Quote: (10-08-2013 09:57 AM)w00t Wrote:
Hm interesting In the past I stayed away from fixed prices and usually bid by word.
Fixed price is essentially figured out that way. I'll often even break it down in the bid, listing how many articles, avg word count, price per article, my rate, and then final bid. That way it's all clear as day exactly why I charge what I'm charging that much. This also leaves no suspicion of your bid being generic (even if it kind of is lol).
In other bids, especially if they suggest a per article price that is reasonable or I can figure their budget based on their estimate of what the job will cost (often at the top of Elance jobs), then I'll just state a per article or total for the job rate, without breaking it down. These ones seem more vague but they already appear to know what they want, so why complicate things?
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My going rate by now is $0.10 per word and already a lot of clients are bitching, though it's not even that high of a rate (turns out to $50-100 an hour, depending on how much I can bang out).
That's a solid rate Woot - comes to $10 per 100 words or $50 for a 500 word article. It took me some time to get to that rate, so you're doing really good.
Ignore the bitchers. The majority of them are not real businesspeople. They're wannabes. Most will probably never make any real money in whatever business they're pretending to be involved in because they are cutting corners.
Your goal is to separate the wheat from the chaff, which you're doing by getting them to bitch and say no (you want them to say no!), and build those long-term relationships. If you add one long-term client a week for half a year you'll be swimming in so much work you won't know what to do with it. Even adding clients at a slower rate will often get you there.
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On the other hand I have a client that pays me 94€ for a single blogpost and I can write that in 30 minutes to an hour easily so the hourly rate turns out a lot higher. These numbers samed amazing to me when I started out but its actually not that high, because you have to spend unpaid time marketing yourself, getting clients and so on....
Exactly!
But great job on those numbers anyways.
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So I'm with Carol Tice on this one she says the MINIMUM you should work for is $50 an hour.
She really does know her shit...
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You know what I really like about working for myself though? I'm actually getting somewhere.
For example I was contacting travel blogs to write an (unpaid) guest post for a private project of mine. Now I had one editor mail me back and say they might give me some paid work on their annual travel journal since I sent a good pitch and mentioned Im a pro writer. Also I'm taking private training in online marketing and using this to get more freelancing clients.
Is that the training we were talking about or something else?
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It all ties in together nicely and I can leverage all the work that I put in, which is awesome! EVERYTHING I have done on my own initiative so far has paid off in one way or another. Even my very first, shitty website got me a steady job in online marketing last year (which I leveraged to get freelancing gigs). So you just keep climbing up the ladder.
You're definitely on the right track, man - you're killing it. Now you're starting to motivate me! lol
Quote: (10-08-2013 10:04 AM)RioNomad Wrote:
I have zero feedback and put $37 an hour on my profile. I'm doing SEO and marketing work though, not writing. I'm also trying to get fixed price jobs paid monthly.
I got one client now who I am doing e-commerce marketing for. $25 an hour. My first client. Sent out 7-8 video proposals and got 1 job, and another guy told me I had the best proposal out of 80+ and that I was in the lead. He then cancelled the entire project out of the blue and hired no one. Pissed me off lol.
Still, pretty good response rate for having no feedback and only sending 8 proposals. I think the video proposals work really well for what I am doing. I also wear a crisp Massimo Dutti white button up shirt while I do the videos....my other half is usually in my underwear hah.
I want to stick to bidding mostly local SEO work though as it is all basically the same and the pitch can be almost identical. Doing marketing for E-commerce sites requires me changing quite a bit on each proposal and video. I can do 3 or 4 local SEO proposals in the same time as one e-commerce proposal.
That's awesome you're doing the video approach, man. I was even thinking about giving it a shot with writing. I've done vids in the past for marketing proposals - mostly screen vids though - and had extremely good results. My approach was a lot different but worked well.
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Is anyone here doing work besides writing? SEO has a billion Indians bidding on the jobs, but I think branding myself in a small subset of SEO, doing video proposals in a crisp white dress shirt, and sending out a "professional" proposal (I.E. marketing proposal with my logo on a crisp white/blue letterhead in .PDF) a long with each bid really bumps me up to the top of the pack. Once I have a few reviews I think I can do pretty well.
SEO is still big - a lot of guys from Western countries still making a killing at it by approaching it the way you are. I knew an American in Bangkok who was making a killing doing it for Thai businesses....
Right on with the branded pdf too. I used to attach one with my portfolio and one with a menu of marketing services, breaking them all down with a bit of sales copy and prices. Both were branded with my website.
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Also, what is your guys thoughts on your name? Do you use your real name? I'm a big fan of branding yourself with something like Travel Writing Rockstar, or SEO Guru (dude I saw who has a ton of earnings), E-Commerce Marketing Maverick, or something kind of cocky like that.
Yeah, do that shit. It lets people know right away what you're about. Good branding. The only thing I'd say is keep it somewhat broad (just my opinion). You don't want to lock yourself in as just an SEO guy because later on you might want to branch into or even specialize in other services. Make it marketing or internet marketing-centric.
For instance, when I started out I was doing mostly SEO writing. Now, the markets have changed and people who brand themselves SEO writers are seen as shitty writers to a lot of clients - they've got a bad name (not to discourage those of you who are doing that because you can still make it work). Fortunately, I branded myself as a "content" writer, but I used an adjective that also branded me as a high-level writer.
By not locking myself into one type of writing, I left a lot of doors open for myself and can pitch a wide range of jobs. When I want to sell marketing services, I call myself a content marketer or content marketing consultant.
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If you are looking for some travel articles, how could you not check out Travel Writing Rockstar? If you get a sponsored proposal and throw down a 2-3 minute enthusiastic video pitch from some exotic locale (can bullshit where you actually are), you are getting that job for sure.
Again, this can really work, but you're locking yourself into one niche. If you want to branch into other niches, you have to start a new profile and persona. You could use a slightly more generic name and still do the exotic locale videos.
I agree the conversions on this with a name like that would be high though. When I first started out I considered doing 3 or 4 different writing sites all for different niches. Specialization closes deals.
Quote: (10-08-2013 10:05 AM)bojangles Wrote:
I've changed it to $25 per hour. How much are you guys charging per word/per 100 words?
I was thinking of putting $5 per 100 words, I've also been putting 'UK' into searches and found this helps me, as my location is the United Kingdom and this helps to show I'm better than the IRT's/Bengali's etc.
For now, I suggest bidding $2 or $3 per 100 words (preferably the latter but I know it's intimidating). After you've filled your schedule for two weeks or more, up your prices again.
Beyond All Seas
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling