Does Pricing Per Word Encourage Wordiness?
Recently, I was asked why I created my pricing guide with per word rates. Doesn't that just encourage writers to be wordy or inflate the price? This is a great question, especially if you come more from a corporate background rather than magazines.
So this week's livestream is going through why per word pricing makes the most sense (and why I do it), how per word pricing helps you create easy-to-calculate prices across the board, why per word pricing is in your benefit, and how per word pricing on your business back end help you raise your rates faster.
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Does Pricing Per Word Encourage Wordiness?
If you price per word, does that encourage you to be wordy as a writer? Does it encourage you to write more and does it encourage you to charge more to your clients? And I think this is a really interesting concept that one of the people who subscribe to my newsletter brought to me, so she got my pricing guide.
And if you go to mandyellis.com/pricingguide, you can get it too. It's free. I adjusted a massive update of it. Uh, so it includes all these different types of projects now, like a lot more than it used to, and a lot of strategy, content strategy and consultative type projects. So if you go to mandyellis.com/pricingguide, you can get it for free.
And then you'll sign up for my weekly, um, email. So you get even more tips and tricks. And this was someone who signed up and she was like, Hey, I got your guide. And I thought, you know, it's weird that you're doing a lot of per word pricing in here. And I was like, huh, I guess I didn't think about it that.
And she thought doesn't, you know, doesn't pricing per word, encourage people to be wordy. Doesn't pricing per word. Hey Marie. Welcome in doesn't pricing per word, encourage wordiness. Doesn't it encourage writers to write more. So they get paid more. And I thought, what a, what an interesting way to think about this pricing guy.
And , I just, I guess for me, I've been doing it for so long, right. And this is the first thing we're gonna talk about. So the first thing we're gonna talk about, we also have a question today, so we're gonna go over that, but I gotta find my number. So number one here, number one, the first thing I was thinking of was, huh?
1) Why My Free Pricing Guide is Priced Per Word, Why Per Word Pricing Makes the Most Sense for Freelance Writers, and How Per Word Pricing Helps Calculate Prices Better
You know, I normally price per word. It it's just from partially coming from magazines. It's more, I guess for me it feels more accurate, uh, because I know how many words are in it. I know if I'm doing interviews or research. I know if I have to do a bunch of SEO stuff. I know if I have to, um, go find images or if I have to go find a bunch of links or if I have to do a bunch of edits, like I, I know a bunch more stuff.
And so pricing per word, I know kind of the value of that a little bit better, but then I kind of realized that one of the reasons, and this is what I told her, one of the reasons that I started, um, pricing per word and why it makes the most sense for writers is because almost all of our assignments, like most of the majority of our assignments are by the word, right?
And this was someone who was just beginning in freelance writing. So they hadn't had a bunch of assignments and, um, wasn't used to the conversation with their clients, but yeah, like most of the time, almost every time you get an assignment it's Hey, this blog post is 800 to a thousand words or, um, you know, we need to make sure that this.
Um, article this reported article is 1200 words or that this ebook is this many words. And sometimes like, for me, I like to do page counts for certain things. So eBooks and case studies and white papers, I usually do by page count. But some people even do word counts for those, uh, almost everything that you do, like marketing materials or brochures or press releases, or, um, gosh, like LA landing pages or sales pages, or when you do web content, when you fix a website, almost everything is by the word.
And that to me just means it's more accurate to do it by the word, but you don't give your clients necessarily a per word rate every single time. Like sometimes I give them a per word rate when it applies, but a lot of times I just work that into how I calculate pricing, because I know the value of that a lot more.
So for example, If someone's talking about, you know, uh, an 800 to a thousand word article and it needs four interviews and all this stuff, uh, then I say like, okay, it's a thousand dollars. I would go to them and say like, it's a dollar, a word, cuz I know that this article with all these interviews, isn't gonna be 800 words.
I know it's gonna be a thousand words. Um, Hey Vicky, I always like the wave. So then you kind of know from going through this process, right. That, um, you know, that that article wouldn't be 800, it would be a thousand. And you know that internally on your side to calculate the pricing that you're charging about a dollar, a award, but you're presenting your, uh, clients with a project price.
And I always feel like that's easier anyways to just give them a project price. Um, and so for me, I think the per word pricing is more about the calculation part and knowing the value part and then being able to translate it to a bunch of different industries. So when we're kind of thinking about, um, Why per word makes the most sense.
I just feel like it translates across businesses and magazines and publications and all these different types and agencies and all these different types of clients that you would work for. So when I put it in my pricing guide, I thought that that would just be the most widely accepted way. I also find for me, it's just easier to do the math.
Like, um, I, I am have a really hard time sometimes with like, I'm really good at accounting math. I'm really good at dealing with money and handling finances. I'm good at like that kind of math when people are like, you should multiply it by this percentage and then do this other thing. Like my brain starts to melt.
So if I ever have a client, that's like, please do the math of all these percentages for this thing. I'm like, oh no, you know, cuz it's like, that's not, you know, I'm not a math person. I'm a writer. Like I, I do. I'm really good at accounting. So for me to do the basic math of per word, It gives me a lot more.
Um, it, it gives me a lot less stress and it makes it a lot easier for me to just calculate it. I'm like, I know how many words this thing is. So we're gonna do three, 2000 word articles, or we're gonna do four blog posts a month at 800 to a thousand words. That's this many, you know, words. So it's a dollar, a word or it's, whatever it is, times four, like I can do, I can do that basic math.
And then I say, Hey, in order to work together, you know, this is $3,000 a month or $4,000 a month, or, you know, it's 50% upfront and 50%, 30 days later, depending on the project. But I feel like it makes it super simple for me to see the value, cuz then I can say like, well this blog post doesn't need a bunch of interviews or it doesn't, you know, it only needs one study.
So I don't really have to spend a ton of time doing research. So it's not gonna be as hefty of a price tag as something that would have a lot of research or interviews. And that I can easily scale that back with a per word pricing rather than saying like, for me, I guess it's sometimes it's hard to visualize like, okay, this thing is a thousand dollars.
Well, I think this other thing should be $600 and I just like per word, it's like a number that I can easily multiply. Hey, woo. My woos over here. My woo dog. My WDO I'm still hoping your scar goes away. from your incident. Um, so for me, I, I guess when I price per word, I feel like it's more accurate. It's more valuable.
It makes more sense. And it applies so many to so many industries and it's easier to do the math. I also feel like if you need to make an adjustment, like let's say someone says, comes back and says, all right, You know, your thousand dollars price tag is a little too high. Could you do it for 900 or could you do it for $800 an article?
And then you're like, okay, well, I know based on my history that this article, it probably won't be 800 words. It'll probably be a thousand because I have to do all of these interviews. I woo. I woo. Uh, and so you know that basically when you take less money, then you're getting less per word, Hey, Carol, welcome in.
Uh, so you know that you're getting less per word that way. And then you're like, but what is it? What's the new number, right? So if it's a thousand, it's a thousand words, right? Is it 80 cents a word, whatever. Um, so even now the mental math is, is hard for me, but that kind of thing makes it apparent to me that it's a big drop, like a dollar to 80 cents a word.
