$10 - $20 ?

[GaryBourque]

Okay, so a lot of clients offer "$10-$20" for publicly requested articles. How do they decide what to actually pay you? Is it totally their discretion? If so, what's the point of thinking you might get $20 if the client can low-ball you with no explanation?

Thanks.

[Celeste Stewart]

You get to decide what to offer. When a customer places a public request, there's a drop-down box of price ranges. $10-$20 used to be the default but CC finally changed that. I'll often price usage at the low end, unique in the middle and full rights at the high end. That way it meets the customer's stated range and isn't like to offend.

For example:
Usage - $10
Unique - $8
Full rights - $20

If I'm unwilling to accept less than $20, I'd price it like this:
Usage - $20
Unique - $20
Full rights - $20

That protects me from accepting less than what I'm willing to accept. If the requesting customer doesn't choose it and I feel the price is too low, I'll sometimes go back and raise the price to what I feel it's worth.

[GaryBourque]

Thank you, Celeste. BTW, I enjoyed your e-book very much.

[Celeste Stewart]

Glad to hear it. Thanks!

[jak]

I often set fees a little higher than specified, as long as the usage price is within the guide. I have sold some for more than the specified price, and sometimes the customer buys usage because its affordable and good enough to use without changing anything. Then it might sell again later.

[Celeste Stewart]

Speaking of going back and raising the price on a requested article that didn't sell at its stated price, I wrote an article for a request over a year ago for $40. It didn't sell at that price, but it was a good article and well worth more than $40. After it didn't sell to the requester, I raised the price substantially and waited patiently. (To be honest, I forgot about it). It just sold today. Yay! The moral of the story is give the requester a chance with a price near his budget, but don't feel the price needs to stay there if the requester opts not to buy it.

[BarryDavidson]

The moral of the story is give the requester a chance with a price near his budget, but don't feel the price needs to stay there if the requester opts not to buy it.

Celeste is so right. I generally put in higher amounts if the offered price is too low in my opinion. I have an hourly amount I need to make for writing an article in my head. If the article took me fifteen minutes to write then I might accept a lower offer as long as it's not and insult. When I had time to write full time, I averaged fifty-five to sixty dollars an hour. (Those numbers are based on the articles themselves, not to total amount of articles I've written.) At one time that amount was almost two-hundred fifty dollars an hour because the open request was for many short articles. Most of them took me ten to twenty minutes to write. (Have I mentioned that I miss the open requests?)