Today’s rant. (I don’t rant often, but tonight I’m fit to be tied… so here ya go!)
ASININE COPY WRITING REQUESTS WRIT LARGE
“I am looking for a professional article writer. $1 for 100 words. I will need about 30 articles per week.”
(“Oh, joy! I can make $30/week writing 30, 100-words articles. It’ll take at least six hours just to WRITE 30, 100-word articles (not counting research or review time of talking points the client sends me), but what the heck…It’s $5/hour!)
“I am looking for a professional writer who has experience with SEO writing to write articles for my Amazon niche sites following a set of guidelines that I will give you upon being hired for this project. This initial project will be for writing one article of 1000 words. I will pay $10-$15 for this article.”
(Oh, joy and rapture! I will be strapped into a straitjacket during this wonderful ‘opportunity’ and paid a lousy $10 to $15 for about three hours of work. How special! $5 an hour!”)
“I’m looking for quality writers who can write high-quality articles on a daily basis for me on a variety of topics. You must be able to effectively research the niche or topic that I give you and write me a unique, 100% original quality articles/blog posts/SEO content. You must have good grammar and spelling as well. I’m willing to pay $1.50 for 500 words if the article is1,500 words and below, $2.00 for 500 words for 2,000-4000 words per day, $3.00 per 500 words for 4,500-6500 words per day, $4 for 500 words if you can write 7,000-10000 words per day, and $5 for 500 words if you can write 10,500 or more words per day. I am looking to build a long-term relationship with someone that can provide quality articles for me quickly. Do not apply if you are not capable of providing high-quality articles and If you do not agree to the price mentioned in Job Description.”
Even at the highest rate–$5 for 500 words and 10,500 words per day (21, 500-word articles per day), that’s a big $105.00 for at least 21 hours of work..or about $5.00/hour.
I’m sitting here shaking my head. What part of “professional” (“an individual who earns a living in a specific field of endeavor”) don’t clueless “job creators” like these understand? A professional writer like me makes my living (pays my mortgage, buys food, gas and other necessities of life) using well-developed skills that took decades to develop. This means I expect (and require) adequate wages to deliver compelling copy.
You can well imagine the resulting quality that you could expect to get from clueless copywriters who are scrambling at near warp speed to meet requirements like the ones listed in the “job opportunities” above so they can keep roofs over their heads. I don’t even know how such jobs are legal in the USA, given the fact that the federal minimum wage is more than seven dollars an hour!
I can usually write upward of 350 well-considered, compelling words per hour…sometimes more. Professional copywriters usually charge between one and three dollars per word and UP. (That’s no typo: per word.) I don’t charge that much. My hourly rate is $75/hour, down from $250/hour now that I’m semi-retired and picking and choosing who I write for so I don’t have to compensate for working with difficult people or for extensive, time-consuming non-billable hours that constant networking and outreach demand.
But I’m absolutely appalled by the job offers I see online. Not one in 100 is worth the time it takes to review them, let alone the fees it costs to submit quotes on them. I get mighty discouraged slogging through scandalously-low-priced job offers. They piss me off. And rightly so.
Any writer who will work for wages like these must live in a cardboard box in a third world country somewhere if they’re making a living this way. And if you are, you’re being horribly misused and abused by your employers, greedy bastards who want to capitalize on your hard-won talents and abilities without paying you adequately.
Seriously. Ask yourself, how much is an hour of YOUR life worth? Service providers like you and me sacrifice hours of our lives serving others’ needs, hours we never get back.
Anyone who’s giving away your time for peanuts is agreeing to enlist in the ongoing problem of giving greedy people what they want without a fight. It’s despicable! Even if you live in a foreign country and can survive on three dollars a day, YOU’RE WORTH MORE THAN THAT. Why are you prostituting yourself to Scrooges who want something for next to nothing?! It doesn’t make sense. This is your opportunity to lift yourself out of poverty and into the dawn of a new day! CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, FOR GOSH SAKES! When you don’t, you drag other people’s wages down and cause poverty in other areas of the world.
I think it’s time for the working classes to go on strike globally and let “job creators” like the above scoundrels try to do for themselves what they’re getting others to do for them for peanuts. They’d quickly realize the value. (Hell, they already understand the value. They just don’t want to pay for it.)