And to me. That's a bigger drop than 800 from a thousand. So if someone says like, oh, it's only 200 bucks less, but then I'm like, no, it's like 80 cents a word. Or it's like this many, you know, this much of a drop. Every time I type a word I'm losing 20 cents, or every time I type a word I'm losing 50 cents or whatever, like that feels a lot more impactful than 200 bucks.
Cuz there's a lot of things that we do in life. Right? Like you buy groceries and it's really expensive. And you're like, man, it was an extra a hundred bucks and that's a lot, like it depends on the context sometimes. And it also depends on like what, what you're kind of doing. So for me, when I think about every time I type a word that I'm losing money, that's a problem.
So for me, that's an interesting thing to talk about when it comes to wordiness. So when it comes to wordiness, um, one of the things that I think is helpful and let's talk about this as number two. So let's move on to number two here. So in number two, if I'm losing 20 cents every time I type. So let's say instead of a dollar, a word, I'm now getting 80 cents a word, right?
2) Why Pricing Per Word Benefits Writers and Discourages Wordiness
So I'm losing 20 cents every single time. I type every single time I'm writing in here. Wouldn't that encourage me to be wordy. Wouldn't it encourage me to charge my clients more. And the answer really is no, on two, actually it's multiple planes. So the first plane is you already have a word count. You know, this thing is 800 to a thousand words, and you need to write to the word count.
You don't turn in something. That's 2000 words to someone and say, good luck. Now there's sometimes when you're creating certain things like for me sometimes when I'm creating web copy, like website copy. I know that if I write more, that helps with SEO. So if I'm having a hard time cutting things, or if I need to add some sections, because my client asks for sections, I know that that web copy is gonna get better, but an article, like most of the time, that needs to stick pretty close to the word count.
So number one, you've already agreed on a word count. So it wouldn't encourage wordiness. Cuz you gotta stick to the word count right here you go, buddy. We're gonna see if he can catch it. We can take votes on whether or not he'll catch it. Oops. All right buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. So close it's to your left.
The other left the the other left. It's over there buddy. It's over there in the corner. Hold on. Bear assistance. We need to do some bear assistance. You go, bud. Here you go. There we go. Charles, go to your HOA hole, go to your HAA hole
over here. Trying to bug me for snacks. Snacks. Woo, careful other one other one. There you go. Oh, cool. Close it up. All right buddy. Let's try it one more time. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, so close, but this time it landed on your paw. So you got it. Good job. So, number one, it wouldn't encourage wordiness because you already have a word count, right?
Someone already told you a 800 to a thousand words and you need to stick to that. And like I said, there are some exceptions and there are times when you can go over. But most of the time, if you're dealing in articles, you need to stick as close as possible to that. And then you also have flexibility with your clients.
So as you kind of work, sorry, got dog hair on my face. Now , uh, as you work with your clients, you end up learning like who, who can you stretch? And who can you not right. But you're not really charging by the word. You've already given them a project price. So they're not gonna pay anymore. If you write 1400 instead of 1200 words, because you agreed already in your contract, right.
Cuz you have a contract that it is 800 to a thousand words or whatever it is. And let's say like, I've done this in the past where I have had more freedom. Like my client's gimme more freedom to say like, Hey, if it turns out. The article is a little longer, you know, a few hundred words longer. That's cool.
I'm not charging them anything more. I'm just not cutting as much as I normally would. So that's the first thing. The next thing is that it's not encouraging wordiness because you're literally not going to them and saying like, it's the final draft was 1273. You owe me for 1273. It's always a whole number, right?
It's like a thousand words or 1200 words. So, Hey, veno, welcome in. So you're not going in there and giving them a random number. And this is for new freelancers. So if you're a new freelancer, this is for you. You are, you will never almost, I, I don't think I've ever submitted a, a literal word count where I was like, yeah, it's 1273 or it's 8 55 or whatever.
Like, it's, it's always a whole number. So because hitting that actual number is really, really difficult. Like, yeah. Normally if it, if it's an 800 to a thousand word article, that's why you have a 200 word buffer. Right. So. It's not encouraging wordiness and it's not encouraging, um, you to, to be more, uh, to charge more because you've already settled on a fee, right?
When you sign a contract with a magazine or you sign a contract with a client, the fee is in there, like you owe me this money. Here's what it is. It doesn't, you don't do the work. And then invoice for the number of things you did. Like you set up a contract and the contract says, cool, you're gonna write this 800 word article for 500 bucks, sign on the dotted line.
That's usually for magazines and then for businesses, Hey, Getty. Welcome in. Um, and then for businesses, a lot of times what ends up happening is you have the same thing. You have a contract and you said, yeah, the thing's 800 to a thousand words. We're doing three of them. The total cost of that, you know, is $3,000 or whatever.
Um, and you owe it to me 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later, or you owe it to me, however it works out. But the agreed upon number is always there. Right? The agreed upon amount. Of what you're getting paid is always there. So the actual word count doesn't apply at all. It's just really applying to your editing.
You have to make sure that you're editing your content so that it fits within the word count. Right. And I thought that was so interesting to think about that. I thought that was so interesting to think about. I hear you. Woo. I hear you. W excuse me. Woo. Over there. I hear you being ish. Can you lay down?
She's like that until I get something I thought that's such an interesting concept because even when, oh, my goodness were sassy and they scared me. It surprising. So even when, um, even when I was starting out, I think it was because ready buddy. 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. Oh, you caught it. And I didn't get it on camera.
So even when I was starting out and maybe this is cuz I had, um, a journalistic style internship, like they give you a word count. Right? Good job. Oh, I caught it again and I missed it on camera. Um, I always had a word count. Right? You give it a word count for an article. And the worst thing is like, when you get a paper, like, and someone's like, it has to be however many pages for your college paper, which is dumb because no one really writes in pages.
Like most of the projects we do are not in pages, very like some of them are, but most of them are by the word. So even doing a paper in college used to be by the word. But in any case for me, I never thought about invoicing someone for 857 instead of 800, or I never thought about, um, invoicing someone for 1575 when the article was supposed to be a thousand, you know, like there's this gap, I think.
And that's a weird thing to think about for me that, uh, that, that would be an idea, right? Like people would be like, well, it's just the word count. I just charged for the word count because it's per word. That would mean that you didn't have an agreement in place. And they were just like charge whatever it costs like that you didn't come to any kind of agreement.
And I think that's important for setting expectations. So let's talk about number three. We're gonna do a P update, but then we're gonna talk about number three. Oops. And it would help if I got rid of number two so let's do a quick P update, cuz I've got a woo machine over here. Woo machine. You gotta go back to your Hobbit hole.
3) Agreements and Expectations with Pricing Per Word
Go back to your Haba hole. Go back to your HAA hole. All right buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh man. We were doing so well. Ready. You're much better at catching things. Bo's never been great at catching things. That's that's not one of his dog's strengths. Did you find anybody it's in the corner? Oh, Charlotte, you're having an off day.
All right, hold on. We got trio assistance. Woo, woo. Trio assistance coming. It's over here, buddy.
All right. She, can you lay down, lay down, down no, down down. She's like, I'll just give you my paw. I'll give you my PO Charlotte, you have a trio right in front of you. You're gonna step on it. There you go. All right, buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, so close it's on the other side. Let's see if you can find it. I can see it on camera.
