaluate ROI if it jumped up and bit 'em on the butt. Yes, people SHOULD be testing and tracking, working with a carefully thought-out budget and marketing plan, and planning their outlay with regard to achieving a given set of goals. Unfortunately, whenever I have been approached by those whose first question is, "How much do you charge for X?", I have found that those people never have any of the excellent parameters you listed in place. So I completely agree with you that value stems from ROI, but I suggest that ROI cuts both ways. When I work with a client, I invest a lot of my time and energy into producing the best damn work I can for them. I've also invested my own time and money into increasing my learning and skill development - so that I can offer high-quality copywriting and marketing services that deliver ROI for my clients. At the same time, I have bills to pay and obligations to meet, and a lifestyle I wish to support. Trust me, I'm not whining about the time and money I've spent on my own career. My choice, and mine alone. But - I think - given my investment and my desire for a "return" on my investment, that I owe it to myself to work with clients who value what I can bring to the table. In other words, I can choose to direct my energies to maximizing my ROI. Or not. Quote:
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In your case, you've decided what your needs are. You take the necessary actions to meet your needs. If an action doesn't meet your need (i.e. does not produce the desired ROI) you dump it and move on. Nothing wrong with that. Some writers work the same way you do. | |||||
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| | #105 |
| Crazy Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2009
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There's a lot of discussions about this sort of topic but this seem to be the one that really interests me.
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| > n.E.i.L < | |
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| | #106 |
| Lisa Dozois War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Florida, USA.
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-- Lisa G
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| | #107 | |
| Lisa Dozois War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Florida, USA.
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Using your example, only in U.S. dollars: If I am paid $400 per day, 5 days a week, I earn $104,000 per year. So, after taxes, I am left with somewhere around $67,000. That's $5,500 per month or $1200 per week, roughly. So that $5,500 defines my world. If I do not want to go into debt, I have to model my life around what I can afford to buy with a fixed amount of money. If I want to buy a $15,000 boat, I either need to go into debt, or save a percentage of my income until I reach $15,000 and hope that inflation doesn't keep driving the price of the boat out of reach during the period of savings. As a freelancer, working in the market I work in, there is a chance I will land a $15,000 project and maybe be able to buy that boat, or all but the engine, out of profits. That gives me hope. I wake up each day knowing that I am going to get new business and that I am in control of what I earn. If I need an extra $15,000 all I have to do is open the flood gates and say "Yes" to every project that comes across my desk, even if I normally wouldn't take any particular one, and I may be able to nail that $15,000 in a short time. Work myself to the bone -- yes, but that would be my choice and I would reap the reward. With a job? I have no hope. | |
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-- Lisa G
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| | #108 | |
| Unplugged War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: London, UK.
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Hi Lisa Quote:
Your rates may vary and you may get a particularly high-paying assignment, but there's still only one of you and only 24 hours in every day. There's a limit to your earnings. If you want to maintain your standard of living, you'll have to keep working (give or take) at the rate you currently are. And your only "asset" is you (i.e. your reputation). A business owner has something tangible to sell. Something that could possibly be cashed in for a lump sum within a few short years. If you're not building assets, then you're simply working for a living - a job by any other name. Frank | |
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| | #109 | |
| Lisa Dozois War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Florida, USA.
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I realize I have a "job", but I have complete control over every aspect of my work environment from my work location, attire, hours, level of effort, choice of tasks. As far as being a business owners and building an asset. Well, been there and done that. I even have the T-Shirt (literally). My husband and I built a mail-order business, took it to #132 on the INC 500 and sold it to a Fortune 1000 in NY after 6 years. http://www.bizwiz.com/bizwizwire/pre...y7sjj44ye7.htm It was fun but waaay too much work. I was never happier than the day the contract was signed and the wire transfer was completed. | |
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-- Lisa G
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| | #110 | |||
| Unplugged War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: London, UK.
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Hi Lisa Quote:
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![]() NB I wasn't in any way disparaging the concept of freelance work. I'd guess most freelancers love what they do and lead happy and fulfilling lives. But it's still a job. Best, Frank | |||
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| | #111 |
| Lisa Dozois War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Florida, USA.
