Can we get an "Are You Kidding Me? Take a Hike" button?

[Lysis]

Seriously....a 500 word article with an offer of $6 and a 1000-word article with an offer of $8. I use the best offer because I'm not above negotiating, but I don't want to be bothered with these ridiculous offers. Does anyone besides the junk providers on elance and RAC really write for a penny per word? I try to keep it at $.05-$.15 a word, which is pretty cheap, but c'mon people. It would be nice if either A) we could privately set a threshold. For instance, we set a price, but not seen by the buyer is a threshold of 15% below the asking price. When the buyer makes an offer within the threshold, the offer goes through. Otherwise, it's rejected. B) The buyer is unable to offer below a threshold set by the system based on price per word.

It'd be cool if we could set our global "Best Offer" settings to only accept offers within a set percentage or a price per word. Just a suggestion, because so far (and yes, I'm new but the offers I've received are beyond ridiculous) I've received offers that aren't even worth the bandwidth cost to send the email.

<3
Lysis

[nichewriter]

This is why I've been hoping for a counter-offer function (I started a thread on this a couple of months ago) because I'm not above negotiating either -- as long as I'm comfortable with the price, even if it is a bit below my set price. I regularly get low ball offers of $7 often from the same two buyers nearly every week now and I don't think twice about rejecting their offers.

As another C-C author, HayleyWriter, and I suggested before, even if a counter-offer function isn't feasible just yet, it would be nice if we could accompany best offer rejections with a short explanation. For some reason, buyers seem to think that $7 is the going rate for unique or fullrights articles. Some writers are happy to sell their articles at this rate -- and I don't hold that against them because hey, it's a free market and they have the right to sell their articles at whatever price they want. I'm quite content to price mine at rates higher than theirs and appeal to a different set of buyers, the ones who are willing to pay more than $7.

I wouldn't take those low-ball offers too personal -- it's all just business. The great thing about C-C is that it lets us authors accept or reject offers -- we have control over how much we want to price our work, and how much we're willing to accept when buyers come to us with their best offers.

~nw

[HayleyWriter]

We have a "Are You Kidding Me? Take a Hike" button. It is called the reject button. Authors have asked for, and I know Support is working on, a feature to allow authors to make comments to the customer when accepting or rejecting an offer. This will enable a professional comment along the lines of "This offer does not represent the hard work I put into this article. I would accept an offer in the range of $x to $y for this article for type of licence or I would accept this offer for a usage licence, but not for full rights," etc. In the meantime, you can reject the offers that are not worth your while. Some customers, who persistently receive incredibly low rates from some authors here, will "try it on" to see whether a new author will accept the absurd offers. Unfortunately, some authors do! I have rejected offers and had a couple of customers come back with counter offers, but others I never hear from again. I've later sold an article for ten times a rejected offer amount, so sometimes it is worth rejecting the offer and waiting for a better sale.

Sometimes, it is worthwhile accepting an offer. I sold two full rights articles today for $40 to the same customer on best offers. This is a return customer, so I am happier to make a reduction in price as I know the customer has purchased several other articles from me and will hopefully continue to purchase articles from me in the future. The price was lower than I put on the articles in the first place but represented a reasonable return (when I looked at cents per word). Certainly, it was the lowest offer I would have even contemplated for those articles, but at least I didn't burst out laughing when I saw the offer. The worst I have been offered was $5 for a detailed tutorial over 1000 words. Needless to say, I did reject that one!

Hayley

[nichewriter]

>> The worst I have been offered was $5 for a detailed tutorial over 1000 words. Needless to say, I did reject that one!

Hi, Hayley! The worst best offer I got was $1 for a 1200-word article. I remember saying out loud, "Are you kidding me?" when I saw that offer. My husband, who was working beside me, blurted out, "What did I do now?" :-)

[HayleyWriter]

Funny! Your poor husband. It is funny, but those kind of prices are just not amusing. Thankfully, CC at least allows authors a choice of accepting the offer or not! I actually feel better about my $5 one now - at least I am not alone in receiving low offers. Getting the worst best offer is not really a competition I want to win!

Hayley

[nichewriter]

No, they aren't funny, but I can look back at those worst best offers with a smile now. Now if I can just get those two buyers who regularly offer $7 to get the hint that I'm not going to say yes to their offers anytime soon...

Congratulations on those two sales, btw! :-)

[HayleyWriter]

Thanks! I notice you've been selling a few articles yourself lately.

Isn't the definition of insanity repeating the same action and expecting different results?

Hayley

[Elizabeth Ann West]

You know, I'm surprised to hear so many use the best offer option. I haven't had much success with it. The few articles I will list for best offer usually sell for full rights at the full price.

However, I do review my pricing, and if an article has sat for a long time I will take a look at the hits. If it's high, I will bring the price down 10-20%, and usually it sells within a few weeks. If the hits aren't very high, I just assume the article is a tough sale and let it sit, the right buyer will come along.

[Antonia]

I didn't even realize it was possible to look at the hits...this is really helpful! I found how you can see it on each article individually by clicking "edit," but is there a way to see a list of all your articles with the hits instead of having to look at them one by one?

And, just wondering what a "normal" number of hits tends to be...if an article only has a few hits would you consider re-writing it? And how many hits is enough to make you lower the price a tad?

thanks!
antonia

[Ed]

While the writer's goal is to make as much money as she can from a single article, the customer's goal is to spend the least amount of money on good content. They do not make low offers with the intent of being insulting. Everyone bargain shops, and - excuse what has now become a cliche - but we are in a recession, so lowball offers are to be expected now more than ever.