You're oh, you covered it up. Will you find it? You covered it with the blanket, buddy. If I girl other one. Good job. All right, buddy. Let me help you. Hold on.
All right. Think we're think we're good. Right? B can you go to your ha hole back up here you go to your ha hole. You lay down, lay down. All right. I'll make you into a blanketed friend. Come here. Me where me?
Where me? You have a. Go to your ho hole. No, you gotta go to your ho hole. Good job. Okay. Nope. Nope. You can't bug me over here or you're gonna get, you're gonna be removed for the last stream mini. Okay, let's talk about number three. Let's talk about, um, all of our stuff. Hi, you being a woo machine today. I know.
let's talk about number three. Does anyone remember what I was saying for th for number three? so let's talk about this. So when you're pricing per word, right, you're already agreeing on all these different things you're already. Oh, oh you okay, buddy? Um, you're already agreeing on a bunch of different things.
So when you kind of start out pricing per word, you are always in agreement with everything. There's always. A bunch of things that you're agreeing on for your pricing per word. So everything, before you ever type a sentence, everything should already be agreed upon. So it shouldn't be this magical thing where you just like go off and write and then submit a random invoice.
Like everything is already organized before you ever submit your article. Right? You can send a proposal that a contract and an initial invoice, or, you know, if it's a magazine or other type of thing you invoice after. Uh, but everything's already agreed. So when we're kind of working on per word pricing, I have notes over here.
That's what I keep looking at is I wanna make sure we hit all these notes. So for me, um, pricing per word is also, um, in your benefit. So let's talk about that too. And if anybody remembers what I was saying for number three, there was a good thought there, and now I've lost it cuz I was futzing around with these furs.
So I'm gonna move on to a different one. so per word pricing is also in your benefit. So per word pricing is in your benefit because it prevents you right from being wordy, right? Because you already have a word count. You already have something to stick to you don't just randomly turn in a ton of stuff.
Right? You don't just randomly, you're like, this is 8,000 words and they're like, what is supposed to be 800 so there's that. And then the other thing is that I think per word pricing, you usually end up getting paid better, like the value of your work and you get paid better for that work. So when you calculate things per price, and you're always giving your client a per project price.
So let me, those are two different things. So what's really important is that you may calculate by the word to figure out what's going on and what to charge, but your clients are always seeing a per project price. Like they're always seeing, you know, four blog posts a month at this amount. Or, um, they're always seeing like, you know, I will, they're always seeing like that bulk number.
So, um, When you're kind of pricing like that, it's easier to, to up your rates because you're, you see the better value in that it's easier for you to do calculations. Um, I feel like you see, you make more money because instead of writing a ton, right, instead of overwriting and being like, I have to have all this stuff, you cut it down to the things that are most important, right?
You have to stick to the word count. So when you stick to the word count, you end up most of the time, cutting all the stuff that you really don't need. Like that's the thing that's really important. And for me, I think that helps you to learn to, to not only edit your work, but find the pieces that are most valuable.
And now your work is even more valuable because it's not just a thousand random words. It's a thousand of the right words in the right order, delivering the right message at the right time. That's really important. So a lot of times writers get into this wordiness trap because they're like, I have to have it.
No, you don't. No, you don't, you don't have to have it now, every once in a while, there is a time where you might need to have it. And if you have a flexible client, do it and be like, yeah, I need these extra 300 words. And they're like, cool. But now you took her seat. You have to go back over to your HAA hole.
You're just gonna sit here, go back to your HAA hole. The other hole um, here you go. Here you go by, you have to kind of learn this really important principle of writing, which is like the flexible clients are great because you get to include extra stuff that you want to include. But most of the time, like, especially if you're writing for magazines, they only have so much space.
The thing is printed, right? So there's only so much space. It's not like the internet where they're like, yeah, an extra 200 words. Isn't a big deal, you know? Um, you're not gonna get paid for them, but you can write them. So you kind of have to learn that process. And I think for me that helped me cut down on being wordy, cuz I only had so much space to work in.
Plus if you're pricing by the word right, then you already have agreed on a, a price. So the more you write the less you technically get paid, right? So if you write 1200 words and you're getting paid $800, right. Instead of 800 to a thousand words, now you're getting paid less. So for me, when I think about it, that way it motivates you to, you know, motivates you to write less
Um, and I think that for me, there's a reason why a lot of articles like, yes, there's SEO, right? They're like, oh my gosh, longer articles are better. You know, a thousand to 2000 words or we need pillar pages or whatever. And that is all very important, but there's also a big thing. Like where. Once you write a bunch of articles or you write a bunch of blog posts, or you do a lot of writing projects, you start learning that there, that the reason a thousand words or 1500 words works is because that's really what you need to hone in sharply on one topic.
It's not a book, right? It's not a book. It's not an anthology. It's not like a continuing story series. Like it's this one snapshot. And this is kind of how I think about it is like this prevents me from being wordy because it's just one snapshot. I could take 20 snapshots of the same topic and they would all be very different, but it's just one snapshot.
So I can't include everything in there. Um, and I can't, you know, be crazy with my word count. I just have to do one snapshot. The other thing that's really interesting, and I think this is something that a lot of writers end up kind of. Realizing late in the game is they're like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm gonna get paid all this money to write a two, uh, three, two, uh, to write two, 3000 word articles.
You know, they want long form copy. Then when they start putting that together, they're like, oh crap, that's actually really hard to do. And here's why when you're writing this long form copy to keep your audience's attention for 3000 words is really tough. It's not a story. It's not a book there's a beginning and an end in 3000 words and keeping it interesting and keeping your transitions, uh, between different sections to have people, you know, keep reading.
That's really tough to do. It has to be interesting content all the way through. And there's a lot of times, and I've seen this in writing where people are like, oh, well, the article needs to be 2000 words and you can go through it and be like, you don't need this. You don't need this. You don't need this.
It's just that they haven't honed their critical eye. So when you're thinking about this stuff for me, That's kind of the thing that's, that's really important. That's why an article that's 2000 or 3000 words and pricing by the word makes sense. Cuz it's really hard to write those. And most of the time you end up with a lot more material.
Like for me, it's like, I end up with 10 times the material that the article actually is. So if like the article is like a thousand words, I end up with 10,000 words of notes, depending on like interviews and research and notes I've taken and all this stuff, like I end up with pages and pages and pages of notes.
It's like how I do my work. So it's not that all of those 10,000 words of notes are valuable. They're not it's that you have to compile the most important things and compiling the most important things from two to 2000 words or 3000 words, isn't that you just get to include all this stuff. It's that you're actually covering a lot in that one.
And then most of the time it's a guide. It's not like one topic. It's actually multiple topics in one article. and that makes it way tougher to write and way tougher to keep the audience's attention and way tougher to just put everything together. So, um, Carol says, so I hope that makes sense. Um, if something has a higher value like sales copy or requires research, you charge a higher per word cost.
Yes, absolutely. 100% Carol, because it has a higher value. And this is something that I think is really important for people to recognize. And this was something I just talked about, um, on ed Gandhi's podcast, so that I think just went live. I need to go double check, but, uh, I just talked about this on ed Gandhi's podcast.
