Why do freelance writers undervalue their services?

I think for a lot of people who list their services that cheap they have a lot of factors going against them. For example:

• English is probably not their first language
• They are working from another country where money has a different "value"
• It is the only skill they have (writing)
• They have no credibility/ references

Just a couple factors I had come to mind about why writing services may be offered so cheaply.

Cheers,
Ben

Three months ago I embark on a writers journey that lead me down a dark and frustrating path as a freelance writer. I decided to do this because of all the complaints that I have seen on freelance boards.

I started bidding on writing jobs cheap. 10 to 15 articles for around $1 or 2 per 500 word article. I was busy for about a half a second and then Clients would come back to hire me later and they found that my prices had went up to $10 per article.

needless to say that these clients drop me like a hot potato. I email them to find out why and all of their response were the same "I can find a writer cheaper from another country"

Doesn't matter to me. It still makes my collar burn a bit though. I can write an article for myself and turn it into at least $75 or more. So now I am out of the freelance game.

Set your prices and stick to them. I started low when I first began writing. Now I have higher rates and if people don't want to pay for quality, that is their loss.

I see WSOs being published with some horrendous mistakes because people don't even proofread their work.

There will always be people wanting to get lots done for very little money. Good luck to them.

Well, yes, I think the country where they come from is a big factor. They give higher value to dollars, thus, making them think that what they are making is already huge and reasonable for what they do for a living. Also, it is not that easy to raise your rates if you haven't built a name in the industry yet.

I agree with "Horny Devil" (did I just say that?). They aren't writers. They just play one on the internet.

There are a lot of factors:

1.) The country where these cheap writers come from. If they are coming from Philippines, Vietnam and India, then, for sure, they would not consider $3 per 500-word article as a cheap rate. As a matter of fact, that is already above their standard income.

2.) English is not their mother language. Of course, they won't be able to compete with the Native speakers if they would set their price as high as the others.

3.) They are not experienced writers.

Competition and experience are big factors, too. Most writers do not think that they are good enough to charge high rates for the service that they are offering, especially if they are just new in the business. Plus, they feel like charging lower rates is better than losing their clients to other writers.

I think most people just follow the crowd and set their prices according to what other people are charging.

I think what these writers need to do is to find the places where people are willing to pay well for decent articles (they are out there) and offer their work on their instead of fiverr like sites.

Anton

Three main reasons, I think ...

(i) Many have no real marketing skills and are (accordingly) desperate for customers.

(ii) Many genuinely don't understand that "trying to find customers at cheap prices and then gradually increasing the prices a bit, later" is a pricing model that doesn't and can't work, to any appreciable extent, in their market. That's partly because they assume (albeit usually totally wrongly) that it's going to be easier to sell at lower prices than at higher prices, and partly because they just don't understand the different market niches available.

(iii) Many don't actually understand what "article marketing" is and how it works (typically, they have it confused with "article directory marketing"), and because they imagine that article marketing has some connection with SEO and backlinks, their perception of what an "article" is is limited to some kind of "chunk of keyword-optimized text to which a backlink can be attached", with the result that their potential clients are effectively limited to the people who share their perception of it (and those are the ones who don't pay real prices because they don't appreciate the difference between that and a real "article", don't understand the uses to which a real "article" can be put, and are themselves in businesses that aren't usually going to survive/develop/become profitable anyway.)

These three things are also - of course - the main reasons why one sees the writers of $5/$10 articles continually advertising for new clients: there's an enormous turnover of clients for those "articles", as they all drop out in disillusionment, so writers in that market need to replace nearly all their customers nearly all the time.

You don't see the writers of $150/$200 articles advertising much, because they have all the work they need from their regularly returning clients who actually understand what article marketing is and "how to use the products they're buying"!

Not that I'm a skepchick, or anything (but these are the inescapable market realities) ...

When I was briefly a service-provider in this market, in 2007/8, I started off knowing nothing about the market at all. Very naively, I worked out my initial prices by looking at what I needed to earn, how much work was likely to be involved in the "average article", and so on ... and began by selling 500-600-word articles for $25 each. Very quickly I realised what a mistake this had been, and increased that to $50. It never occurred to me to write $5/$10 articles at all: I barely even knew there was such a thing. Through inexperience and luck, and by ignoring my "competitors", I had wandered into a part of the market from which I could survive, and in which there was real demand (then, just as now) from regularly returning clients who actually knew what they were doing. (Not long after that, though, I started looking at how they were using my articles, and what they were clearly making from them, and decided I wanted to be an article marketer myself, rather than a service provider. That was a much better informed and more realistic decision for me: since then I've done no writing for anyone else (apart from a little bit of copywriting in 2008), but have simply been "my own only client" - an arrangement I far prefer!).

