Still Working Out My Pricing

[dburkart]

Hey all, I'm new on the site and was wondering if anyone had some advice about offers and prices.

The first offer I received was insultingly low, so of course I refused it. Now I have an offer of $55 for full rights, which sounds like a lot of money to me (even after cc's cut), on a 1000 word article. I had initially listed the article for $50 use $110 unique $140 full rights. I'm starting to wonder if my prices are too high. Still, I think this article is worth the prices I set, I just don't know if I could sell it for so much.

I've been trying to write around 300 - 400 word articles for $30 - $40 full rights because apparently this is the amount most buyers are willing to buy. So, should I wait for the longer article to sell for more, or accept the offer and risk buyers expecting lower prices on my shorter articles? Basically, I'm wondering if accepting this would be selling myself too low, or if I'm pricing myself too high.

P.S. I've only been on the site for about three weeks, so maybe I'm rushing things?

[Abbamay]

Good question. I think we all have different experiences and have had low and high offers. If it were me, I'd take the $55. When you write more or reword and revise previous articles for selling, you find you can be quite efficient. If you haven't spent too much time on it it's ok if the price is a bit lower. I'm sure some people pay $100 for a 1,000 word article and it's a good full rights price, but I know that plenty of people won't pay that. I wouldn't expect someone to pay $140 for it, but it will be interesting to see what the others on this thread will say.

It's nice to get some sales under your belt if you're new, too. I don't think that buyers will automatically assume that you are going to sell articles cheaply just because of this one offer. I had a guy try to buy my 800 word article for $18, and when I declined the offer he tried $20! When you work out the exchange rate and the cut that CC take, you need to have enough to pay for your time.

Good luck.

[stelle]

I think 14 cents/word is a bit high for a spec piece on CC. You might have better luck pitching it elsewhere, or lowering your price. I think that 5.5 cents per word is a bit low, but it really depends on how long it took you to research and write the article.

I generally price my spec pieces at 9 cents per word, rounded down to the closest 5, but for a long article I'll generally price a bit cheaper. For the most part, I aim for an hourly wage, and price accordingly.

That said, I'm not in a rush. Some of my spec pieces have been sitting in my catalogue for months and months.

[dburkart]

Hey, thanks so much for the replies! They were really helpful. I wound up rejecting the offer, since I've been on here less than a month. But, now I'm thinking of changing my prices around on some of my articles.

I think I'll probably lower some of the prices for my longer articles, and keep the shorter articles the same. I hadn't put a ton of thought into the prices per word, but looking at that from the customer's prospective is always a good idea. I think I'll keep fiddling and try to write a few shorter articles on more popular topics to see what I can get on them.

Thanks Again