So if you're writing something as a higher value, it's not just like, it's not just, um, the word count. This is about like what the ripple effect is. So that means when you write sales copy, a lot of times they keep that for a very long time. And the 10, like, let's say you wrote a landing page, like a big juicy landing page.
That's supposed to be for sales. and that thing is 2000 words. Okay. And they pay you, you know, somewhere like they pay you. I don't know. Let's just make the math easy, a dollar award. You should probably do a little more for sales pages, but like $2 a word or something, but let's say it's a dollar word. So they pay you $2,000 for the sales page and then they're getting sales from that.
So the $2,000 is really small compared to all the sales that they get. So you need to charge very well because you are helping them make more money. that's really important. Plus whatever you create for them, especially if it has to do with sales. That reverberates for a long time. And ed again, you and I talked about this, we've both had content that people use internally.
So like, um, one of the things that's really important is, uh, people use it as onboarding, Hey, new writers, we don't work with Mandy anymore. Um, you know, for what, you know, I don't know, but here's her, her work as an example for you to create new copy or here are our four best performing blog posts. Mandy wrote them.
She's still working for, for us, but here's four of our best performing blog posts. Please use those as an example, uh, or they put it in their onboarding material for new employees, or they put it in their contracts or their, uh, sales materials for new clients. Like the thing that you write reverberates out people, they can, they own it, right?
So they can use it in 10,000 different ways and you get paid one time for that thing. So if you're using something that's high value and the other high value thing. Besides landing pages are things like white papers and case studies because case studies, right, and white papers are kind of like, they're like really big testimonials, almost like white papers, a little bit different case studies are more like giant testimonials, but those things are used all the time to make sales and used all the time to, um, educate people on the product, like new employees on the product or the service, or to help people understand or to get leads or to do a whole bunch of different things.
So basically it's like that thing does a lot of different, uh, jobs. It's almost like it's almost like, um, Okay. Here's a good example. And we're just going to use, we're gonna use horses because I think this makes sense. If you were to buy a donkey and a Clyde's tale, right? Your donkey can only do so many things, right?
Your donkey is small and it can only do so much, right? Otherwise it's animal abuse and let's not do that. So the deal is like your donkey can only do so much, but your Clydesdale, which you're definitely gonna pay a lot more for, for a number of reasons can do 800 different jobs. Cuz the thing is a beast.
It's huge. Right? So instead of the donkey, right? You're like, all right, donkey, you can do five jobs. And my donkey didn't cost a ton because the donkey can only do five jobs. The Clyde's tale can do 25 jobs. That's why it costs more. That's kind of the idea here. If you were doing something for sales and marketing like that, you know, is going to get repeated.
That's why you charge more is cuz you're, you're creating a Clyde's tale, not donkey. Right. Does this make sense? I hope this is making sense, but that's the thing is if it's, if it's lots of interviews or lots of research, that's why I always put that in the pricing guide. Let me pop that up. We haven't mentioned that in a little bit, so that's why I put that in the pricing guide is like the prices here in this free pricing guide, mandyellis.com/pricingguide.
I say it depends on complexity, research, interviews, SEO stuff, et cetera, because that's how I grade my work. If you, um, I'm gonna pop this back in. So if you, um, if you end up having something like a blog post is not just a blog post, like I've had blog posts that are like the same, like it's called a blog post on their end, but it's the same thing I would write for a magazine, like a hundred percent.
I have to interview four people. I have to go find three studies or I have to go find, uh, a bunch of data that supports this theory throughout the whole thing. So I need like eight to 10 data points. And that is a lot more than 800 words of like one profile or 800 words of just like a basic blog post of like, you know, five hardwoods to consider for your floors or whatever.
Like, those are way different. So every time. You look at that work. You need to look at the complexity of that work and you need to look at the value of that work. This was something that I talked about with ed. Gandia the value of your work is so much more than writers know, like it, it's not just one thing.
And even if it is, even if you just have one blog post for this client, it lives on their website for forever. almost forever, almost like. So they might delete it someday, but it lives on there for almost forever. And it continues to drive traffic and audience and all these other things to them. So they only paid for it once I hear you.
Woo. They only paid for it once, but that thing is still doing all the good work for them. So you need to charge more for that. I hear you. Woo. And I, and I, I understand your, your issues. All right, Carol. Carol, are you trying to stump me today? if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up.
If you feel like you wanna learn more about, uh, a hiring freelance riding business subscribe. Okay. Carol. Says so rather than guesstimating, how long an assignment will take and multiplying that by your internal hourly rate, you charge by the word and the rate depends on the value of the project. You got it.
Carol spin the prize wheel. Yes. You get $200 for passing. Go. I don't I have said this many times, I don't know my internal hourly rate. Like I, I do sometimes, but very rarely. I'm not good at, at paying attention to how many hours I spend on stuff. Like I can guesstimate it. And I'm like, this draft could take two to four hours or this writing, this garbage draft could take six hours or eight hours like it, you know, and I sometimes am like, well, editing will take me an hour to two hours and it could take four hours.
Like I'm not good at that thing. So for me, I don't guess how long something will take and charge for that, cuz I'm not good at it. And I don't think it's actually accurate the, the time is not the value. This is really important. So pay attention. time is not your measure of value. Nobody cares how much time it takes.
What really matters is the value of that piece of content to your clients? How long will that thing live? Will it be a Mastodon? Will it be a dinosaur? Will it live for a long time? Will it get them a bunch of money and sales and clicks and shares and thought leadership points and whatever you need to charge more for that that is totally more important.
Nobody cares now. Like nobody cares how much time it takes. I hope this is like a really important thing. This is something that a lot of freelance writers make a big mistake over. They're like, oh my gosh, it took me two hours. So I should charge less. No, no, someone's gonna pay you one time. And if you, this is why, um, people like Ray Edwards work on royalties, right?
So when Ray Edwards writes a sales page, I hear you. Woo. When Ray Edwards writes a sales page for Tony Robbins, he's like, cool. That costs a billion dollars. No, he's like this costs, you know, however much it costs. I don't know how much his sales page is cost off the top of my head, but he gets X percent of royalties from the sales, from that sales page.
That's why he does it. The value is not in the one time transaction of paying Ray Edwards, $30,000 or whatever it is. I don't know the number I'm making it up $30,000 to write a sales page. The value is that Ray's work converts and he should be paid well for that. So they pay him $30,000 to write a sales page that they know will do well.
And then they reward him. Like his contract says that he gets royalties, right with percentages of the sales that come in that's value. Nobody cares that it took Ray one hour to write that sales page, which it didn't, it probably took him multiple weeks. We're just guessing. But. No one cares. Tony Robbins is not gonna come down from the stage and be like, Ray Edwards.
Did it take you four hours or 15 hours? You should charge us less money because it took you less time, even though I'm gonna make bajillions of dollars off the sales page, nobody cares. So for me, why would I use a guesstimate of how long it takes? Because I have no idea. And a lot of people do this. Like some people are like, it's two to four hours, even people like I've been writing for 10 years.
