You Get What You Pay For

It’s one of the most basic principles of the market, and it’s no different for the freelance writing business than it is for anything else:

You get what you pay for.

What made me think of this? Last week I received a Facebook friend request. I didn’t recognize the name, but an email came along with the friend request asking if I could take a look at this person’s site and quote some prices for content writing.

Over the course of communicating with this client, I discovered that he originally found out about my freelance writing services via one of the freelance job websites. I’d bid on a project of his, and he liked what he saw in my portfolio. Unfortunately, my rates were out of his range and he went with a lower-cost provider.

You can guess what happened next. He was unhappy with the other provider, so much so that the content was, in this client’s words, “unusable.”

Now, after throwing away some of his money, he decided it was time to do things right. So, he contacted me. He still has the same budget, so he realizes that he’ll have to do things one piece at a time. A few pages of well-written content are worth a hundred pages of useless content.

If this were the only time this situation ever came up, I would chalk it up to bad luck on the client’s part. Unfortunately for buyers, it’s not. I’ve had many clients tell me this same story, over and over again.

There are a lot of freelance writers out there. There are a ton of good ones, too. But there are plenty of bad ones. And yes, some of the good ones work too cheaply, not getting paid what they’re worth because they are afraid they won’t get enough work if they raise their rates. Eventually, though, they come to their senses. They recognize the value of their work, and they adjust accordingly.

No, price isn’t the only indication of quality. A really crappy freelance writer can set a high price tag. You still need to consider the portfolio and, in some cases, references or recommendations. Smart clients, however, will look at price as one warning sign that the writer may not have the level of talent that the client is looking for. If the portfolio is weak and the price is low, chances are you’re not going to be satisfied with the end product.

The challenge for freelance writers, then, is trying to make this case to potential clients before they blow a bunch of money on substandard work. It’s not particularly easy, and the good news is that, like my Facebook friend, they will come back after the fact to ask you to clean up the mess.