Make A Living Writing

NOTE: I’m on vacation this week, and co-founder Angela Atkinson of the WM Freelance Writers Community offered to supply a guest post to keep you amused in my absence. I didn’t know it would be all about things she learned from a little informal mentoring I gave her (in exchange for a Facebook fan page for my Make a Living Writing e-book soon to come!). It was thrilling to me to see how my tips helped Angela increase her writing income — and now you can be a fly on the wall and hear about them, too.

By Angela Atkinson

Before I became a full-time freelance writer, I lived in the corporate world. While I made some business decisions, mostly I carried out the decisions of other people. And, though I did some negotiation, it was always within the confines of the standards the company had laid out for me in advance.  So, when I ventured out on my own and had to start making deals without these pre-set standards, I often floundered and ended up getting the short end of the stick.

After arranging a meeting with a client who proposed a big project, I knew how I wanted to pitch the project itself, but I was really intimidated by the negotiation process.  In fact, I almost felt guilty asking the client to pay fair market prices—even though I knew that my work was worthy of at least that much.

I approached Carol Tice for a little advice on the negotiation part of the meeting, since she was clearly an expert on the topic. She was happy to help, and not only did I successfully negotiate the contract, including the highest rates I had been paid up to that point, but I held on to Carol’s advice and have used it in every contract negotiation since.

So what did Carol teach me?

Know What You’re Worth

I had this idea in my head that I needed to undercut the competition in order to successfully pick up clients and projects. What Carol taught me is that I must set and maintain my own business standards, and that I should not accept projects that pay below my “bottom line” prices (which, conveniently, I could set at whatever I liked—within reasonable market prices, of course.) This made it easier to negotiate, because like before in my corporate job, I had pre-set rates to work with.

Don’t Be Afraid to Turn Work Down

Before I met Carol, the idea of turning down work turned my stomach a little. What if I turned down a project and then no other ones came my way? What if there was some underground client network and they reported me as someone who refused perfectly good jobs?

Carol taught me that it’s ok to turn down a project that doesn’t meet my standards in any way—whether it‘s because the project pays too little or because it doesn’t feel right in some other way.  And, she taught me that there’s always another gig around the corner.

Ask the Right Questions

While I knew that I needed to ask clients questions about their projects so that I could understand exactly what they wanted, Carol gave me some pointed questions to ask that would help me to better negotiate my rates. The best one?

“What is your budget for this project?”

With this simple question, I can get a feel for what the client expects to spend on my services. (Of course, sometimes they ask “Well, what do you charge?” In that case, I just quote them my top level rates and work from there.)

And another favorite Carol-ism is this one, used when a client refuses to pay reasonable prices:

“I understand that you don’t have the budget for a professional writer just now. Feel free to contact me again when you do.”

Shut Up

By nature, people are wired to “fill” silences in conversation. So, Carol said, once I quoted my price in a meeting with a client, I should keep quiet and let him speak first. Before, I found myself sometimes quoting lower prices if the client didn’t respond right away—because I thought the silence meant the client wasn’t happy with the price I quoted. In fact, when I learned to shut up for a minute, I found that most clients will either accept my price or come back with a reasonable counter-offer.

Take a Leap of Faith

Turns out, when you quote crazy-low rates, many clients are turned off because they figure that you’re not a professional and that you don’t think you’re worth any more.

The fact is that if you’re willing to hustle a little, there’s plenty of freelance writing work out there.  You don’t have to accept crappy gigs just to get paid. Take a leap of faith, set your rates and stick to them. If your work is strong and your customer relations skills are sharp, you’ll find plenty of work—and you’ll get paid what you’re worth. Personally, when I started employing this rule, I found myself nearly overwhelmed with legitimate jobs.

Be Confident

Before, I felt like I needed to be sort of “humble” about my abilities and my pricing, and I’m sure that clients could see and feel that during a negotiation. Now, thanks in part to Carol’s coaching, I recognize (and acknowledge to clients) that I have a valuable service to offer—and I very openly explain to them why they want to hire me for their project.

Bottom Line

Thanks to Carol, my negotiation skills are ever-improving.  Negotiation success lies in understanding that you’re offering a valuable service, not being afraid to quote and stick to competitive market rates, and in feeling confident enough to walk away if the client is not willing to pay a reasonable amount. Plus, to achieve a successful negotiation, it’s imperative to fully understand what the client expects from you so that you can accurately determine your quote prices.

What are your best client or contract negotiation tips? Leave a comment and let us know.

Angela Atkinson is a freelance writer and editor, as well as the co-founder of The WM Network. Learn more about Angela at her website.

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One of the biggest problems many new copywriters have is they’re afraid to discuss a client proposal and negotiate. Instead, the writer gets a prospect and is so excited, they jump at the first offer that’s made. Often, this means they end up with a lower rate than they might have secured if they’d explored the client’s needs and budget a bit.

This process should have some give-and-take to it as you hammer out what you’re going to do and how much you’ll be paid. It’s also an opportunity to display your knowledge of what will best help the client meet their goals for growing their business. A recent conversation I had with a prospective small-business client went like this:

Prospect: I looked at your site and I love your writing! I have a new Web site I’m launching that will have an audience of private-equity investors and small companies looking for funding. I was thinking about having you blog for me once a month for a couple months. I also need a press release written.

Me: I could certainly do that for you, but I have to tell you I don’t think it’s going to be effective in drawing enough traffic to help your business get rolling. You need more frequent posts – at least one blog a month. I have a minimum contract for startups that’s four blogs a month for $500 that I think would start getting you meaningful traffic.