I know who I've been writing for 10 years. And I still, like, that's not one of my. Some people are like, oh, I know it'll take me this amount of time, but it's always a, a range. Nobody comes to me. I've, I've never met a writer that comes to me and says everything. TA you know, this thing takes three and a half hours.
Every time I'm not tired at all. It doesn't take me six hours sometimes, cuz I'm burned out and overworked like no one does that. No one comes in and says like th you know, a blog post is two hours, but like they say things like I can get a blog post done in as little as an hour. That doesn't mean it always takes an hour.
I can do this in as little as four hours, but it doesn't mean it always takes that time. So the guesstimate is the wrong is the wrong function for that equation. You need to focus on value of the project. Will that thing live for a long time? This is why. And I saw this. Um, you go buddy, oh, you caught it. I keep missing the ones on camera.
I saw a study recently where people poll, uh, high earning freelance writers. They were, they were polling, uh, six figure writers. And the average per word rate was a dollar, a word or. So most six figure freelancers. I don't remember where this was. I saw it on LinkedIn. So if you wanna go find it on LinkedIn and send me the link and I'll share it here, let me know.
Uh, but they were making a dollar award or more cuz they know the value of that content. They know that when they charge a dollar, a award, they know the ripple effect of that thing. They know the value they're bringing to the project, the knowledge, the niche expertise. They've done that thing a bunch of times.
And they understand that when they hand that over and they get paid a thousand dollars or they get paid $2,000 at $5,000 or $30,000, that what they're giving them informs so much more of the whole sales and marketing process that it's worth it to pay that one time fee to then use it over and over again.
So I'm glad that you asked this, um, Carol, because this is a really important thing. I don't charge by the word like, and just to be just to clear, did you get it? Did you find it? Here you go. We have a little. Dementia situation um, so the other thing is like, just to be clear, I charge per word on the back end.
So I will say based on my experience, based on the value of this thing to my client, based on the, the things I know about all of these projects, this should be a dollar award. I tell my clients, okay. If like I tell my clients it's a thousand dollars. So for on my back end, in my own private little office space in here in the headquarters, that's what we call it.
It's actually a very small room. So don't feel like it's fancy um, this is, this is actually a closet right behind them. So, um, I say, okay, this person, this client wants me to write, uh, wants me to write, uh, Hm. Like a, like a, um, an article, right? Like this is the example I always use is like, they want three interviews and two studies, or they want three interviews and some research to support the points as I go along.
Right. So then I'm like, all right, I already know from past experience, or I already know that the quality of my work and what I'm turning in is like at least 80 cents, if not typically a dollar, a word, this is complex, they're asking me to do extra stuff. Maybe I'll charge a dollar 50 a award most of the time I don't, but unless it's really complicated, but then I know that the value of that thing, right?
I know that they're saying it's a thousand word article. I know the specs of that scope of work. I always ask this before I price anything. And then I'm like, all right, so a dollar word makes sense. It's a thousand dollars. I'm doing four of these articles a month. So I tell my client it's $4,000 a month.
That bulk price is easier for their brains anyways, to kind of, you know, go around. Cuz if you go to them and say like, it's a dollar, a word, you calculate it. That's a pain in the butt. don't do that. So I always on my back end calculate by the word cuz that's what makes sense to me. I think time is the wrong thing.
Time to me is the. Old outdated nine to five job thing where that's not actually the value. That's not the difference. Like someone can be doing a great job at their full time job. Right. And we all know there are people who Excel, who make $40,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 a year. People who do great work.
Right. They're still getting paid for time, even though they're doing great work. So getting paid for time does not incentivize people to do a better job. Right? Most of the time, the idea that I would guess how much it would take and multiply that by my internal hourly rate. Right. I just, that doesn't, to me, that's not the point.
Like that's my internal hourly rate. If I'm like, I would like to make $200 an hour and it'll take me three hours to write this article. I should get paid $600 when that article is not . Right. Like, so let's think about it. That's another good example. And I'm glad we're talking about this. This is really, I.
so the deal is that when you are, let's say you're Carol and Carol. I know Carol. So I know she has a bunch of experience. I know that Carol is a smart cookie, right? So if Carol came to me and said, okay, cool. I know that this blog post between everything that I wanna do, right. And I'll give you two examples.
Here's one, everything in this blog post, I know I wanna make $200 an hour, and I know that this blog post will take me three hours to, to, um, put together, right? So now I'm at $600. You should not be getting paid $600. Carol. I know, excuse me. That's way too low. And let's say that, excuse me. This article is a thousand words.
We'll use the same number. Carol should not be getting paid $600. Just because it took her X amount of time to do it. She should be getting paid $800 because Carol's a rock star and she gives people results and she does a good job. And her content is amazing. And the value of that thing to her client is way higher than $600.
That's nuts. Here's another example. Now this is more of the Mandy example than the care example. So the Mandy example is that, um, I'm like, I wanna make $200. So between doing, and let's just calculate this out. So between doing interviews and those interviews can be 30 minutes to an hour. So let's just say 30 minutes.
So that takes me two hours. So I'm already up to $400 just by doing the interviews. I haven't done any research and this is a thousand word article. Now I need to go do research. And my research takes me another two hours. So that's another $400. Now I'm up to 800 bucks and I haven't written a damn word.
Okay. I'm up to 800 bucks and correct my math, if I'm wrong. Um, which we all know, I'm not good at fast math. I know. Woo. I hear you. Um, so now I'm up to 800 bucks and I haven't done anything. Now it takes me another two hours to compile my notes and transcripts and research and put it all into one document because that's how I write.
I write all in one document. I put all my garbage, all my, everything into one dock. And then I write through all my notes. This is just how my brain works. So now I'm at a thousand dollars, right? Another two hours, eight, wait a minute. What was I at before? I'm either. Um, hold on. So that was two hours. That's $400.
Like, and then it was whatever I said, um, $600. No, that's 800. Oh yeah. I was at $800. So now I'm over a thousand dollars. Hey, go buddy. Now I'm over a thousand dollars and all I did was do the interviews, do the research and put my notes in there. okay. So if I'm going by time and I haven't written a goddamn thing, I'm in trouble.
So if I was worrying about all that stuff, and that takes time, we all know interviews researching putting your notes together, organizing before you ever write your garbage draft. That's critical to actually creating really great copy. You need really great interviews, which means you need to write very good questions.
I didn't even factor that into the math that I had to write all these interview questions and set up the interviews and set up my calendar stuff and then get people on the phone and then run the transcripts. And like, I didn't even do that. I just calculated for interview time. Right? So now I'm over a thousand dollars.
Let's say it takes me, uh, I have a lot of notes from all these interviews and from all the research and it takes me another four hours to write my draft. So let's just say I'm at 1200 now I'm at 1600 and then I have to edit the thing and it takes me another two hours to edit it. So now I'm at $2,000 and now I'm getting paid 50%.
Of the amount of time I've spent on it. And that nobody cares if you go to your client and you're like, Hey, I spent 50% more time on this. They're gonna be like, I don't give a shit. Like I want, what I want is the thing that you have. I want that article. They don't care like that. That's the thing that I think is a mistake when you're coming from the corporate world, there's no one like in the corporate world in a nine to five.
