Below: Outsourcing ✧ What is a freelancer worth? (For clients and freelancers!)
I have been increasingly surprised over time as I found out how many contracts were posted requesting a freelancer to do their homework for them. Roll back the clock twenty years and yes, I might’ve been one of the smart kids who helped others with their homework when asked. Never at the level of doing it for them, though, I wasn’t quite that stereotypical. I find the idea of doing someone’s own work for them repulsive on a non-negligible level, and that has now cut into how many jobs there are available for me. (I am a member of Upwork.com, so I am referencing my job feed there, but I would anticipate this is similar across other sites as well.)
I can understand someone’s desire to have an epic college entrance essay (that’s the rest of their life being decided there), but not at the cost of it failing to be a very personal declaration of self. But what about a statement for a new job? Once they’re hired, won’t it become blatantly obvious that they didn’t write it, if they needed someone else to do it in the first place? I don’t know whether people are outsourcing important work just to have a template for their own version—which seems like it could potentially be useful—perhaps because they don’t have time to truly marshal their thoughts to do it well. If that’s the case, I think there’s some underlying issue other than just getting someone to do your work for you. Whether you’re a workaholic or underpaid/overworked, the difference probably doesn’t matter for my purposes, though the former is more under your control.
A quick definition: ‘ghostwriting’ is the verb for writing without getting credit, or writing something that someone other than the writer will put their name on. Not everyone applies the word to something short like writing a blog post, but for the purposes of this article, I will. If I’m writing a book, my name is on it. If I’m ghostwriting a book, my name isn’t there (often with an NDA involved).
Curiosity: Why Have Someone Else Do Your Work?
Let’s assume for a moment that you’re hiring someone to do your work not because you are overworked (or whatever other situation means you have to be working instead of doing the task yourself) but because you want to. This is a curious scenario, as this implies you’d rather hand out money than do whatever job you’ve chosen for your life. If that’s the case, why are you even doing that job in the first place? Okay, maybe not everyone has their dream job; I’m aware of that. I myself am working toward something I don’t have yet. But whatever you’re doing is probably in pursuit of that dream job, or at least something you can stand to do to make the money you need to keep a preferred hobby alive. If it’s not, I’m surprised you would have the money to pay someone else to do it for you.
As an aside, I can also understand the year 2020 having hit hard and not given you time for things you require. If that’s your situation, none of this section applies to you. If you need help to make 2020 happen and have the money to get someone to help, great. I support that without question.
However. I have seen job requests that sound like a college essay. Theme, resources, specific word count goal, and “I need this by tomorrow night!” Please excuse me, but are you frickin’ nuts? For one, I am filling every moment I can with paid work, and rarely have the ability to turn anything new around in 24 hours. For another, if you’re in college and you have the money to pay someone to do your homework, not only are you spending money you should be spending on your tuition, but I have to question what your goal is, here. Did you waste the two weeks you had to write the essay and only realize it at the last minute, so you figured a freelancer would be able to do it faster? Hate to break it to you, but we’re regular people just like you. You probably have more relevant knowledge to the essay than we do, unless you are the luckiest person in the world and happen to come across a specialist freelancer in the narrow window of time you need the essay written who happens to have the time to write your essay in the next 24 hours. (Hint: I don’t know the odds, but they’d be worse than one in a million.)
I may be taking a rather forceful position on this, but I really think it’s a question that’s worth some thought. I don’t know what the reasons behind any given job posting may be. Maybe you’re hiring someone to write content for a website because you’re not a good enough writer to suit your standards for that site. If you’re a plumber or mechanic, I certainly don’t expect you to be able to write like a CEO of a Fortune 500 company; writing is not in your required skillset. That’s completely understandable, and common enough we have a job title “content writer” to go with it. Just keep in mind that the content writer is writing something without getting any credit but your money. However, if you’re that CEO of the hypothetical Fortune 500 company hiring someone to write your biography on your company’s website, you’d better make sure you’re paying them what a Fortune 500 CEO’s writing is worth.
Cutting Corners vs Outsourcing
Outsourcing is one of those big buzzwords that businesspeople put on a pedestal, as though outsourcing is going to solve all their problems. In theory, I suppose, getting someone else to do the job or project for less money does in fact require less investment than, say, a salaried employee. That’s fine, I know it’s done. But when the outsourcing is actually the employee paying a fraction of their income to a freelancer, that stops being outsourcing and feels like a cheap way to get paid to manipulate people who probably need the money even more—surprise, freelancers are only as well paid as the contracts they can sign.
I am fully aware that cutting corners is industry standard. It’s all about the bottom line. But if you’re going to cut corners, make sure you are aware you’ve given up any integrity you have in favor of the money. On a philosophical level, I hope everyone agrees that cutting corners is wrong, and that all work should be done well. I know that may not be realistic, but if cutting corners is your reality, at least be aware that’s what you’re doing.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Frequently freelance writers are writing blogs. Blog requests (singular or ongoing) are a significant portion of the job postings that come across my feed. Whether it’s all the content or just additional content so the blogger isn’t so hard pressed to keep up, in my personal opinion that should have the freelancer’s name on it, not the client blogger’s. If you didn’t do the work, you should be crediting the person who did. Guest posts are common enough on blogs, there’s really no reason not to credit the actual writer.
Yes, I am biased in this. So sue me. Quite frankly, I work my butt off to keep up with both the writing blog here and the short stories I post to my personal blog. For some other blogger to only write some of the content (if any) they claim is theirs borders on offensive to my hard work and the hard work of other bloggers who do the work themselves. If you’re not going to do the work, you don’t deserve the credit for it.
Isn’t this something we learned as kids? Maybe I’m mistaken, but claiming another kid’s toy is yours never got you very far.
