I’m thrilled to have fellow writer and new friend Sean Platt as my guest blogger. Sean and I both help others make a great living at this thing called writing.
by Sean Platt
Underestimate the value of your time and you limit your potential by the minute.
Don’t feel bad if you’re not charging what you’re worth right now. This is a common folly among online writers.
Yet you must command your market value as soon as possible. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll get what you deserve—to make more money for every word you write.
You are a writer. This means that many people—especially when you’re first starting your online writing career—will minimize your time.
But just because other people are willing to minimize you, doesn’t mean you’re obligated to allow it.
I tolerated a lot of time wasting when I first went online. These days, the only people I allow to waste my time are my six-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter, but I usually enjoy every minute of that brand of time wasting.
Time is your most precious asset besides your brain. You can always make more money, but you will never, ever make a single extra minute. The sooner you decide on an hourly minimum, the sooner you will be able command it. And the sooner you command your baseline rate, the sooner you can grow it into something substantial for you and your family.
To calculate your per-hour rate, don’t just think about how much you want to gross per year, consider how many hours you want to work each week as well.
Pay yourself as soon as possible, this means generating enough revenue to afford you with a reasonable amount of time to write for yourself. This might be slightly indulgent if you’re behind in your bills or have a family to feed, and you should always balance your dreams with reality, but working writers should be developing assets whenever they have slices of time between the client work that earns them a regular income and the dreams that need feeding.
Fill your stable with a few steady clients as soon as you can. Once your baseline is covered, reach for something better. As long as your bills are being paid, it’s better to build assets, write for yourself, and safeguard your time. Creating a portfolio of creative is an amazing way to grow—as a writer, businessperson, and all around human.
You’re probably not charging what you’re worth. Few writers do. This isn’t something you can fix in a day, but it is something you can start fixing immediately.
You write your future a word at a time. Start charging just a little bit more for each one.
Sean Platt helps good writers make a great living. Get his free report, The 9 Mistakes Most Writers Make That Are Keeping Them Poor. Follow him on Twitter.
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“You write your future a word at a time. Start charging just a little bit more for each one.”
“Underestimate the value of your time and you limit your potential by the minute.”
I am living this personal testimony with Sean. His words are real and TRUE. If you know better, then do better and start today!
Thanks for your comment, Cindy. Writers do seem to underestimate their value, don’t they? Starbucks doesn’t bat an eye for their prices so why should we? :)
Great business post, thanks! Creative folks have to learn to find the right balance between wanting to build their writing careers and making financially sound decisions for their business. It’s a process that’s definitely on my radar and one that I’m juggling as a new freelancer.
Thanks, Jme. I know that Sean and I both appreciate your comment. As a longtime freelancer, my advice would be to not sell yourself short early in your career. It’s much harder to adjust rates up than down. Ask for what you’re worth. Writers bring way more value to the table than just the end-product of copy, content or an article—we bring strategy, thought, perspective, organization, clarity and so much more.
It can be hard to work up the courage to ask for more, but one thing I tell myself that is helping is that the other party is just as likely to be embarrassed that they can’t afford me rather than thinking that I’m full of myself.
Another thing I’ve found is that there are so many jobs I just can’t afford to take. Every hour I spend on something is an hour that is not available to anything else. When you think about how few you have it a day, it makes sense to get the most value out of them that you can.
That’s so true, Tracy! Also, I appreciate your perspective that every hour you spend on one thing is an hour that’s just not available to another. We need to choose wisely, that’s for sure. Thanks for stopping by the blog and sharing your comment.