And this is what I have found with students and my own stuff is that people care about time. They're like, how much time did it take you? Why are you wasting so much time? Why are you late? Why are you early? Why are you doing this? Uh, how much time was your lunch break? How much time is that meeting? Uh, how much time are you spending on this report?
Is this report gonna be done on time? No one cares in the freelance world. They want the thing on like at the time, right? No one cares that it took you three weeks to get it done. No one cares. They want that thing to be right. The reason they're hiring you is to give them valuable copy with the right words in the right order delivered at the right.
And delivered on your deadline. That's what they're paying for. They're paying for that. Uh, that's why I think time is such a weird thing. Like I wouldn't in, I would never multiply by my internal hourly rate because it's almost always wrong. And people often make this mistake and by people, I mean, freelance writers, they make the mistake of, um, they make the mistake of being like, oh, I'm just calculating for writing time.
Or I'm just calculating for this. No, you're doing a thousand other things. You're compiling notes. You're compiling research. You're compiling this. Yeah. If I sat my butt down and just wrote a blog post from scratch without doing anything, like if, like when I sit down to write a newsletter, write, I just sit down like my weekly newsletter, I just sit down and write it.
Right. And if you get the free pricing, If you go to mandyellis.com/pricingguide, you can get my weekly newsletter. But when I sit down to write that, I'm just writing from my own knowledge and experience. I have a list of notes. I have a list of ideas, but I'm writing from my own experience. When we're writing for clients, we're most of the time not writing from our own experience, we need something to back up that says, like, this is what pantones says, or the five colors of the year or whatever.
That's why I always think it's crazy when people say they sit down and it's less than an hour to finish a blog post. Cause I feel like they're not doing very good research. They're not double checking. Like they're, they're not, you know, that blog post is not filled with use a ton of useful stuff. It's scannable.
When you're writing these big beefy things that are actually more like reported pieces and they need to be very persuasive and they need to be very clear and they need to do a lot of different functions. That's your Clyde's tale. That's why you charge for value. That's why you need to think about the value.
Nobody cares if, if Carol goes to her client or if I go to Carol's client, or if I go to my client and I tell them, it took me 50% more time than I thought, they're not gonna give me more money and that would be crazy. That would be crazy. And I would never se guess how long something is and then charge someone for that.
That's totally inaccurate. But what I know is the value of those things. I know that that thing will live on for a long time. I know that it's valuable, cuz they're gonna make big piles of money off of it like sales. I know that that thing is gonna continue to bring them traffic. I know that that thing typically lives a year or two years or more like I have case studies that are like five years old that still live.
Right. And they're still getting sales and people from them. Right. And I only got paid. so the value of that thing really matters. And if I went back and said, oh, well, like the idea here too, is that you would, then you would have to apply that backwards. So if you say, like, I think that this thing will only take me three hours, right.
And, or like, it only take me six hours between all the stuff. And it actually only takes you three hours. Does that mean that you should go back to your client and charge them 50% less because based on your math, that's what the real answer is. No, like, see that's, that's why I don't like that principle. I don't like the idea of guessing and then picking an internal, hourly rate because you could be wrong almost all the time.
Like, I don't know anyone who has specific numbers, that every time they write something, it's this amount of time and it's not just the writing, it's all of the pieces. It's not just literally sitting down to write the article and edit it. There are lots of other things you have to do. And for me, I do a lot of complex assignments.
That's what I do really well on. I do not do well with simple stuff. I tend to like overcomplicate it, get stuck in. So for me, when I do a lot of complicated stuff, that is a lot more valuable and it takes a lot more time. And I think that that the time piece is not as important as writers really understanding the deep ripple effect of value of content.
That is the most important thing. Okay. Carol, was that helpful? I'm glad that you asked that. So Carol says. I had an old client come back after two years with a per word rate. So this is timely. Yes. That's a bonus. When someone comes back to me with a per word rate, they, then I know we're on the same kind of field.
When someone comes, this is what I've found. Oftentimes is that a lot of clients who wanna like nickel and dime are like, oh, well, if the article costs me $800, how much time does it take you? Then you're like, oh, it takes me this much time. And then they're like, why can't you do it faster? Or if you like, this was my, the most crazy thing.
If you write a hundred words less, will it take less time and be cheaper? No, dude. No, like that's the thing is, is when you're getting in these conversations about time, most of the time, when you have a conversation about time, it's with someone who's trying to nickel and dime the actual time, they're not paying attention to the value of that content or how long it lives or all the good stuff that content will do for them, like the actual value.
So instead of paying you a thousand dollars, they wanna pay you $800 because it took you two hours less time. why, why would I do that? That's crazy time. So this is the thing I, and the other thing, Carol, um, cuz I know you're a rockstar Carol, and I've known you for a long time. So um, Carol and I were, uh, moderators together in the den.
So, um, here's the deal. When someone comes to me with a per word rate, right? This is the coolest thing that that's happened and it's happened to me more than once, but it happened to me a little while ago. I was like, oh, well, I normally, and like, I just decided to give them a per word rate cuz they asked and normally I don't do that, but I did.
I was like, oh yeah. Normally I charge a dollar, a word for this content. They're like, oh we pay a dollar 50 award. And I'm like, oh shit cool. Like, sounds good. I'll do that. Right? Like, like that kind of, they understand the value of that content. They understand the long term effect of that content. They're not asking me how much time it takes.
I'm telling them I normally charge a dollar, a word they're telling me they're gonna give me a dollar 50. They don't care how much time it takes. They care that it's done. Right. Like that's the thing that matters the most. So, um, just keep that in mind. okay. Carol says, uh, but the rate is lower than their agency used to pay me, but now there's no agency in the middle.
That's weird. Uh, try to get, I mean, you should be accepting the same rate as the agency and letting them know what that is. They may not know what the agency paid. You. So you should be getting paid more or equal to what their agency used to pay me. Plus didn't you say two years have gone by, so like that should be higher.
You shouldn't be getting paid less Carol, go back to them and tell them what you got paid at the agency and say, Hey, you know, like, this is what I was working at at the agency. And I'm happy to work at the same rate for you. Like you shouldn't be getting paid less because they got rid of the agency. You should be getting paid the same that you were at the agency or more because the agency's not in the middle
So go back and futz around with that. Go do something about that. All right. Um, I'm gonna go to four, cuz this is the last thing. And then we have a question and then we're gonna hop off. These are my last thoughts. So number four here, number four. Um, we're gonna talk about the back end. So this is how your per word pricing helps you, uh, raise your rates faster.
4) How Per Word Pricing Helps Freelance Writers Raise Their Rates Faster
Yeah. Carol, you should negotiate that for sure. Um, and it's just, don't like, just as a note, like, I know Carol already knows this, but like, you don't have to be scared about negotiating. It's just a conversation. You're just like, I would like this and they're like, I would like that. And you're like, how do we compromise in the middle?
Like most of the time reasonable people in green light clients are like, sounds good. Like it's not this thing, you know, red light clients, it's a whole rigmarole. So if you start feeling like you're like digging your own grave here with negotiating that client's not for you. so four here. So when we're looking at per word pricing now, for me, when I look at hourly pricing, the idea, like, let's say you're charging $50 an hour and you're like, all right, I wanna raise my rates.