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| No worries. I didn't take it that way. And I wasn't disparaging the concept of owning a business and building assets. But I bet you knew that ;-)
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-- Lisa G
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| | #112 | |
| Advanced Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Right Here ---->
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As for the freelance guys, they come and go as they please as long are the projects are completed and are up to the agency standard everyone's happy. Furthermore, as I said in my subsequent post, as far as the really good writers are concerned, "I didn't meet a single one of them that didn't have countless other writing projects, plays, novels or lectures on the go." In many cases, they make more income from their non advertising endeavours but, of course, the advertising income is regular, guaranteed and immediate. As Frank wrote, simply being a freelance writer can limit your revenue potential for all of the reasons he discussed. It's good to hear that you have recently discovered this. Good luck with your sites. Tom | |
| STOP THE TRAFFIK: PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE BOUGHT AND SOLD Help Us Rescue, Rehabilitate And Reunite Victims With Their Families STOP THE TRAFFIK is a growing global movement of individuals, communities and organisations fighting to PREVENT the sale of people, PROTECT the trafficked and PROSECUTE the traffickers. | ||
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| | #113 | |
| AT gmail DOT com War Room Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: Kent, WA
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I'm actually starting to lean in the direction that the best way to get a solid, reliable education in IM is to learn one thing passably well, and then sell your services in that one thing to see how other people are integrating it with their other efforts. Once you've got a solid handle on it, you can move on to the next thing, and over the course of a year or two you'll learn all you need... getting paid for it the whole time. Which is really a pretty strong argument for not going the corporate route, when you think about it. | |
| Donate to the Darklock Liquor Fund Hey; I got nothin' to do today but smile, 'n-da, 'n-da, doo-da, and here I am. | ||
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| | #114 |
| Writer War Room Member |
One lesson I teach is how to get a client in 10 mins and that client will be the best paying client every. Without giving away everything, we got this client, and we worked for them for maybe 20 hours at the most. The payback was over 3 months, because of how the work was done. Less than 10,000 words were written and the paycheck over 3 months was just over $9,000. Why, because we don't want a job as a freelancer, we use our knowledge to get writing contracts which pay far higher rates than anything a normal client would pay, be it in IM or outside of IM. |
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| | #115 | |
| Unplugged War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: London, UK.
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Then you'll begin earning something like your true worth. ![]() Frank | |
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| | #116 |
| AT gmail DOT com War Room Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: Kent, WA
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| One of the things I occasionally point out to people who say "my time is worth $X an hour" is that an hour of human life is, in fact, priceless. You only have so many of them, it's never enough, and there's no way to get more. You literally cannot be paid enough - let alone "too much" - for your time.
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| Donate to the Darklock Liquor Fund Hey; I got nothin' to do today but smile, 'n-da, 'n-da, doo-da, and here I am. | |
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| | #117 |
| Unplugged War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: London, UK.
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| | #118 |
| Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: United Kingdom
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The problem with CONTENT is it's not easy to determine a true return on investment (ROI). For example, you could purchase a $10 article for your blog. It doesn't make you any direct sales. Does that mean its ROI is zero? Not necessarily. As I discussed in Do You Value Your Content? Here’s Why You Should..., there are many factors contributing to the value that aren't immediately obvious. Brian Clark's Copyblogger was founded early in 2006 and now has 70,000+ subscribers, half a million backlinks (I mean REAL backlinks, and not profile links and comments) and over 1,000 articles. If the founder were to sell up now, I estimate he'd easily get $100K for it, which is OVER $100 an article. (Personally, I suspect he could sell it for $1 MILLION or more, or $1,000+ per article!) That doesn't even include all the revenue he's generated from his blog since 2006, plus the LEVERAGE factor of owning such an authority blog (he speaks at various conventiions and sells other products which he can promote on his blog), plus the boost to his own personal AUTHORITY in the field of copywriting. What is the ROI of all that? One thing I'm certain... I doubt very many of the posts on that blog were written by "cheap" article "writers" with English as a second language. On the other hand, that doesn't mean he pays $50 an article, either. In fact, probably many of those articles were written for FREE by guest bloggers, who determined their ROI for doing so on the basis of the publicity they'd receive. My point is... if