The Word Wrangler

Peter Bowerman posted this piece about how electronic communication is ruining many students’ ability to write well. The bad news is that these kids will someday be in the business world. The good news is that companies will either have to pay to have them trained, or hire freelancers for their writing needs.

Maybe we all should print this out and include it in our cover letters when pitching new clients.

I’m sure you all know by now how tough it is to get noticed on the web. If you’re a freelancer whose primary market is the Internet, then there are many hoops you have to jump through in order to stand out.

And it’s only going to get worse as more web users mark their online territory.

I read blogs and articles from other freelancers about how to best market our services on the web. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Squidoo - the list goes on and on.

Maybe I’m just in one of my moods, or I’m becoming a crank in my old age, but does anyone else out there think that we’re all going to need clones to keep up with all the social marketing so we can just spend our time writing?

What types of social media outlets do you use? Are you getting work from them or do you use them because you think you have to?

Warning: This post may be offensive to some readers.

I was checking out E-lance today and I happened upon such a sick display of desperation that I had to share it no matter how many readers it might cost me.

The project: 5 articles, no word count given, about how improper money management can ruin your life. Most of the bids currently are in the $50-$60 range.

Now, one guy, I’ll call him shit for brains, bid $290 for the package. The bid was promptly declined. Shit for brains then comes back with a new bid of $50 for all five. His comment to the employer is:

“Please note that this bid is a resubmission - with a more realistic price! Please, oh please let me have this job! I can go lower if you want, and I’ll even let you piss in my Corn Flakes too! What? You want me to eat the Corn Flakes afterwards? Okay, I will if I can have the job.”

Okay, I added a few lines in there, but it’s the same sentiment.

People who engage in this kind of business practice anger me to the point that, if I could, I’d strip them of their keyboards for a length of time to be determined by whatever I felt was appropriate when I handed down my sentence.

Now, before you jump all over me, let me say that I get haggling. And I believe in offering discounts for bulk work. But going from $58 per article to $10?

How do you run a business that way? How can you, in good conscience, ever charge $58 per article again?

If there are any newbies who are reading this, please take note: DON’T EVER DO THIS SORT OF THING IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS A WRITER, AND AS A BUSINESS PERSON. If you want to know how to properly set your rates, read this.

This isn’t about high and low rates: You can charge whatever you want. But please, act like a business person. Pick a number and stick to it.

Okay, I got that off my chest and feel a little better now. Let’s all pray that shit for brains sees the error of his ways. And if he doesn’t, let’s pray that he finds a nice job as a bus boy where he doesn’t have to deal with all those complicated numbers.

Peter Bowerman recently launched his copywriting blog. (It’s about time, Peter!)

For those who aren’t familiar, Pete is the author of the best-selling book, The Well Fed Writer and the follow up Back for Seconds. 

While Bob Bly is the one who got me interested in becoming a freelance copywriter, it was Peter’s books that laid out the blueprint for my success. I highly recommend that beginning freelancers pick these books up and use the techniques that made Peter a successful freelance writer

Pete’s blog is still fairly new, but he’s a real pro who has a very unique voice among the many writing blogs currently online.

Check him out. 

One of the questions I get asked most from beginning writers is: “What do I have to do to succeed as a freelance writer?”

My answer is always: “Market yourself like crazy.”

The truth is that your writing skills play a secondary role when it comes to how much success you’ll enjoy as a freelancer. That’s not to say you can be a sloppy writer, but you certainly don’t have to be a Hemingway.

In fact, if you’re target market is Internet writing, then a high school writing ability is sufficient. Many of your clients will be more impressed with your speed and ability to meet tight deadlines than with the quality of your prose.

If you’re just starting out your writing career, my advice to you is to focus your energies and studies toward the marketing of your writing services as opposed to trying to improve your writing skills.

This topic is far too weighty to cover in this post, but I suggest that you learn how to:

• Market your services through blogging.
• Take advantage of article directories like Ezine and Helium.
• Make use of free advertising like Craigslist.
• Tailor your services to different niche markets.

There’s an old saying that goes: Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. That’s true in every aspect of life. A fair writer who works their tail off marketing their services will almost always beat a great writer who sits around hoping to be discovered.

If you’re a blogger, and want more traffic to come to your site, you’re going to have to take action. There are simply too many blogs online vying for readers’ attention for them to find you.

Here are a few ways you can increase your traffic.

Become more social. Think of the blogosphere as a dance club. You want people to dance with you, but it ain’t gonna happen unless you get out on the dance floor. In order to get readers to your site, you have to let them know you’re there. Try taking advantage of the many social media sites available like Facebook and MySpace. Create a profile that’s relevant to what you’re blogging about and start making friends.

List on blog directories. There are plenty of blog directories online, and many of them break down their listings according to topics. Get your blog listed there because many people look to those first before doing a general Google search. There are also blog directories geared toward specific topics. Do a search on the topic of your blog and see what comes up.

Latch onto popular blogs. Everybody likes to be with the In Crowd, so look for where the action is and join in. Find blogs that are similar in scope to what you’re offering, then join the community. Become a frequent commenter on the site, just make sure you’re bringing something to the table, and not doing it only for the traffic. Also, go beyond just being a commenter and make friends with the site’s author. Getting a mention in a post from a widely read blogger is like being handed a pot of gold.

Blogs, and their visitors, feed off one another. One blog latches onto another blog and then a third blog comes in — the next thing you know, you’ve got a little community of blogs, which will attract even more traffic as time goes by.

Make good use of SEO. SEO won’t drive traffic to your site as quickly as the first two options, but you should make use of it nonetheless. Having a good SEO strategy is a good plan for the long haul, because while you’ll get short bursts of traffic from the other ways I’ve mentioned, SEO will keep traffic coming in from outside sources for a long time.