Well, how much would you raise it per hour? Like, you're not gonna double it. Most of the time, most people aren't like, I'm gonna go to a hundred dollars an hour. They're like, they go up by such small increments. They're like, okay, cool. Five more dollars an hour. But five more dollars an hour or 10 or 20 more dollars an hour is not as significant as 10 or 20 more cents per word.
Okay. That I think is really important. So this is something that I have noticed with writers. Like I don't worry about hourly rate unless it's like I'm consulting and I'm on a meeting. So if I do consultative stuff and I'm like, it's 200 bucks an hour, uh, and we'll have a two hour meeting, you know, whatever, uh, that's a different game, cuz it's not content.
It's like consulting and brainstorming, but I hear you. Woo. But here's the deal. If you raise your hourly rate, a lot of times it ends up being a very small bump. Right. Like, you're not actually getting that much more money. So if you're like, all right, I'm gonna bump it by $20 an hour. So now, instead of your work being whatever it was now, it's $60 more.
So now you've made an extra 60 bucks, but if you raise your rate per word, you get paid a lot more, like a lot more than 60 bucks. And this to me was a, is a crazy idea. Why would I work hourly? Where I raise my rate? Like even if I raised my rate $25 an hour, and now this work now takes me an extra 75 bucks.
Like what? No, the difference between charging like 50 cents a word and 80 cents a word is vast. And you're, you're your vast and your, your, your gaps. There are a lot easier to kind of calculate and move up. Like for me, I always found that to be way more lucrative and way more useful than going up by $25 or $50 an hour, like.
The, the increments of per hour are so small. So like when you end up getting more, you really have to go from like a hundred dollars an hour to like $200 an hour. Right. It's not the, just to me, that's just like the craziest thing. Even if you were $50 more an hour, let's say this thing is three hours. You now made 150 extra bucks instead of moving to a per word rate where you would make like 500 extra box.
Like, I just think that it's just crazy to do that. I think it's nuts. I think it's way better to just calculate per word. And then when you move up, Every single time you type, you get paid more and you get paid more because you now realize the value. It's not paid more because you're being wordy or you're taking more time.
You're getting paid more because your writing is better. You're getting paid more because you complete things. Well, you know, the value of your work, you know, the value that you're giving your clients and how that affects them, you know, that, you know, this type of thing does X, Y, Z to help them do whatever kind of things they want.
So like, you know that when you write a blog post that helps with SEO and web traffic and thought leadership, and I hear you, Lou, um, and all that stuff. Right? So there's just a lot of things that I think the value pricing and knowing the value of your work is just way more valuable. Like, I, I. There would be hardly any time where you would give a realistic, hourly number, right?
Like, let's say you were like, well, I know this thing takes me eight hours, right? So if I'm getting paid $50 an hour, whatever that is 400 bucks is that right? Eight times five is 400, whatever. So we'll just go with that. So eight times like $50 an hour is 400 bucks. And now you're like, okay, now I wanna get paid, you know, 60 bucks an hour.
Well, eight times six is four 80. Now I've made 80 extra bucks. Okay. Well now I'm gonna make 70, like I'm gonna do 80 bucks an hour. So now I've, now I've made a significant jump. Right. But I've gone up a lot. And for people to, to get on board with $80 an hour, sometimes for writing is like their, it blows their minds.
I don't know why. But if you go to them and say, this thing is 800 bucks or a thousand bucks, they're like, oh, sounds good. And this is a weird thing. And I think this is a weird human psychology thing, because when they see $80 an hour, they're like panicking. They're like, that sounds like a lot because I have no idea how many hours it takes you.
And then you have to get in this weird discussion of like, well, sometimes it takes me six and sometimes it takes me eight, but then we should cap it at 10 and then we should like, what? I don't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you did it per word. And you said, this thing costs a thousand dollars.
It doesn't matter how much time it takes you. It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the price for them, but it does focus on the thing that matters, which is the value of getting that thing, which is the content. That's the thing that matters. Harold says, yes, I'm really struggling to raise my hourly. Yeah.
So that's why I think the hourly is not valuable. Like it's the hourly thing. When you tell, like, if you go to someone and say, my hourly rate is 200 bucks an hour, then immediate, next question is, how long does it take you. That's not where we wanna go. We wanna go with, I wanna work with you because I know that your content does X, Y, Z, or I like your writing style, or I know that you have been prominent in this industry, or like they're hiring you for the value you're providing them.
They're not hiring you for like when you clock in, in a clock out, that's dumb. Don't do that. So when you're thinking about hourly, like, I just don't think that's the way to go. Like, especially when someone comes with you comes to you with an inbound lead, like per word pricing allows you to calculate it out.
And it allows you to kind of avoid the whole wordiness trap because you've already decided that a thousand words is a thousand dollars or whatever you've agreed upon. I also have found that my students. Like my freelance writer, wealth lab students, and my one-on-one students go through the same thing.
They get stressed out. Oh my God. I told them it would be eight hours or I told them it would be four hours. It's been eight hours. I don't know if I should charge them double. Uh, we didn't agree on a max number of hours. We like, it becomes this very stressful thing. If you set it as a flat rate, you're not like going to the grocery store and being like, how long did it take to make this orange?
Or like, how many hours did it take to make this vineyard, you know, get right. Like if you have a vineyard, it takes years, like five years for the vines to just like, get to a point where you can make something, right. So you're not paying for five years of vineyard when you buy a $10 bottle of wine, right?
You're not paying a hundred bucks for the bottle of wine because of the time it took all this stuff, right? The quality is what matters. So then you end up paying for a real, I hear you. Woo. But you gotta go. You gotta go. Woo. You can't, you, you gotta get outta here. You're bugging me. Um, you're just wooing at me.
So. You're you're paying for the quality or the value of that thing. Right? So like when you buy no mini stop it. Um, so when you buy a really expensive bottle of wine, right, you're paying for the value of that thing. You're paying for. Why it's that expensive? Why the grapes are a certain variety shoes. You gotta get out here.
Do you wanna leave? Okay. Hold on. We have to remove a friend. Nope. Why don't you just, why don't you just hang out outside Minnie byebye have a great day. All right. Sometimes you just got a woo. You got a woo princess in the room and the woo princess in the womb is driving you nuts. So with the wine you're paying for the value of that thing, which has been dictated by other people who understand the value of that wine.
Right? So there's a difference between like, even if the amount of time it took Charlotte, don't you woo. At me outside the door. So let's say the $10 bottle lo of wine. Took seven year. Let's say it took 10 years to make that 10 bottle, that $10 bottle of wine. It took 10 years to make the $200 bottle of wine.
Nobody cares. Nobody's at the store saying, well, the years matter, they're looking at the quality and the value. They're looking at the taste. They're looking at a whole bunch of different things. Nobody cares. So like, for me, when I think about that kind of stuff, like if you go and you're like, how long did it take to make this orange?
And this orange costs $2 or however much oranges are like, or lemons. I, I usually know the price of lemons cause I buy them a lot. So lemons are like 50 cents a lemon or corn is in stock right now. So corn is like 25 cents per, per cob. So you don't go to someone and say, man, your corn is 25 cents a cob, you know?
