Constant Content

Hello everyone,

Only a few hours after my first articles were accepted to C-C, I was absolutely thrilled to receive an offer for one of them! I was so excited! However, the client is offering only $6 for usage rights and my asking price was $20. I think I'm going to refuse it because $6 just seems so low. I was wondering about how others handle low offers. If they only want usage rights, do you think it's worth it to accept a very low offer because the article might sell again? Will refusing it drive away the client for good?

My other question is, I went to the website of the client (karlonia.com) and I noticed that none of the articles have bylines. With usage they need to include the byline, no?

Looking forward to hearing others' take on this. Thanks very much for your help!

best,
antonia

Only you can answer whether or not to accept a low-ball offer. If you want opinions, mine would be no. A best offer should be hovering around $15 to be fair. The buyer knows it's low-ball and she may rethink it and come back with something reasonable. Don't worry about the possibility of losing a client. If you have what she wants, she'll be back with fair offers in the future. And what she doesn't buy, someone else will down the line.

I've sold usage to this buyer. Your name is in a kind of intro.

Lor

Antonia,
The byline should always be included with the article if the client buys usage rights only. If the author does not include a byline in the document, the client can assume the author did not want his byline included and leave it out. The client in question had to buy full rights to use those articles without the byline, or he/she might have bought usage but the authors didn't want their byline included. So if you haven't already, always include "by (Your Pen Name)" after the title. If you write something that you do not want tied to your name, leave the byline off.

I wouldn't accept $6 either, but bravo for that first offer!!! It's kind of validating, isn't it?
Emma

Hi, Antonia.

I have received similar low offers from the same buyer. One time I did accept his offer of $6 for an article, but that was after the article had sold at the usage price I had set ($20). The interesting thing was, the first purchase was fraudulent (way back in March, along with a bunch of other articles by C-C authors). His offer came the same day the fraudulent purchases were made. Of course, I didn't know about it first, so I had no qualms accepting his low offer. After that, he has made $6 offers for my other articles and I have rejected them. (And I have learned to wait a day or two before accepting an offer, unless the offer is acceptable to me from the get-go.)

Hope you get many offers, though -- and that you enjoy your time here at C-C!

Best,
Sherry

Hey Lor, Emma and Shery,

Your advice helped. I feel better about rejecting the offer now....I am worth more than $6! (RAAAWR!!!) I understand more clearly now how bylines and usage rights work, so thanks for that explanation. No more offers yet....but I will keep writing and posting and hope for the best!

take care,
antonia

Hi Antonia

I have been writing for CC since December last year. I have received offers from the same customer, all low, and have refused them all, figuring that my time and effort is worth more than that! I felt very brave refusing the first one because it was early days in my CC 'career', and I was worried that I may have been turning down my only sale ever, but I have since sold more articles for the prices I stated in my submissions, so I know my articles are worth more. Stick it out - your work is worth more than a few dollars! Good luck with your writing!

Kathy

Hi Antonia,

I am also fairly new here. When I read your comment about receiving a low offer for a usage article, I noticed the same person or website (Karlonia.com) also offered me a low quote today. I haven't replied yet and may not accept the offer, because I'm not selling the full license, and as you said there are no bylines with the articles. Makes me just a bit concerned that no credit will be given. I've spent quite a bit of time with my two submissions so far and would like a higher offer for the effort.

I've also written for Helium but never any contests or Market place articles. I got tired of seeing just pennies roll in, and having to rate articles in order to get paid. I'm hoping things will work out better at CC, and maybe they will, if I remember to punctuate properly (that one is for Ed, if he happens to read this :-)

Karl

Karl, Antonia,

I have also received low offers from that customer and refused them. I know you can earn far more on CC. I have sold articles for ten times the offered amount, even for usage. Those offers are just too low, and obviously from this forum we can see this particular customer goes around making low offers and picking up bargains regularly. Keep working at it, build a decent portfolio of articles, and the sales do happen. You may have to wait a couple of months for the sale, but you will likely make more money in the long run by rejecting these offers.

I always have a low price in mind for that particular article when I first tick the best offer box when I submit an article. Any offer below my low price I automatically reject, and then I make a judgement call on the others. Sometimes, I will sell a particular article cheaply, especially if that article has already been sold a couple of times for usage and has already made me a nice profit. I figure the 3rd or 4th licence is definitely the icing on the cake, so it doesn't matter if the price is a bit low at that point.

Hang in there! Perhaps if every author rejected the low offers, karlonia would have to start making higher offers to get the articles she wants for her website. Karl - You can definitely make more on CC than on Helium from all I have heard about Helium. I've sold articles up to $50 for usage (and sold that one twice!), and up to $130 for full rights. I have seen other authors sell in depth articles for even more for full rights. One sale like that makes the pennies other sites offer or from these low best offers seem ludicrous.

The best offer system is good in that it allows customers a chance to negotiate on price, however, authors should seriously consider each offer on its merits. If the offer is too low, don't worry about rejecting it. Another buyer will likely come along for the article, even if it is down the track. If you undersell yourself, you can regret it for a long time. I sold a couple of articles for $5 and $6 on best offers when I started (before I realised what the articles were really worth), and I still wince every time I see the licence or that article on my content list. A sale that you regret is not worth it, even to make a sale when you are starting on the site. Hang in there and wait for the price that values your article and hard work almost as much as you do yourself!