The bottom line is that you’ve really got to work at getting traffic these days. With millions of blogs online, and millions more coming every year, there’s just no way to get noticed without being proactive in your marketing.

In the last post we talked a little about how to set your rates by getting the facts regarding your living expenses.

Now, we’re going to discuss value, and what a writer is really worth.

I prefer to deal with tangibles, which is why I shy away from ideas like: “I’m not worth as much as a doctor, so my fees have to be low.”

Worth and value are like beauty - they lie in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that there are people out there who value a copywriter who write sales letters that bring in thousands of dollars just as much as they value their doctor. And some maybe more so.

So how do you add value?

Try to think of yourself as a chef and your specialty is hamburgers. A slab of meat on a plain bun, that’s it. That hamburger represents the lowest level of service you provide, whatever that is. It might be basic article writing or whatever. Now let’s assume that a client wants a hamburger with extras. He wants lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, a sesame seed bun, AND special sauce.

As a businessperson, you have several options. You can sell the hamburger and give away the extras for free; you can charge more for the hamburger because of the extras and the time involved preparing it; or you can refuse to add the extras to the order and continue to sell the plain hamburger. There’s no right or wrong answer, and every option is legitimate in the business world.

The point is that if you want to make more money with your writing skills, and separate yourself from the pack, then consider offering more value to your clients. A writer who is willing to manage a site’s entire content over the course of a year can legitimately charge more than a writer who is just writing articles can. There’s more work involved, a greater attention to detail has to be paid, and outsourcing is often required.

Value can also be added by offering writing that accomplishes something. A writer who writes copy that persuades people to do something - like spend money - can charge more for their services because they offer tangible results.

Your experience, education and expertise can also boost your value in the eyes of your customers. To use the doctor analogy: would you rather pay for a physician with a medical degree and decades of experience or a pay a guy who scans the web to learn how to do kidney surgery?

What do you think? Are these legitimate ways to charge more for your services or is The Word Wrangler full of it?

I’m a thinker. I think all the time. I make plans and then change them an hour or a day later. Maybe I’m obsessive/compulsive, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s so frustrating because my brain never shuts off. Of course, when it does finally shut off, that’ll be the end, so I’m grateful for the activity.

Anyway, I told you a few posts ago that I started a professional copywriting blog that would be geared toward attracting clients. I’ve since dropped that idea. I’ll just keep using this and going after customers the old fashioned way - by getting in touch with them.

I’ve decided that I’d like to be a humor writer, which is why I’m so excited about the blogging position I’ve taken over at phononline.

My goal is simple: World domination.

The way I see it going down is this: Write a few posts, get an agent, get a book deal, do the book tour and end up in a hot tub with champagne and bikini clad women every night of the week. I realize that it might not happen quite that fast, but I have ordered a slinky, gold Speedo off ebay and a couple quarts of Mad Dog so I’ll be ready. (It’s all I can afford right now.)

In the meantime, I’ve converted mikesieber.com into a blog to post funny stuff. You can check it out and laugh either with me or at me. Either way counts in my book.

Enjoy.

The rates for your writing services must, first and foremost, be based on your cost of living.

Read that again and take it as gospel because everything else related to your rates is built upon that principle. To use any other method that doesn’t use this as the building block is taking your business down the pathway to failure.

I’ve read countless articles and blog posts from other freelance writers on the topic of rates. Some were great; others were downright asinine. Some advise writers to charge what they think they’re worth, while others say to check out the market and find out where you fit in.

Bad advice. Because unless you have concrete numbers on paper that show exactly what you need to have coming in on a weekly basis to maintain your current state of living, there’s no way you’re going to make it by arbitrarily pulling numbers out of the air and hoping it’ll be enough.

So if you’re just starting your business, or haven’t done this before, I want you to sit down with all of your expenses, and figure out exactly what you need to have coming in on a weekly basis to maintain that lifestyle. It’s a pain in the ass, I know, but if you don’t have the numbers, you can’t possibly know what rate to charge.

Every business that hopes to succeed does this. They figure out all of their operating expenses in order to figure out what to charge the customers. Remember, you’re running a business, so you have to think like a business.

Let’s say that, after you’ve figured out your cost of living, you’ve arrived at a number of $300 per week. Divide that by 5 days and that gives you $60 per day. Divide that by 8 hours and you get an hourly rate of $7.50. You don’t have to charge an hourly rate if you don’t want to, but you do have to know this number when estimating how long it’s going to take to complete a project.

That number is your starting point. Everything else is based on that rate because that’s your bottom line. That’s what you need to make in order to survive. Now you can begin checking out the market to see what others are charging because you’ve got a solid figure to work with.

Now, let’s say that after doing the math you arrive at $100 an hour. Fine. That’s your rate. If you can get that: great. But, if you’re finding that you’ve priced yourself out of the market, you have to either adjust that number, or find another line of work.

If you decide to adjust the number, do so by attacking the externals that cause that number to be what it is. In other words, don’t just start knocking dollars off that figure to bring you in line with what the current market is paying. Your business will fail inside of two months if you do it that way because you won’t be able to meet your financial obligations.

If you’re paying the expenses for owning two vehicles, then cut it down to one vehicle. Do you need satellite TV? A new Blackberry with GPS? How many kids do you really need?

Obviously there are other factors to consider when coming up with your rate. A spouse or partner who works and brings money into the household will have an effect. But the bottom line is for you to know your bottom line. If you don’t know what it costs you to live, there’s no way to successfully choose a rate that’s going keep you living that way.

In the next post, I’m going to talk about why worth and value are BS, and why it’s good business to raise your rates.

If you came to the site recently, only to find it down, you can blame it on Go Daddy. I tried to update my version of Wordpress through their site and…well, it wasn’t pretty.