Sometimes it feels deliciously sinful to sit here, dancing with words for an hour or so, and then getting paid  handsomely for the time I spend doing it (along the lines of $100/hour).

 

But then I remember the piles of money that my clients are making, day in and day out 24/7/365 with the evergreen copy I write for them, and I think, “Hey, it’s actually sinful I’m not charging more for what I do so well!”

 

Because it’s a fact that I shouldn’t be impoverishing myself just because I love what I do, when it benefits my clients and their clients and customers as much as it does.

 

But here’s the thing: money has never been a “driver” for me in any position I’ve ever held–unless the position paid so poorly that I was still struggling, in which case I never stayed at it longer than necessary to find something that paid adequately to satisfy my basic needs–so I’m not sitting in high clover financially.

 

And that’s pretty nuts!  You know?

 

I should take into better account the hours and hours it takes me to find projects that I want to do for people I want to serve.  I’m pretty picky!  I want to feel excited about putting fingers to keyboard every time I go to work for a client. I want to know I’m making a positive difference not only for my client’s bottom line but for their clients/customers’/patients’ lives.  And it takes serious filtering to separate the wheat from the chaff in this regard! I pass up literally hundreds of projects to find the ones I really want to tackle and then I have to pray that the clients who posted them are willing to pay enough to compensate for the time it took me to find them and post a quote in addition to the time it takes me to create the magic for them!

 

So yeah… I can’t claim that I make $100/hour when I take into consideration the careful searching I do to find these “diamonds in the rough” who have a product, service or cause that I can truly get behind, heart, soul and mind…the folks I’m aching to help!

 

If money were my only driver, I would have given up a long time ago, or I would have been wildly successful (but far less happy!) serving every business owner or entrepreneur who wants a copy, content or features writer. Because the searching/ sorting/quoting at freelance portals takes longer than the actual projects do!  I can easily spend $100 in percentage and membership fees to freelance portals to make $500 to $750.

 

I realize my focus should be on marketing myself better so people come straight to my website at wordwhisperer.net to get my services. That way there is no middleman gobbling up so much of my time and money.

 

But I’m semi-retired now. If I market myself better, I risk getting inundated with new clients, some of whom I won’t want to serve unless I get a great vibe from them (by great vibe, I mean this: they know what they want, have the talking points or source materials to help me make it happen, and they’re willing to pay what the project is worth) and feel certain that their offering is rock-solid, praise-worthy and beneficial.

 

And telling folks whose offerings appear shady–or just don’t inspire me to want to help them convert browsers into buyers–that I don’t want to serve them is not my favorite thing to do, either! Since I’m not a liar, it isn’t easy to mislead them with something like, “Gee, I’m just too busy…”   because what if they say, “No worries! I’ll wait for you!”  ACK!!!! Then I’d really be in a pickle!

 

So marketing more robustly isn’t high on my list. I already have a wonderful handful of regular clients who drop in with new tasks on a semi-frequent basis. I’m more or less happy (satisfied) where I am right now…except that I’d like to be making more money while bypassing the freelance portals that slow me down, cost me money, and have me competing with wannabes and hobbyists for the most part, many of whom offer bargain basement prices and have no legitimate claim to being high-quality, ROI-focused (for their clients, not themselves!) copywriters in the first place.

 

Copy/content/features-writing charlatans are a dime a dozen and small business owners on shoestring budgets fall for them far too often because they don’t know how to evaluate a good writer.

 

A lot of business owners don’t know the difference between their/there, then/than, anecdote/antidote, here/hear, a lot/allot, accept/expect, hear/here, there/their/they’re, altogether/all together, and other common words, so they get sucker-punched by fly-by-night operators and then get ticked off and made gun shy because  they “paid good money for writing services and what was delivered isn’t fit for lining the bottom of a bird cage! My return on investment has been nil!”

 

I feel their pain!  And it impacts me because they didn’t come to me first and now they’re soured on hiring writers altogether–including me!  See how that works? It’s infuriating!

 

So… I guess my best bet, probably, is to ask my present and former clients to recommend me to the business owners they know whose websites and printed marketing materials can benefit greatly from my ministrations.

 

So here I am, asking!  If I’ve served you in the past, can you give me the names, contact inforamtion and website URLs of a couple of people you know who could benefit from my writing chops–or can you share my copywriting website with them and let them decide if I’m right for them?

 

I can also edit/enhance existing copy, usually for far less than writing from scratch if the talking points are there and they’ll turn me loose to dance with them in place, line-by-line,  to make them convert better…

 

In Other News:

 

It has been over a year since my article in Cowboys and Indians was published, so I can post it now. Sorry for the flashback on the article. I hope you can still read it… (If you enlarge the page sufficiently, the pages are definitely read-able. I just tried it…)