you're measuring the value of content by the immediate ROI (i.e. how many immediate subscribers or sales it generates, or Adsense revenue), that could well be seriously underestimating its value over the long term. And that also doesn't include the different ways in which your high quality content could be repackaged: PLR, reports, courses, even a physical book! In short, measuring the short term ROI does not take into account... ... the LONG TERM value of your content as a whole (i.e. on a blog that can be sold in its entirety) ... the LEVERAGE you can get from your content (i.e. writing a book, perceived as an authority, guest speaker etc) ... the REPACKACKING value (i.e. can the content be refashioned into reports, courses and even physical books). ... the BACKLINKS value. Everyone wants backlinks, but if you have a blog with a decent number of subscribers and good content, people will naturally backlink to your content (aka Copyblogger's 500,000 backlinks) - no "packets" necessary |
| PRESELL MASTERY: What you thought you knew about "preselling" is about to radically change. Forever. Click Here. BECOME A COPYWRITER, WITH CLIENTS, IN AS LITTLE AS 6 MONTHS...CLICK HERE. | |
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| | #119 |
| Active Warrior Join Date: Sep 2009
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@Paul Hancox - they're soem great points. For online writing, I long ago figured out that I had to add value to the content if I wanted to charge a lot for it. That's why I started cultivating an online social network. These days I have most of the top social media users available to me on IM and have some pretty strong accounts myself. That means that any content I produce for my clients is practically guaranteed to get a heap of traffic and links. The content itself needs to be pretty good and well suited to this type of marketing, but I think I have the formular just about right. It was a lot of work to establish my network, but it has been well worth it. When I launch a site, it gets thousands of visitors from day one. The thing is, this value add practically guarantees a steady stream of customers who are willing to pay a lot more than most online content buyers too. The ROI is there for them.Another way to get more for writing is simply to sell to a different market. I get 3x more if I sell the exact same service to an offline company than to an internet marketer. I know guys who sell the service at 10x what I am doing (with no guarantees), but they are the big names. The perceived value of their work is higher than mine and good luck to them. |
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| | #120 |
| Warrior Member Join Date: Aug 2009
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Hi Dee name is Etheli am on since 8/17/09 earnings 0.00 dont know any thinr am interested in your services please respond HAD TO REMOVE MY EMAIL ADDREE BECAUSE I DONT HAVE 15 POST PLS.GIVE ME A QUICK CALL AND GET MY EMAIL 704 900 5325 Thank you Ethel |
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| | #121 | |
| Pauljeaston Join Date: Sep 2009
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| | #122 |
| Writer War Room Member |
What I find disturbing isn't writers who don't value themselves, does McD's value themselves over an expensive ... you can't tell. But, the writers who think they can charge more because they can charge more. I have asked this question over the past year to many writers, and many are in this thread. I asked how would they write an article on a certain niche for a low rate, a medium rate and a high rate. The writer has to determine which rates they would charge in each group. And the answer was the same way, the same article for all the different price ranges. That is wrong. I don't go to a 5 star restaurant and expect a McD just because I'm willing to pay more. A high price article should have more research completed, the article written with more in-depth information and hidden gems you have discovered whilst reseaching. A cheap price article will be researched, but to a far lower level, and the article written so people can engage with it, but not anywhere as in-depth as a high priced one. We tell people we can write low priced articles but they will be fairly basic articles compared to our high price articles. I would be annoyed if I paid a top price and found that someone who wanted cheap got the same service, because the writer can't tell the difference because low rates and high rates and what it means. It doesn't mean the most I can get from a client. |
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| | #123 | |
| Advanced Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: The wilds of Pennsylvania
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Because my lowest rate is still much higher than the average rate in the Warrior forum, and many times the average rate at a place like Rentacoder. And for that you get talent and experience. On a relative basis, though, I do have a sliding scale. I have a minimum per word, and then a fee related to the amount of research time and revisions I'm going to need to do. My fees for doing standard IM articles is less than half my usual rate, because the investment in time is so much smaller. | |
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| | #124 |
| Writer War Room Member |
Most of the people who were asked the question were people charging around 2 cents per word. They wanted to know how to charge higher rates, and I posed the question to see what they would do for 5 cents a word or 10 cents a word. But the rates were not relevants in the sense any 3 rates would have done. It was the principle to show an article written couldn't be sold for 3 different rates without different levels of writing.
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