Constant Content

I just submitted my first article (so begins the "waiting game") and would appreciate any input anyone could offer.

I named the article "Becoming a Pilot" - it's about taking a demo flight - then moves on to what's involved in becoming a pilot - what kind of pilots licenses are available and information about becoming a commercial pilot.

When I went to "classify" it, the best place I could find to put it was under "Business/Careers" - does that seem about right or does anyone have a better suggestion?

My next question is, did I price it too high?

(the article is just over 900 words)

I set Usage at $40
Unique at $125
Full at $125
(with offers available)

Most of the articles I've seen are priced quite a bit lower, but isn't charging $10-15 for what we do a waste of time? - I set "unique" and "full rights to about 3 times what I'd get for "usage" since they would mean only one sale...

Are my prices out of line? I obviously don't want to have the article sit "forever" because it's over priced.

I also priced Unique and Full rights the same, because they would both mean only one sale - and wonder if there is maybe a reason to change that?


Thanx!

Dennis

Hey Dennis, I may not be the best one to advise you because I also price my articles on the higher side - compared to others. First, your category choice seems fine. Second - the price: there is clearly an art to pricing your work. I set a baseline of an hourly wage and pay myself for time spent. I tend to write research based articles, and usually they are 1000 words or more. I frequently price them at 3 figures. Sometimes they sit there and do nothing. But there is a market for higher priced articles, as long as they're well written. I've had reasonable luck selling articles at 100, 150 or more. Recently I responded to an interesting request in which the client made it clear his/her top price was 50 bucks. It killed me to put my article up for that price, as I had spent more than 2 hours researching it, and at 50 dollars, after CC took its share, I would earn less than minimum wage. The client didn't buy it, and I actually felt fine about that because I went back and bumped my price up to a more reasonable return for my work. And here's another thought: a couple times I've put articles up and wondered whether I priced them out of the competition. A few times, just as I had convinced myself that I should go back and lower my rate, they sold.

I agree with you that it hardly seems worth it to sell articles at 10 or 20 dollars, but there are plenty of writers here who do, and sell lots of them, and do fine. If you feel your work merits that price, keep it. You could take a look through the premium articles to see how other writers price more in-depth articles to help assess whether you're on the right track.

Thank you C.R.,

The more I think about it the better it sounds to me - and of course you can always lower your price if it's too high, but it's difficult to raise it if it's too low.

Thank you for your reply!

Dennis

Actually I often go back and raise my prices if I find that particular category is selling well. I also lower prices occasionally. So don't feel that you're stuck with what you choose now.

$125 does seem a little high to me for 900 words. That's nearly 14 cents a word and I find that around 10 cents a word sells more consistently. On the other hand, if your article contains very specific information that can't easily be found elsewhere, it certainly warrants the higher price. Your current price with best offer gives buyers a chance to negotiate, so you'll get an idea of what they're willing to pay.

I usually price my unique and full the same for the reason you stated...and also because unique is a hassle; you have no way of knowing for sure whether the buyer goes outside of the contract. Fullrights gives me peace of mind.

Good luck! I hope to hear a sale announcement from you soon!

For a $125 article with a $40 usage, you're gonna get someone buying at usage. First, a buyer can take a logical chance with usage. Since you have it up at fullrights, they know it's unique, and they can take the chance that it will remain unique for a little while. I'd price at $90 for FR, but that's me. I've been pricing usage at the same price at FR, because I'm not interested in selling my original content for usage.


Edit: BAH it's late and I made a booboo

I wish we had the option to NOT offer usage rights at all. I know we can price usage the same as full rights but I think it's a clunky work-around that looks like we're trying to pull something.

I agree with Lysis that you shouldn't price usage that much lower than full rights. The way it stands, the first buyer gets an exceptional bargain until the next buyer comes along (someday if at all) and Google eventually determines that there are two duplicate articles out there. That said, for a first time submission, testing the waters so to speak, I'd be surprised if you see results at this price, even if the article is the most in-depth, grammatically perfect article on the topic available. The topic's certainly interesting enough but I'm not sure of its widespread interest to the current crop of CC buyers. Plus the price for the article's length is on the high side compared to comparable articles on the site. But who knows, maybe the right customer is looking right now? Maybe it already sold?

I'm all for each writer valuing their work and charging accordingly, but I'm also all for each writer fully understanding the marketplace here. The point is that it pays to pay attention to what's selling and at what prices and then weigh that information against your long term goals.

There are so many different strategies here. While charging $10-$15 for an article may seem like a waste of time, it really depends. If a writer can easily sell ten $15 articles in a day or two here versus taking six months to well over a year to sell a single $100 article, who's the one more likely to stick with the site and walk away with a bigger CC paycheck at year's end?

Here's what I'd do: move to the next article. You can tweak this article's price or leave it the same and see what happens, but the way to succeed with CC is to keep moving. If one strategy or topic isn't working for you, try something new. I keep track of time spent per article, word count, and sales price to calculate my hourly wage for each article and you'd be surprised at how often the cheaper articles actually earn more on a per hour basis than the triple digit articles. Keep an open mind, keep asking questions, and keep trying some of the strategies the rest of us have had success with

"Thank you" to everyone for offering their views on this (and other topics).

You definitely give us (myself and other newcomers) a lot of important things to think about. I've been writing for another site that doesn't have a forum or any real way of "talking" with other writers, which is one of the "many" reasons CC has become everything it is.

If, or hopefully "when" my first article gets approved (it's in it's 5th day of review, which is more nerve-wracking than I ever imagined...) I'll be taking a closer look at pricing - thank you for sharing some of the things I need to think about when that happens.

Thanks again,

Dennis