“This should be an easy job for anyone who knows what they’re doing” ;-)

I wonder if writers find better blogging clients (i.e. pay well and appreciate your work!) by focusing only on selected markets?

How do you negotiate with a client like that? You probably can’t — it’s not a negotiation when one side doesn’t apply any real value to what the other side’s offering.

The “helping” language is classic stuff. One of the biggest red flags you can hear from a client is the classic “I’d do this myself, but I don’t have the time.”

They’re typically not interested in buying talent, just keystrokes. Keystrokes are cheap.

Good luck with your future endeavors.

I priced myself right out of a longterm blog job recently, when I refused to continue to write 5 great posts a week without fail, for less than the cost of a few designer lattes.

The employer then countered my price suggesting that I write 7 posts for a slight increase in pay– essentially .002 cents per word. Write MORE for LESS? I said no and thank you.

Shortly thereafter I was informed by the employer that he’d found someone else to, “help him out” at the old, sweatshop rate. WOW. So, I was HELPING, not writing. Lovely. There’s always someone who will do it for less, I guess.

How do you negotiate with an employer who equates your work to running an errand, or doing him a favor?

Yes, this a challenge many bloggers write about and most writers face.

But I like the way that you have written it. Specially the part about exposure we can’t eat.

There’s an amazing video of Harlan Ellison, writer for Star Trek, giving quite some powerful sound bytes on what he thinks about people wanting writers’ services for free. I had blogged about it in my post called “Should writers work for free or be paid like every other profession?” at http://www.indiancopywriter.com

I found your counter questions useful – including the retainer contract suggestion.

Thanks for bringing this up. I hope your reads this post… and gets it.

That some of that attitude is bleeding over into the copywriting world isn’t surprising, especially given the legions of new writers who are willing to work for free.

Most of my clients haven’t been affected (infected?), but I suspect we’ll see a lot more who have been in the future…

By contrast, a direct mailer or landing page generates a lot of data (and often direct revenue), and as a result, I don’t think those projects have experienced as much downward pressure.

And Matt, I think a *lot* of entrepreneurs are making a ton of money getting everything done for free or cheap; think Google, Facebook, etc.

Although I’d like to think/hope otherwise, the threat of writers being expected to charge lower fees can’t be ignored. I’m now working on supplementing my one off project fees with ongoing income from eBooks/information products.

It gives me an opportunity to put into practice what I’ve learned about the internet in the last two years and hopefully a cushion so I don’t feel tempted to write for ‘exposure’.