Yesterday, I came across an advert for a copywriting job. Part of it read: We won’t pay you much to start with but the prospects for successful writers are very good.
Tell you what, I’ll tell the restaurant owner: “I’ll pay fifty pence for my three-course meal, but if I really like it I’ll pay a bit more next time. Okay?”
(Excuse me while I practise ducking the flying plate of pasta!)
Just as cooking isn’t a hobby for restaurant owners, writing is NOT a hobby for freelance copywriters. Rather, it is part of a viable business, so please give them the respect (and the fees) they deserve.
Paying a professional anything less will only serve to haunt you. As famous ad man David Ogilvy once said: Pay peanuts, and you get monkeys.
And he show know: Not only did he own and run one of the most successful advertising agencies of all time, he also generated millions of pounds in profits for his clients.
OK, so what specifically does the monkey reference have to do with business?
Well, there is a current trend to outsource skills, including copywriting and editing, to the cheapest service provider.
Nothing wrong with that, you may be thinking. After all, we operate within a global marketplace, don’t we? And the struggling economy at large is putting a lot of pressure on companies to cut the cost of business, right?
Sure, but going after price rather than value can have dire consequences.
I should know. It happened to me…
I’d hired a so-called professional writer with a seemingly good portfolio via one of those service providers like Elance to write a 30-page report for me (to supplement my own marketing materials).
On top of her taking almost three times the agreed time to do this, the quality was poor. She was so off-brief it was scary. There were typos everywhere, and some of the language used was more than a little odd.
Worse, having already collected the bulk of the payment due as a deposit, she disappeared. No contact. No one to put things right. No brief fulfilled.
Later, I found out she had passed off other people’s samples in her portfolio as her own.
I ended up out of pocket for that project. And you can imagine the frustration and disruption caused to marketing my business. Which is what happens to a lot of business-owners who think they can save money by commissioning the lowest-cost provider.
So, please, listen to experience. Honour the core values of your own business as well as that of the service provider you’re hiring — otherwise, you, too, may be left with monkeys if you pay peanuts.
(C) 2010 T Smith, All Rights Reserved