Uh, why is it so cheap? Did it not take you a lot of time? Like what? That's just crazy like the, the. The value of that thing, right? Like, and obviously grocery store prices and their value is dictated by a different thing. But I think that kind of illustrates the point is like, there are a lot of things in life that we never ask how many hours it took for that thing to make it to our table or for, or for that thing to exist or whatever we never ask about the hours.
It's the value of that thing to our lives. So people who really care about wine, buy more expensive wine because that thing has a value to them and they understand the value of that fancy wine versus the $10 bottle of wine. Right. Those things really matter. So like the idea that we're like worried about hourly to me is like a silly thing.
I mean, yeah, hourly will work for consultative stuff, but for turning in a piece of content, a physical deliverable, like you need to charge by value. That's the only way to get paid well for your work and to understand the value of, of the long term effect of your content. And. Really help you raise your rates faster and you don't even have to worry about wordiness.
It's not even a thing. Like you don't even have to worry about that. So, okay. Let's get to the question real quick. All right. So do do, do do, okay. This is an interesting one. So, um, this came in for our live stream. And if you ever wanna ask a question like this, all you have to do is go to manela.com/question, and you can submit anonymously if you would like, or you can have your name up here, whatever you like.
Um, but if you go to mandyellis.com/question, you can submit a question like the one I'm gonna answer right now, which is anonymous.
Question: I found a company on LInkedIn and found an employee I want to offer my services to, but they’re not active on LinkedIn for Facebook. For example, they liked something a month ago and that’s it. What should I do?
So it says, let's say I found a company on LinkedIn and I found an employee that I'd like to offer my services to, but they're not active on LinkedIn or Facebook. For example, they like something a month ago and that's it. What should I do?
So for me, um, there's a big difference here, so I don't go on anything with Facebook. I just Don. That's too personal and weird. So on LinkedIn, what you wanna do is find specific employees and then go from there. So it's not that it's just an employee. It's like, you're looking for the content manager, the content marketing manager, the marketing manager, the marketing director, the VP of marketing.
And if none of those people exist, the CEO and the activity level only matters if someone has like four connections or two connections, or they don't have 500 connections and you can see that they are not on LinkedIn. Like almost everybody has over 500 connections now because of all the COVID stuff and all the, you know, all the things getting changed and whatever.
So the deal is that, um, as you kind of look through, you're looking for the right person to send it to not really their activity. And for me, when I'm the only time I'm really checking activity is like, if I notice that one, there's like two people I'm comparing like two different marketing managers. Two different people in content or whatever.
And I'm saying like, okay, one of them has over 500 connections and it seems like, you know, they at least have updated their profile and this person doesn't even have a picture on their profile. And they only have, you know, 300 connections. I would connect with the person who looks like they're actually, you know, weeding out and taking care of their LinkedIn.
That's the point when it matters. So when you're kind of going through all of these different, um, profiles on LinkedIn, you're looking for the right person. It's not about like that they have posted something or liked something or commented on something. It's more about that. You're getting your LOI or letter of introduction to the content marketing manager, the content manager, the marketing manager, the marketing director, the VP of marketing, the CEO, somebody who handles marketing or content within that company.
And then if you end up at a company like there's always companies with tons and tons of employees that you may send an L LOI to. You're looking like, if, if there's like, this has happened to me before where there's like four or five people in content or four or five people in marketing or 10 or 20 people, then you've gotta narrow it down by who's actually doing the content because sometimes there's, you know, 10 people who work in marketing, but only two of them do the actual content production.
So then once you figure out who does the content production, my second tier after that is usually like, do they have LinkedIn premium? Cuz if they have LinkedIn premium, I can send them a message for free cuz I also have LinkedIn premium. So that's a bonus and I always pick the free message over anything else.
Like if I can send someone a free message and that the right person, like I choose that all the time. If they don't have premium and they're kind of a tossup I pay attention to who seems to be more active out of the two. Uh, I just feel like that's your best bet. Um, and worst case scenario, you can just forego the whole thing and use a tool like hunter.io to find their email.
All you need is the URL of the website. Um, and hunter.io pulls up the convention. So the email might be first name@companydotcomoritmightbefirstnamedotlastnameatcompanydotcomorlastnamefirstinitialatcompany.com. But you'll at least know the convention of the email. And then you go find the right person and plug in their details, right?
You find them on LinkedIn and say, okay, this person's name is, you know, Alex Smith or whatever. You plug their details into the email thing, send your LOI as an email. So that's kind of your, your plan. Uh, it's just like, it's not really, uh, you know, LinkedIn people can be super active and people can be not active at all, but they will answer messages.
So the activity level isn't. Always an indicator on LinkedIn of whether or not someone will answer your message. Obviously you want people to be more active on LinkedIn. Uh, but you know, when you're in a situation, you gotta send it to the right person. And if you can't send it to the right person on LinkedIn, for whatever reason, you can always find their email and email it to them instead.
Okay, cool. I hope this has been helpful and I hope that this has been, um, something that is really useful for everybody. And so last thoughts. So if you go get my free pricing guide, you go to mandellis.com/pricingguide. That's where this question came from, that does per word pricing, encourage wordiness.
Someone got my free pricing guide. And they sent me like, well, why, you know, why is your pricing guide in per word rates? Right? And that's because, and I hope that from this, you know, this video that you now see that that's really about value. We don't care about time. Like, this is when a lot of writers send me something and they're like, Hey, , uh, how much time does it take you to do this?
And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I can give you a big estimate, but I don't know. And then they're like, well, how do I get done faster? And that's the wrong premise. Like people start with the idea that if I get it done faster, or if I do this, I'll make more money. That's just not how it works. Some people have fastness as a skill and you do get faster over time.
Like it, it just takes a while, but the goal is that you wanna price for per word for value. And it really doesn't encourage wordiness, cuz you've already agreed upon a word count. You've already set a contract. You've already set rules and offense in place for where you should be writing for. So really if you write more than your word count, you're just getting paid less.
So I think that for me, um, per word, like per word is just the easiest way to calculate across the board for clients. You give them a per project price. And if you start doing hourly, you start making all these weird guesses and then your client like that con you don't wanna have that conversation with them.
You don't wanna end up having a conversation with a client about like how much time could it take you? Can you take less time? Like that's not, the time is not the factor. The value of the content is the conversations you should have with your clients should always be on the value of the content. No one cares about time and if they care about time, they're caring about the wrong metric.
Okay. All right. People. Um, so I am actually not gonna be here next Friday, but that's, I am next week off. So we won't have a live stream next Friday, but I will send out in my email, uh, a bunch of videos that you guys can check out in the meantime. And we are here pretty much all the time, every single week at noon on central time on Fridays.
Uh, just putting it in there that I'm not gonna be here next week. Uh, but I hope everybody has a really good July 4th. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Uh, just remember to bring your dogs inside when it comes to fireworks that, uh, July 4th is one of the weekends where a lot of dogs go missing because they get scared by the fireworks or they run away or whatever.
So just remember as someone who owns dogs, who bark at the fireworks, you know, we lock them in. Uh, so just a little note on that. All right. I hope everybody has great weekend. And, uh, if you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe, and I will see you two Fridays from now. Bye.
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