What undercharging does to a practice and to the field
Undercharging affects a freelance’s ability to sustain the business, the time available for quality work and the rates other writers can obtain.
The writer’s own practice
Charging too little can leave a freelance overworked and underpaid, unable to meet bills, take a holiday or buy necessities, making the business unsustainable. Resentment toward the business or clients can then damage relationships and lead to lost work. Discounting also carries a longer-term risk: it may be difficult to increase the rate charged to that client later.
Working for free or at deeply discounted rates is discouraged, although one adviser accepts slightly lower starting rates when experience is gained and prices subsequently rise as skills improve.
Other writers and the market
A handful of writers charging too little can make it harder for others to obtain what the work is worth and earn a living; a new freelance is therefore advised to consider effects on the community as well as personal earnings. Cheap outsourcing and persuading clients to pay adequately for quality are recurrent concerns within the profession.
Price pressure and quality
An online advertisement quoted in 2015 offered at most £50 for a 3,000-word anticoagulation-guidelines article in perfect English, four creative images and no plagiarism, with a medical background an advantage; a medical content writer would charge six times that amount for the article alone and more for image design. The writer also argues that businesses can source online work at one tenth of a local skilled writer’s price, with public profiles, samples and client reviews helping buyers feel comfortable commissioning writers elsewhere and writers bidding for advertised projects.
Some writers using such marketplaces may be equally skilled, but low prices can pressure them to finish quickly and move to the next assignment because high volume may be their only route to income. The content writer argues that quality inevitably suffers under those conditions and that clients should consider the skills behind a higher rate rather than assume the same quality at the cheapest price.
The argument for paying for expertise distinguishes a one-off or routine task such as data entry from health content whose errors could seriously, even fatally, influence a reader’s health decisions; specialist training, knowledge and experience are presented as reducing that risk.
Subcontracting at very low prices
A critique of cheap outsourcing asks how much underlying writers can receive when a five-star-rated writer with thirty concurrent projects is charging only $10 an hour and passing work to others. It calls on clients to take responsibility for the resulting cycle of low-paid offshore labour.
The same critique accepts that freelances probably lose some work to outsourcing websites, but holds that writers need not feel threatened if they keep developing skills and experience, care deeply about content quality and find clients who do not rely on those models.