SEO Writing: How to Ask for More Money When the Parameters of a Project Change or You’ve Miscalculated What It Takes to Complete It
Publisher Note: In April, to read the posts on SeoWritingJobs.com, you will need to be a subscriber. There won’t be a subscription fee; the content will still be free. What’ll happen is, I’ll post excerpts, but you’ll need to be a subscriber to click through and read the content in its entirety.
FYI, you can subscribe from any page of InkwellEditorial.com (this site’s sister site). There’s a subscription in the right-hand column of every page. Now for today’s informative post …
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New SEO Writer Lands Her First Gig and Immediately Finds That . . .
“Houston, we have a problem . . .”
A new SEO writer got her first project after some coaching from me. I told her how to start, which niche to specialize in and what to charge. When she landed her first gig, she couldn’t believe it – 10 articles from a large web developer who specializes in building real estate websites.
WITH much more work to come if they like her work on this initial order. Needless to say, I was proud as an “SEO consultant mama peacock!”
SEO Copywriting Rates: When and How to Ask for More Money & When Not To
As a new SEO writer, she’s learning a valuable lesson about what/how to charge when she writes seo content. I told her to charge $35 per 250-word article. But she was so anxious to land the gig, she charged $29. Now she’s wishing that she’d listened to me, for the following reason . . .
It’s taking her much longer to complete each SEO article because the articles are specific to a particular area – one she’s not readily familiar with. So, she has to conduct research.
To be fair, she didn’t know that the articles were going to be area-specific; she thought they were going to be general context articles.
New SEO Writing Project Tip: Ask a lot of questions up front so that you fully understand the parameters of a given project. This way, you can adequately charge for it.
If it had been me and it was my first project, I probably would have done the same thing. BUT, moving forward I would let the client know that the rate was going to increase because of the research time needed to make the articles factually correct.
SEO Pricing: How I Asked for More Money from One SEO Writing Client – And Got It
In fact, I did this with a new client just last week. This Irish firm hired my SEO writing company to write some travel articles. And although the client had promised to provide the background material needed for each article, I found that it wasn’t sufficient and additional research had to be done.
I had the project completed for the initially agreed-upon rate, but when it was turned in to the client, I advised them that the rate would be $X moving forward because each article required additional research. Because the writing was “superb,” they readily agreed to the increased rate and have hired New Media Words to write monthly articles and even to do some article marketing.
My point in this post is this . . . if you take on an SEO writing project and the parameters change and/or it turns out to be much more work than you thought, don’t be afraid to ask for more money. Unless it is significantly more work, I advise doing it for the originally agreed-upon rate to show your professionalism and the quality of your work.
My rationale for this line of thinking is, if the client balks at your new SEO writing rate, then you will still have gotten a payment for one project and proven to them what you can do. This way, if they hire someone else for less, they can judge the quality for themselves. They may just come back to you.
And if they decide to hire you at your new rate, well, then your talent as an SEO writer will have spoken for itself.
Learn SEO: SEO Writing Ecourse News
FYI, the next SEO writing ecourse commences on April 26th. As of today, there are still 12 slots remaining. You’ll learn four ways to make money online using your newly acquired skills that will give you financial security (maybe to travel to Jamaica or some other exotic hot spot anytime you want). Get full details on the SEO copywriting training this ecourse offers.
Another hump day in the books! Tommorrow, I’m off to New York to visit friends for a few days, then back home to Atlanta next week. I’m ssooooo dreading the travelling day tomorrow. It’s gonna be a long one!
Yuwanda
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