E-Lanced! Word Scrabble With Danity Kane

You would think in this day and age that I would never have to tell anyone this, but I do and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.

Why should you never hire a copywriter in a third world country who’s willing to work for $10/hour?

Well, several reasons.

First being, he’s a writer in a third world country. That means English is not his native tongue. Second, he doesn’t know that value of what he has to offer (or heh . . . maybe he does and that’s why he’s willing to work for $10/hour!)

At least once a month someone who has trickled through my funnel and actually gets me live or via email and says, “Gee . . . you’re really expensive. Can you recommend someone cheaper?”

And, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart — I send them to Elance.com. And there they can watch unsuspecting newbies slash and tear at each others’ prices until their floors run with red ink.

Sure, the price may be right for the short-term — but in the long term it’s like putting the sales of your organization into the Danity Kane girl group — looks good, but can they write?

No. Nor sing either. Though apparently shaking their groove-thang is something they can do. Golf clap, everyone.

I know up here in the great Pacific Northwest, a local freelancer group, chockful of unsure fledgling copywriters, electronically wring their hands over whether they should charge $25/hour or not.

What they don’t know is that this has been meticulously and exhaustively researched by copywriter and sales anyalyst Chris Marlow. And in her landmark survey, she discovered that the mimimum a copywriter can charge to break even is $50/hour!

That’s no profit, mind you. That’s just broke-assed break even.

Though there are not many copywriters subscribed here, here’s the link to the survey in case you’re interested.

And no, I do not have an hourly rate, so don’t ask. I have a project rate.

So what happens when being too cheap to pay for results dictates whom you use?

I thought you’d never ask.

Here’s an perfect example of bad copywriting gone horribly, horribly wrong. Now I don’t know if the person who wrote this was from a third world nation, or even if they were found on Elance.com. What I do know is, it’s a prime example of you get what you pay for.

It comes courtesy of colleague Eileen Coale and she included it in her recent newsletter. Hers is one of the few e-newsletters I make a point to read each month and when I read this, I couldn’t stop laughing.

Fall-out-of-the-chair-snorting-milk-through-the-nose funny.

So I asked her if I could link to it. With her kind permission, the link is below and sure and visit her site and sign up for her newsletter as well — it’s worth reading. And if you think about, tell her I sent you.

“JUST FOR LAUGHS Follow the link below to discover why you should never hire a cheap copywriter. Be sure to scroll below the picture of the product to read the copy that describes the product.”

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