MarketingMoment

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 like it I’ll pay a bit more next time. Okay?”

(Excuse me while I duck 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 (& 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.

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 very suspect indeed.

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 peoples’ 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 my business. Which is what happens to a lot of business owners who think they can save money by going after cheap.

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’ll be left with monkeys if you pay peanuts.

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Many of my clients and newsletter readers have taken advantage of my ‘heads up’ on the price increase of MediaMinister’s Using Online Marketing to Your Advantage home-study system. Some also wrote in asking for an extension on the ‘old’ price, before I revamp it into the fully ’supped up’ version. You’re still sorting out post-Christmas debt, you said, and would like a little longer.

No problem! I mean we all need the help we can get, especially with the news that we’re not that far out of the recession as we’d been led to believe AND inflation is set to go up — again.

So you’ve got until March to buy the original at the original price before it goes from £50 to £85 for the CD or downloadable transcript and from £60 to £97 for the whole package. If you’ve been meaning to get it, *here’s where you can read more about it, and get yours at the ‘old’ price.*

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Add my RSS feed to your reader now so you never have to miss a post.
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Want to use this in your ezine, blog or website? No problem! Just let me know. I’ll send you a short resource box/bio to include.