There is a high demand for writers and there is a high supply of writers, as well. If you will not set your rates lower than what well-established freelance writers charge their clients, without a doubt, you will lose. Also, if you start with low rates because of the factor that I just mentioned, it will really be hard to raise your rates, especially if you have already gained loyal clients.

The competitions maybe on of the factors..
They also invest for the future.. If you get high quality writers in low costs, you don;t have any reason to find more.. People will come and come again to them..

If a freelancer is really good, he will eventually find his way up. He will gain the confidence to raise his rates and will still manage to keep his clients loyal to him. But that is not something that comes easily. You need to really be born to be a writer or squeeze your brains out to be an excellent one.

I really agree with this one. However, not a lot of freelancers realize this. There are even ones (newbies in the business, mostly) who will let their clients set the rate which is really depressing. Some will just learn how to make their own rates after several months of being in the business.

Great thread. Was just thinking of launching my own writing business
and I am really thinking about how much to charge for my services. I
know working for $ 0.01 per word really leads to great burn out. But I guess
writers face a lot of insecurity when they want to charge higher prices and they
see a lot of people charging a lot less for the same services. But then there are other writers
who charge a lot more and still get clients, so I guess it adds up to how much experience you
have and how confident you are in your writing skills. The less confident you are and the more
desperate you are for money, the less you will charge.

It's very simple. It is very easy to find buyers willing to pay $1.00-$5.00 for an article. It is much more difficult to find buyers willing to pay $50.00+ for an article. As Alexa pointed out in her post, there are far more buyers in the former category; however, they do not stay in business very long, so sellers of cheap articles have to continuously advertise for more clients. There are far fewer buyers in the latter category, but those buyers tend to stick around, and the sellers do not have to continuously replace them.

It takes a lot of prospecting to find buyers who are willing and able to pay premium prices for premium writing. Most people don't want to do the work involved, and/or they have no idea how to go about prospecting and selling. It's much easier to just reply to job listings on oDesk and Elance, or run ads on Fiverr or the WF, and most people will take the easy way out.

In my (not so) humble opinion, most freelancers are starting-off with both hands tied behind their collective backs. What I mean to say is that they have no real portfolio from which to point when they're drumming-up new clients.

They - perhaps - have a few articles they've written... maybe even a very short story in their arsenal, but nothing they can really point to to prove their writing 'chops'.

Here's an idea: Create a couple of short stories (10,000-20,000 words each) and publish them to the Kindle store. Spend a few bucks to get some decent covers made.

It doesn't really matter if they sell a tremendous number of copies... what you're aiming at is to simply get published and to use that publishing experience as a proof that you can do what you say.

Of course, this all depends on whether or not you actually DO have some sort of writing talent to begin with!

--JR

Most of those cheap content suppliers don't really believe there is traffic after quality content.

The worst scenario are those who don't write or buy these cheap contents.

They believe they can use bot to manufacture one...

While they dig their timely death i think we should celebrate our long life.

Well, I am not saying the people who have English as their first language should not consider themselves as real and hardworking writers. I just have bigger respect for freelance writers from other countries. They really take the time to study and be good in writing articles in English and they give high value for grammar.

market price/competition.

there is the little aspect that if you are offering services in the WF you are supposed to be giving warriors a better price. DUH!

You get more on the WF then fiverr even so...so that about sums that up.

If you want to compare pricing for freelancing you need to compare off warrior freelancers.

There will always be people who charge too little because they are insecure about their work.
Theres nothing strange about that IMHO.

Hi George:

There are a lot of retired English teachers on Fiverr living on meager social security income. They are ready and willing to write an article for $5 and they have a plenty of time on their hands, but little or no money. This is your competition, not some young guy. Most of those realize that they can make more money mowing grass.

Most people know by now that they cannot use cheap ESL writers with content that is full of grammar errors. Those will cost your company... Basically, there is an incredible amount of labor in excess. That drives down prices. Perhaps you can focus on high end technical writing for a specific niche such as day trading stocks or currency.