That's my $2 worth - I'm worth more than 2 cents!

Hayley

Karl--welcome to C-C! It's good to meet another newbie. Interesting that Karlonia made you a lowball offer too. After rejecting that one, I still haven't received another offer for any of my articles, but I don't regret rejecting it. In fact, I feel really good about all the work I've been putting into writing and submitting! I know the right buyer will come along...(soon???)

I had my first rejection from Ed today...I forgot to use Times and my summary was too short. Whoops! Oddly, instead of making me feel bad, I just felt a surge of gratitude that Ed puts so much effort into proofreading our work...and am extra motivated to live up to the high standards of the writing community here. :) Especially after checking my Helium account and finding I earned...wait for it...2 cents this month.

Hi Antonia and Hayley,

Thanks for the welcome and it's nice to meet you. I just had another low offer (same customer) today for my other article. I don't want to seem unappreciative, but I had to to reject the offer. Perhaps it would be best not to check the 'best offer' box, and hope for the best. I do appreciate your advice and will be patient. What I'm thinking of doing is some shorter (opinion) articles that don't require research and let them go at a reasonable, but not too low of rate. I'm not sure that customers appreciate the time it takes to do well researched and written article.

I had my first sale this morning! Woohoo!

So, it was a 300-word article that the buyer offered $25 for full rights--lower than my asking price. But, on reviewing my pricing, I realized I'd priced a tad high, and I would still make 6 cents a word at the buyer's price (after C-C's cut). I was in a real tizzy trying to decide whether to take it or not, until I realized I'd spent 40 mins on the forums looking for similar situations when I could have been writing and trying to find the links to suggested pricing (which you can't access if you've submitted the max number of articles--can we have that posted elsewhere please?). I still don't know if $25 was too low, but it's definitely not worth agonizing over.

Back to writing now...I have a goal of writing 4 articles per day and submitting as fast as Ed will let me. So far so good. :)

grats man! There's some guy (same buyer) who must go down the recently approved list and make ridiculous offers. He does pretty well off of some n00bs, but I'm glad I didn't give into his $5 offers (LOL). He keeps sending me these offers, and I think he's an article farmer who just resells them. I just sold my second article, and one is bugged on the "Waiting" status and support wouldn't release it yet. :-/ The good thing is that I know it's a dud, but at least I know someone was interested. It definitely gives you motivation to do more!

Antonia,
Congratulations! Trust me, $25 for a 300-word article isn't too shabby here. $16-some after the cut and it took you how long to write? Let's say it took you a half hour. That's $32 bucks an hour. Not bad. Even if it took a full hour, $16 an hour in this economy isn't anything to be bummed out about. Think of it this way, what if you wrote a 900-word article and someone offered you $75 for it? That sounds more impressive, doesn't it? But if you break it down, it's the same scale so enjoy your first sale! 6 cents per word after the cut is more than a lot of writers get before the cut.

Lysis, congrats on selling your second article! Stay strong and keep rejecting the lowballers. The idea of article farming just makes me mad. Grrrr...

Celeste--your words were really helpful. When I break it down that way it makes a lot of sense. Thanks! I was wondering...you mentioned you use a spreadsheet to track your writing and sales. I'm obviously not at the point where I really NEED to do that yet, but I think it will help me take myself more seriously if I get organized. Is there any way you could describe in bit more detail how you've gone about setting that up? I have my own ideas about what kind of info to include but I'm not that hot with Excel. For example, is it possible to create a formula in Excel where you have it calculate the date posted and the date sold and then it tells you your average sale time. Stuff like that.

Ah yes, there's lots of fun stuff you can do with Excel and I'll give you a brief overview. It's late and I'm beat right now but give me a nudge in a day or two and I'll be happy to share more details.

My main columns are:
Category
Article title
Type of request (public, brainstorm, private) - this helps me further breakdown sales ratios
Hours
Price
Word count
Date submitted
Asking price
My percentage (it calculates what I get based off of 65% of the asking price)
Per word price (calculated after the cut)
Per hour price (same)

I also have columns for:
Date sold
Rights sold
Buyer

But I find I don't use those so much. Yes, you could calculate the time difference from date submitted to date sold if you want. Time calculations are a little tougher than simple calculations (more rigamoroll) but still doable.

Once you're entering the data, then you can create reports based on that data if you want. For example, you could create a pivot table that shows you how many articles you sold in a given month and then break it down by type of request or whatever. You can filter down your sales, calculate your hourly average, and so much more! I am such an Excel geek that this stuff is fun for me.

I also set up an earnings budget and calculate the number of working days per month plus how much I want to earn annually. Then, I break that down into a daily productivity budget. With the help of Excel, I know exactly how much I need to write each day in order reach my annual income goal. Of course, there are assumptions that the articles will sell and all that fun stuff. Having data to look at makes it easier to project this, so don't worry about this part just yet.

The cool part is going back and looking at this data after time has passed. My first month here (Jan 2006), I did quite well with about $280 in sales with a little less than half of all submissions having sold that month! When I look my first month's data now, I can see that I've sold most of those articles. So, while I made $280 that first month, those articles actually earned nearly $700. I was thrilled with my first CC paycheck and then earned an extra $400 as time went by. Nice! I wouldn't necessarily know this odd little fact without my spreadsheet :)

So much for a brief overview. I get to talking about CC and spreadsheets and I go a little nuts. :)