Over at one of my favorite blogs, Lori is asking us to stand up with her and make today, May16th, Writer’s Worth Day.
What is Writer’s Worth Day? I am soo glad you asked! It’s one day where we take a minute to devote our blogs to calling out the crappy low paying gigs and (in my opinion) scams as well.
Let’s look at it this way. I make a decent wage. I take on assignments that pay relatively well but it’s taken me two years to get to that point. It was after two years of lowering my rates to equal the low balling non-English speaking writer with poor grammar, who posts on forums that states “I write good English. Can do 500 words for $3.00″. All in the hopes that they would choose me over them.
What the Frick was I thinking?
I know what I was thinking -
I am a new writer and I can’t demand $25 or $50 for 500 words (psst… and depending on who you ask, even that can be considered low). Why can’t I?
I don’t know.
Somewhere I got it in my head that I wasn’t worth $25 per hour… or more. Then I got comfortable in the low pay but I was drowning. I hated the work, it drove me batty to be writing so much for so little that I began to think that this was the best I was ever going to get. I even let people I called my friends take advantage of my services (No… not you! I love the manuscript! 
) and believed them when they told me I was crap, (Ring a bell yet?)
You know what? I AM NOT CRAP. I am not a crappy writer. I can speak the language, I can put a thought together, make it cohesive, and yes… even inform someone or teach them something new from my writing. I can research the fur off a cat if need be (though I don’t recommend it and neither does the cat).
But what does all of that have to do with Lori’s post or the slew of others who think working with low-paying clients are the cat’s meow? (Sorry, still thinking about the furless cat.)
Lots.
First of all, I’ve worked with low paying clients. I did hoards of work and got nothing from it. Not even the benefit of my name on the page. For writers, building your name is everything. It’s your BUSINESS. Without your business, what are you really doing?
How long do expect to be able to keep working for low pay? Seriously? I realized early on, that it wasn’t working for me. I was getting nowhere. I worked hard. Gave 110% every day and had nothing to show for it. Working for low pay will eventually drag you down. The money you make will be little compared to the time you put into the project.
This might be a stretch for some of you but when you accept low paying gigs, you degrade yourself and what you are really capable of. You get in a mindset that you can’t do better. This is the best that there is for you. You don’t apply to the bigger paying, better paying, or more fun gigs because you don’t think you can do them. You don’t think you have the experience or the worth.
Can I smack you now for thinking that way? Ok, well then, do you want to smack me now because I thought that way too. I really did. I bypassed so many interesting sounding gigs because I was too tied up working my tail off for $3 or $7 per article.
But it was learning to value my skills that I still needed to work on. Because honestly, I didn’t think anyone else would pay more for my writing skills. I didn’t know how much I was worth.
I now believe I am getting past that way of thinking. I don’t walk around saying, “Damn. I’m good.” Alright, sometimes I do and I think that everyone needs to. Remember Kelly? She didn’t think I was worth it (well she did and then when it went sour, she didn’t…) and I was going to let myself believe that… HA! Not anymore.
I don’t necessarily mean you need to walk around all day everyday saying to yourself, “Who’s the writer? You’re the writer.” Well, you can if you want to, it might help you get the ego boost you need to get the bigger paying gigs…
Ultimately though, you need to believe you are worth the $75 or $25 or $50 an hour gigs (whatever you set your sites on as a fair price) and then GO! FIND THEM!
I am still working on my worth. I have figured out that this is what I am going to do. I need to start thinking I have something of value that people will pay for to get. And I do. I have words… some people need those words. There are people in the world who can’t put them together like I can. Yes, I know this is pretentious of me… but I think sometimes we have to be.
We have to believe in ourselves and what we can offer to clients. We have to be assertive and ask for what we feel is a fair wage.
Thanks, Nikki! I think the minute we realize the caliber of client goes up as the pay scale goes up, it makes it easy to turn your back on crap jobs.
It absolutely does! It took me two years to learn this and I only hope that this helps others realize that before they waste their time and energy!
AMEN!! You are absolutely right! I just dropped a low paying project for this very reason. The pay per article was decent, but the time involved to write them was 3x longer than the client’s estimation. (Well if you can do it in that time frame, Dearie, more power to ya! Buh-bye!)
Yes, our talents are worth more than a pittance. We should be paid accordingly!
K – You know, I think I am about to drop one of my clients… he’s taken a two month contract and dragged it out to what will be four months – again articles are simple but he hasn’t held up his end of the contract thus far. I think it’s time for him to go.