How and where to get high paying clients

Thanks for your contribution Jeffr2014, but paying 1.5c/word for quality blog content?Most people in this thread would agree with me that your rate is still low .But then agian if you`ve got quality writers willing to work at that rate, why pay more?

 

Well, the rate is always based on supply and demand isn't it?
If you are really good, my personal recommendation is to build reputation and get author/publishing access to high demand publications (e.g. HuffingtonPost, Forbes, etc.). Writers who can publish articles (with links to client's sites) at high authority/traffic sites get paid very high rates. Especially, if you build authority in some specific field (e.g. healthcare, finance, etc.)

 

If no one is going toread it, why do you write it? Do you honestly believe that the search engines are that dumb?

And even if they are... what does this do for you? Other than get useless traffic and providing information that turns it away?

I've always found this curious. Not criticizing, just interested.

 

There is a difference between auto-spinned junk (that I don't use) and "less perfect" content. I care about quality of my blogs but don't need articles written in perfect English to promote my blogs elsewhere, so I give jobs to non-native writers who are able to deliver decent quality at low fees. I spent years developing AI systems, so I know quite well that search engines are not dumb Yet, there's a price for every resource, so search engines deploy only limited resources to evaluate the quality of content - hence, they do index less than perfect posts even if very few people actually read them.
I am always surprised at naive SEO "experts" who use spinned content - it is very easy for Google to detect spinned posts (e.g. using "frequency dictionary") and penalize the offenders. That's why I never post any links at blogs with spinned content...

 

No quality and serious writer would be willing to work for rates that do not justify his/her time, efforts, ability and quality. There are so many writers who assure you high (or at least good) quality at rates stupidly low, but the truth is you never get it. All goes fine until your content is delivered. After that, you realize that you have paid for nothing but crap. In other words, you get what you pay for. If you want quality, you should be ready to spend. The lower-end market is fed from both ends - writers vying for cheap rates to cut across the competition and employers looking to trim down the money they have to spend on content.

 

Those are appallingly low rates. You can get more writing for content mills like iWriter/WLE or even from rev share (and that's saying something).

Funnily enough, not really. The rates in writing are often based upon fear: writers are afraid they won't get work if they ask for proper rates and don't realise that there's an infinite amount of work out there. They incorrectly assume that they have to compete on price.

And they all lose. The writers work for crap money and the employers get crap results and come to the conclusion that they paid too much (for crap results), then hire even worse writers. Why do authority sites pay so much for content? Because they get great results from them. The sooner employers realise this, the better off everyone will be.

 

That`s exactly what I wanted to hear.I used to work for low rates, but looking back I realize it`s because I was afraid that if I quote a higher price the client would find someone else who would do it at a much lower rate, and I would end up losing the job.But this fear was justified, because at the time I did not know the best platform to sell my skills.I had worked with Iwriter, and the job requests started decreasing and I decided to join Freelancer.com.All I could see at the site were job posts with clients offering $1.25 for an article, and they were very rude if you told them to increase the rate.I did my research and noticed they all came from a common geographical location: India, Bangladesh, pakistan...and the like.Most of the clients at the site looked very un-serious to me and I bid farewell to Freelancer without ever accepting a single job.I knew my worth and wouldn`t stoop so low.

 

These last few posts are exactly correct. if you have something of value, then it should be valuable. The fact of the matter is, the higher a writer's rates go, the fewer jobs he/she will have. But it's okay, because the rate per job is so much better. Let's examine an example:

Say you write for 1 cent per word, or less, and get 20 jobs per month. So, each job is for 4 500 word articles, for for $5 each. 4 articles @ $5 each X 20 per month = $400. And how long does that take? Assuming an hour for each 1, that's 80 hours. Okay, it probably won't take you an hour to write 500 words. Why would it, at $5? so let's say 40 hours. You made a whopping 410 per hour. In fact, in some circles, this would be considered good.

Now let's look at it this way:

you charge $30 per hour, which is still a fairly modest rate. You bill the same 40 hours in a month with 2 clients and make $1,200.

or, you charge $80 per hour and work with 1 guy for 17 hours this month, or $1,360, and do another job at $40 with 23 hours which totals $920. not a bad deal with only 2 clients, huh?

The point is that writing is an extremely valuable skill, especially when applied to business situations where sales are being generated. I take a dim view of the idea that you can puke a bunch of crap onto a blog and it works for you. I don't care if you're tricking the search engines, the person reading it is not impressed. And if they're not impressed, they won't buy what you sell, click a link to go futher or even click an ad.

maybe I'm wrong here, but quality always wins. There are people out there who will pay hundreds of dollars per hour to a writer who can convert. Imagine what you're worth if you can help a company sell one concrete floating dock installation at a marina worth 4 million bucks. Would they gladly pay you $5,000 to write the copy that helped get them there?

This is a funny business. If you want to stop getting carpel tunnel for $3.87 per hour, then do not accept anything less than what you are really worth, whether that's $20 per hour or $200

 

It is easier to edit crap than air

 

I won a high paying client and still have them by doing the following:
Mind you this was for short copy, selling dog grooming chemicals. I got paid $100.00 per page (500 words) X 6 pages =$600.00

• I wrote a custom bid.
• Include their username if you can.
• Let them understand that you understand what they want
• Tell them how you can deliver what they want. Examples pay off
• Give an estimated time for project complete be sure to allow extra time for corrections or changes.
• Then give a call to action for them to contact you through PM's.

Then for this client I gave a P.S.
I haven't seen your control but I guarantee I will beat your control by at least 2% or I will give you a complete refund and re-write the content until it does for free.

Now this is a balls to the wall, way to get clients attention. Most writers would never do this. However, I have complete confidence in my writing and selling abilities and fully intended to give the refund and write for free if need be. Without seeing the control I sent him my 30 questions questionnaire and decided to write story copy for the page. Luckily, my client was willing to A/B test the page I wrote and send me the A/B test showing that my page in a 48 hour period beat his control by 12%.