While getting offered a few dollars for an article that is worth much more is frustrating, it can only negatively affect you if you let it. An important aspect to writing is not taking anything personally. Every writer here has to do what is right for her or him because every situation is different. Authors can reject offers that don't align with their income goals or refrain from using the "best offer" system, and instead adopt a strategy similar to EAW's.

Antonia - It works the other way around. A lot of hits but no purchases might mean you need to think about how to make your article more appealing to customers. Or the topic might be too esoteric and you should consider writing some articles that will attract a wider customer base.

Thanks,
Ed

[Elizabeth Ann West]

No offense Ed, my experience has been slightly different. High hits but no sales usually for me means the price point is slightly too high for the prospective audience. I wouldn't really consider a rewrite, but I might consider writing an entirely new article from a different angle if it appears there is interest in the topic. For example, my recent sale of Baby on a Budget: Cloth Diapers 101 was originally up for $65 full price. It had 9 hits, so I reduced the price to $45 and within one week it sold.

As far as what are normal hits, you have to keep in mind some authors will check out what others are writing. So I do take that into consideration. However, most of my articles have 20-40 hits within one month. I just reduced a few because their hits were 20+ so bringing down the price $10-$15 hopefully some will sell. Typically, my articles have about 20 hits when they sell if the price isn't an issue.

The hits just tells you someone saw the short summary and it interested them enough to read it. Then for whatever reason, they opted not to buy it. I'm confident in my writing, so I assume at least for some of them it was just the price was outside their budget. I think many customers come here with "I have $x and I really need y articles on z topic." So they search z, look at the articles that interest them, and then balance price with content.

[eek]

This is slightly veering off topic, but Ed & EAW's discussion of hits made me want to go take a look at my content, again. I've tweaked prices before, with few results. However, I tweaked again, just a little, and discovered a few things:

1. The current new site design encourages more hits, because your articles have more of a chance to land on the "front page". Some categories are less popular with authors, so some articles can sit for awhile and gain a lot of hits, if you're lucky enough to gain a first-page position (it's all in the luck of the draw). I've been busy with private requests, but the articles I submitted since the change sat for a long time at the head of their categories, and gathered a lot of hits.

2. Older articles had varying numbers of hits, but one in particular stood out at 177 hits!!! Ouch. I had a very reasonable price on it. Think that was a giant red flag saying "this is a great topic, but it didn't make the cut with ANYBODY." So, taking Ed's advice, I deleted it and revised, this time making a few changes that might appeal more to customers. I probably won't do that with all of my old articles, but it might be worth doing with a few.

Bringing this back on topic, we received an $8 offer for fullrights where I had $15 for usage. My husband laughed and said he'd rather chuck it in the trash than let it go for peanuts. I guess for some people, all those peanuts eventually add up. I seldom choose best offer, but I did for this article because it was slightly time-sensitive. I wouldn't want to do away with the best offer option, but looking forward to an updated version.

Emma

[Elizabeth Ann West]

I don't know, I'm a little leery about improvements to "Best Offer." While I agree perhaps some type of message going back with a rejection would be helpful to the site in terms of turning a rejection into a possible sale (i.e. "I'm sorry but $8 is just too low for the time and care it took me to write this piece. I would be interested in letting it go for $10 or more. If you have any specific writing needs, please send me a private request and perhaps we can negotiate a price within your budget for steady assignments.") I don't want to see authors or buyers forced into a bidding/auction type situation for all the articles.

For example, I use best offer on some of my articles, mainly because of the recession. I priced them higher to accommodate buyers seeing "Oh she will take a lower offer." So if the article was $65, I would expect an offer in the $45-$50 range. If I had it set at $50, probably $35-$40. I really like though that the majority of the site and sales are "This is the price, take it or leave it, or send the author a private request seeing if they could write a similar article for less."

I guess I just don't want to manage a bunch of bids, and then worry that if I accept the first one, what if I had waited just a day or two and a better one came? Plus, what happens if I can't get to the system to approve the bids in time for the buyer to make his or her selection?

[eek]

You're right about that, Elizabeth. It's nice to not have to deal with an auction-style environment. That's why I almost never use best offer, but I understand why others do. Not using it makes the pricing strategy a little more subjective, but I like the choice.

[Celeste Stewart]

I don't do the best offer thing at all. I offer "no haggle" pricing like Saturn. Oh wait, Saturn's no more. Yikes :)

I also don't worry about hits and adjusting prices. Sure, I may adjust prices up or down depending, but it's not something I'm overly concerned with. Yes, a time sensitive one might benefit from a price drop or lower best offer because once the time sensitive element passes, the article won't be worth much. But for more evergreen content, the right buyer will eventually come along and I'm usually fine with waiting or busy doing something else.

Elizabeth mentioned that her diaper article sold after lowering the price this week. But, how do we know that it sold because of the price adjustment? Yesterday a customer came along and bought a ton of pregancy and baby articles in varying price ranges. Had the diaper article remained at the higher price, it very well could have sold for that higher price because there was a customer stocking up on articles about babies and parenting. I don't think that the customer suddenly purchased the diaper article because the price was lower; I think a customer came along needing exactly what was offered. Price may have influenced the purchase, but again, it may not have. We can't know for sure.