Ghostwriting, from Blogs to Books
I was hesitant to start ghostwriting earlier this year for many of the above reasons. It is being paid to do what I’d like to do for a living (write novels), but it’s another case of feeling like I’m doing the work for someone who’s taking all the credit. If you are going to make money off my work for the rest of your life, perhaps longer, the amount of money I’m getting paid is pretty limited. Seems like I should at least double or triple the fee I’m charging. That said, I don’t know how well my writing sells, not when I have yet to get published in any fashion on my own merits. So perhaps getting two cents a word is a significant portion of what the book is likely to profit the author for quality reasons based entirely on me—but I doubt it. It wouldn’t be affordable if all the profits went to me. Publishing books is expensive.
I am fairly new to ghostwriting entire novels, and that’s what my client is expecting for the price I’m charging. I’d call that two cents a word the low end of Intermediate-level fiction writing. One cent a word or $0.012–$0.015 is what I’ve seen for entry level or beginner ghostwriting jobs. Anything less than one cent a word is really not worth the freelancer’s time, but more on that below. (Freelancers, I don’t recommend accepting a contract for anything less than one cent a word!) I’m expecting something more in the range of $0.022–$0.025 for near-future ghostwritten novels, quite simply because I know my writing is worth it; I also include a revision pass in my contract milestones, so there’s a built-in promise of fixing errors and any elements my client doesn’t like. After I’ve written at that rate some, I will probably increase it again because my experience has grown accordingly. This assumes equal improvement of my skills at ghostwriting, including sounding more like the author than I succeed at currently. If the freelancer is not actually improving, they should not be increasing their rate. Note that existing relationships should be valued higher than the precise rate! There is value to having longer-term work. That means if I’m still charging my existing client the same rate as I started with months ago, even if I have increased my rate since, there’s a good reason for it. Freelancers, keep this in mind. Clients, be aware of this, but don’t expect it automatically. Your freelancer may be doing other work at the same time as your contract, and that additional experience stacks with whatever they’re doing for you.
What is a freelancer’s work worth? (For clients and freelancers!)
To wrap this up, I wanted to point something out. If you hire a freelancer to ghostwrite (write without credit) for you, you should be paying them for the work AND the rights. (Writers, pay attention!) This could easily mean double the fee. For instance, I am willing to accept contracts for one cent a word if that’s what is available to me and I’m desperate to make ends meet (cue 2020). For significant projects—writing a novel among them—I won’t accept less than two cents a word. That is double my bare minimum, precisely because I am not getting the credit for my work. Even while I am quoting those numbers, I’m already increasing them as I do more work, because I know that the bare minimum isn’t worth my time. If I’m going to spend hours on a project that I would have been able to spend on something more profitable, you bet your butt I’m going to charge the rate that is actually equal to how much time I’m spending. (Even my current ghostwriting project is a fixed rate that doesn’t equate to how much time I’ve spent on it, and I’ll be increasing my rate if I am hired to write a third book in the series, though not as much as I would charge a new client out of respect for an existing working relationship.)
Assuming a freelancer works 9–5, Monday through Friday, they should be making a living wage. (And no, minimum wage is very frequently less than a true living wage, though it’s a start.) Getting paid by the hour in freelance writing is less common as far as I can tell, mostly because unless there’s a strict limit on billable hours, the freelancer could write, edit, and revise, and charge for every hour it takes, and writing three words where one would do is entirely possible. (I can write about one thousand words in an hour on a good day, for reference.) Hourly rates don’t include any sort of quality or quantity specifics unless the client knows to write them into the contract. By the word is probably what I would consider industry standard, because it is linking the fee to the output (write more, get paid more). This means the client estimates how long a piece they’re looking for, and then pays several cents per word. I quoted one cent as my bare minimum, but that’s for massive projects like a fifty-thousand-word novel. A blog post should be anywhere from six cents a word to a couple dollars, depending on the blogger’s skill, experience, and turnaround time. This means a 2500-word blog post (this one is over 2600) should cost $150 minimum, not $20–$25. Guess what? No one offers that up front, and much of the time inexperienced freelancers don’t know any better. For fiction, the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) qualifying rate is $0.08/word. That’s how much they expect a writer to earn for a published piece if the publication wants to be vetted by the SFWA and listed on their site for their members (and any other writers who are looking for real paying jobs).
There is also the fixed rate payment system for freelancers, whether that’s the entire project or by milestones, so the freelancer is paid in agreed-upon increments, each with individual deadlines—for instance, my current novel contract is set up so my client pays me a flat rate per ten thousand words (with a target of 50k agreed upon) then additional incremental payments for the revision and editing, all of which ends up totaling approximately two cents a word ($1000/50k words). Fixed rates can be ideal for both client and freelancer, but without agreed upon standards for quality, often this means the freelancer will race to the word count to get paid, and then move on as quickly as possible, at the cost of the quality of the writing. Clients, it’s wise to ask for a sample of the freelancer’s work or to view their portfolio if they have one. Make sure they aren’t going to hand you sloppy work. Freelancers, it may be handy to know you can work harder and earn money faster, or have a schedule so you know you’ll have $200 in two weeks (budgets love this), but you need to be clear about quantity and quality with your client, so you aren’t blindsided by requests to redo things that aren’t up to the client’s standards. Working in milestones is great for getting feedback during the process, if your client can keep up with reading your work at the same speed you’re writing it. Know up front what your fixed rate is equal to in price per word, so you don’t realize later that you wrote a huge amount for less than a cent per word. (This is not a hypothetical situation, I regularly see budgeted prices on job requests that come out to less than a cent per word requested.) That’s not worth the freelancer’s time, and they got cheated out of what their work is worth.
Marie Efromson 