Prospect: That’s a little high for my budget…

Me: What if I throw in the press release? I’d do that if you signed on to a minimum three-month contract.

Prospect: That sounds good.

–

So what happened here? I took what was likely just $200 or so of blogging work and maybe a $250 press release and turned it into a $1,500 minimum contract. Because what I proposed is more likely to succeed in building this client’s business by drawing more prospects, I also upped the likelihood this will turn into a long-term gig.

Throwing in the press release made the client feel he was getting a freebie, and sealed the deal. In reality, his blogs were easy to put together, and he was willing to let me write them ahead of time all at once, which was very time-efficient for me. Even with the press release, my hourly rate for the project stayed in the neighborhood of my target $75-$100 an hour, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part.

As with all truly successful negotiations, it was win-win.

Of course, if you make a suggestion and the client doesn’t like it and wants to stick to their original idea, you can always agree to it and take the work that’s offered. But remember, it never hurts to negotiate a little and see if the client might commission a bigger, better project.

Photo via Flickr user Joe Howell

One of the questions I get a lot is how to negotiate a good rate. Writers who’ve written for mills usually have no experience with the dynamic of working out a rate with a client.

You’ve seen a million job ads that insist you send a rate quote, even though you’ve been provided almost no details about the proposed project. Or you meet a prospect at a networking event and they ask you to send a bid on the white paper they want done, or on rewriting 10 pages of their Web site. How to respond?

Here are some of the negotiation strategies I’ve used:

1. Be vague. If you absolutely must submit a bid to be considered, give them a big range. As in “In the past year, I’ve done copywriting jobs ranging from $.30 to $1 a word. I look forward to learning more about your project so I can pinpoint an appropriate quote for you.” This way, if they’re a penny-a-word or $10 article type of client, you can screen them out fast and move on, but if they’re paying anything remotely appropriate, you can hopefully stay in the game long enough to learn more. Then you can decide if the pay rate makes it worth your while.

2. Ask, ‘What’s your budget?’ If at all possible, get the client to tell you what they can pay. Try to put the onus back on them to quote a price. Every time I’ve done this, I’ve discovered the figure they had in their heads was bigger than the one I had in my head. I asked a business-book agency this question recently, with the thought that I’d ask for $10,000. Their figure: a range of $17,000-$21,000. Let them speak first, and get paid more.

3. Defer quoting. Ideally, you’d like a prospective client to get to know you well before you put in a bid. So I resist blind bidding in response to online ads. When I respond to job ads that ask for a price quote, I usually indicate that I’ll need more information to develop a quote. This gives me a chance to show how thorough I am, while putting off quoting, hopefully until after I’ve had a more detailed conversation with the prospect.

4. Don’t lowball bid. Many online job solicitations and jobs on portals such as elance or odesk set up a competitive-bidding contest where the job will go to the lowest bidder. I personally don’t get involved in these, as when you win, you lose – you’ve gotten yourself a slave-wage gig. Though I’ve heard from people who say they’ve ended up with good-paying clients through these sites, I believe it’s a real long shot, and there are better ways to get good clients. In general, companies that would hire whoever bids lowest regardless of qualifications aren’t companies you want to work for.

5. Bid per-project instead of by the hour. This is always a better way to go for both sides. You know exactly what you’ll be paid, the client knows exactly what they’ll have to pay, and if you’re new and it takes you a bit longer to do the project, the client doesn’t suffer for it. Clients also seem more satisfied with per-project rates than when they’re thinking, “Sheesh, this guy is making $95 an hour!”

6. Bid by the word instead of by the hour. One quick, easy way to come up with a project bid is to simply add up the proposed wordcount and multiply. I usually bid somewhere between $.50 and $1 a word, depending on degree of difficulty and client size. As with a flat fee, this gives the client the reassurance of knowing exactly what their project will cost.

7. Consider all the hours involved. Remember that projects take a bit of time to get set up and rolling, especially with new clients – files need to be created, initial emails exchanged, contracts negotiated, meetings taken. You should bill every hour of this time, and figure those hours into any per-project bid you submit.

8. Know industry rates. Try to do some research to help you determine an appropriate rate. You should belong to some writers or copywriters forums online where you could describe your project and prospective client, and ask members to comment on your rate proposal. I’ve gotten really useful feedback this way.

9. Get details. I’ve developed a questionnaire at this point for clients to fill out to help define their project. One of the biggest problems in copywriting is that companies know they need some content…but they’re often very fuzzy on exactly how much, what form it should take, when they’ll need it by and other issues that can greatly affect my quote. I’ve had proposals for 400-word quick blogs turn into 700-word fully reported stories I’m ghostwriting rather than getting a byline on. Scope creep is a major problem in the writing world — so get it in writing so you can renegotiate for more if the client changes the project parameters.

10. Make a counter-proposal. There is no law that says you have to accept the first price a client throws out there. See How I got paid $300 a blog on The WM Freelance Writers Community for details on how to successfully bid up your contract during negotiations.

I’m proud to report that I took my own negotiating advice this week. I was approached out of the blue by a major company I’d actually had on my list of prime targets, to write articles for their site. I was excited…until I heard their rate, which was a lot lower than I was expecting. I told them I was surprised by their price, and could they do any better? They raised their flat fee $50 a piece immediately. I could easily end up writing 50 or more articles in a year for them if the relationship continues…if so, that’ll be $2,500 more I make just for asking the question.

Got any other negotiating tips? Feel free to share them with the group…let’s get this party started on the MakeALivingWriting site!

Photo source: andyrob