I agree with the others on this post. For most needing a freelance writer, they need someone cheap because they haven't enough income.

An IM'er or a very small non-IM business might be willing to use Fiverr because it's cheap, and they themselves are barely paying their Internet bill. They can't afford to pay $30.00/hour. They can't afford to pay $5.00/hour.

But when a large company, one with receivables in the millions, needs website copy or hard copy sales materials, they are not going to outsource that work on Fiverr. They will pay $30.00/hour or more. They can afford it, and they are willing to pay for high quality work. What they are not willing to do is entrust the image of their million-dollar company to god knows who on Fiverr.

I have John's WSO, too. It's very good, and it goes over many of the points raised in this thread, especially those about selling to IM'ers who are on their last nickel vs. selling to established, profitable firms that are looking for the highest quality work possible.

You took the words right out of my mouth! (Although my version would have been a little less, um, graphic! )

One reason I know of is that it's a great way to get reviews without actually working for free.

Other than that, I completely agree with the OP.

The usual game here is "lowest price wins." Of course along with other factors like country they live in, the value of their currency, no marketing experience, etc. But it's also worth noting that there are writer that charge thousands for a sales letter (of course, not to be compared with typical article writing). But the point is, if you can, offer high quality writing and then charge accordingly.

I've outsourced some writing to fiverr and the Philippines before and I can say there are a lot of good writers who do not know how much they undervalue their service.

I've been looking for someone who's able to make a great sales letter. About 300-500 words. Most of the people I've been talking to are willing to this for anything between $300 and $500. I guess I'm just lucky since I haven't met anyone offering their writing skills for less than $300.

(I don't count writers on Fiverr and such.)


Cheers,
André

There's also a "group/herd mentality" factor in play...newbies come online and the first thing they think they can do is write articles or stuff. Then they look around most freelance sites and see these ridiculously low prices, so what do they do? They do what everyone else is doing (reasoning everyone else can't be wrong or who am I to go against everyone)...

So basically most people do this because other people are doing this...pathetic but true.

Keep in mind that sometimes these undervalued services are converted to a pretty high pay depending on which country their from...

Frank - a lot of writers don't know how to sell. I admit that I do not. That's why I am taking a professional selling class as one of my MBA electives; the class starts next week, and I'm really looking forward to it.

It's often said here that copywriting is the most important skill for an IM'er. I don't agree with that. I think that selling is the most important skill, not just for IM'ers but for everyone. You could have the greatest product or service in the world, but if you don't know how to sell it, no one will ever buy it.

I think at the most BASIC level people tend to think that because you
can construct a few sentences then you can write. Writing is thought
to be easy because, 'doesn't everybody do it?'

-Ray Edwards

Further to your comment, Raydal, someone mentioned earlier that retired English teachers sell "writing services" on Fiverr. A former English teacher is a great candidate if you need something proofread for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. But just because you have terrific language skills does not mean you know a bloody thing about marketing or business writing, or even creative writing.

Indeed, writing is a market driven trade. Writers are paid less, and undervalue their services, mostly because the perception on writing is... it's an easy trade. Some marketers even think that those rewriting/rewording software can replace writers. Come on, guys.

I belong to so called "third world" mentioned in few posts. I am not a Native writer by birth but writing is my passion and I am learning every day.

An important point is the "potential customer base" which a writer is targeting. There is a market for $50 articles and a different market for $5-8 article. There are n number of buyer who need articles at dirt cheap price or they just need articles for directory submission, syndication or are startups and can't afford the best. They are willing to accept a little less than perfect articles against the premium they are saving.

In many countries like I belong to, dollar currency conversion value is high and more than 70% writers who think they are master of trade make less than $200-300 per month. Given that, if someone charges $2-3 per article and is able to write even 10 articles a day he/she is still making 600-900 per month. It is simple conversion factor and writers are not confident to compete over price as they are non-native speakers.

I would like to share an incident which happened with me recently. I bid $xx per 100 words to a client to which a client responded "$xx for 100 words.. what is this? I know in India it is a lot of money. I am looking for writers for $1-2 for every 500 words. I will have continuous work.. blah blah". I politely refused. But the second group of $1-2 writers will still see this as an opportunity.

I want to add,
They decreased their price because they were not getting clients on higer prices,
They want to make permanent clients, and later they can increase the price.

I think because of sites like odesk and elance people are competing with outsourcers from other countries offering services well below the market