Has the Art of Copywriting been Devalued? Write House Founder Daniel Waldron Investigates

If you are a professional copywriter, and I use the term professional in the sense that it’s meant to be used in, which is highly-skilled and passionate about your work, with your primary focus being to deliver exceptionally high standards of customer service, then you will no doubt be as depressed as me about how undervalued the skill of copywriting has become.

Words, not even my beloved words, can express the utter derision I feel every time I go onto a freelance jobs board and scroll through the writing projects on offer, displaying what can only be described as shed loads of work with employers offering a pittance in return.

Posts such as this… (**** inserted for the purposes of anonymity. Highlighted words are the mistake of the client) – Client expected to pay £8.00 per 550 word article.

“Top **** **** is an online bingo comparison website for UK bingo players looking for the next best bingo site to play on.

Now in its third year, I am looking to maximise its potential and grow the site three fold over the next 3 months. Crucial to achieving this will be increasing our reach online.

I am therefore looking for a reliable freelance copyrighter to compose around 5 articles a week and distribute these articles via guest blogging.

If you have an interest and/or experience in writing articles for the online bingo / gambling sector then this job may be for you!

You must have perfect written English and an ability to make articles useful and engaging to the reader. Being UK based would also be an advantage.

Contacts within online bingo / gambling sector would be an advantage, but not essential. As long as you're happy to establish them!

I am looking to pay £8 per 550 word article successfully submitted as a guest blog post.”

Source: peopleperhour.com

…are a prime example of what employers expect from copywriters in return for peanuts and a few magic beans, both of which are great food sources, but wouldn’t nourish the common rat, let alone a family for which my income has to support.

‘They are ruining the industry, I hear you cry.’ Well actually they’re not, they’re enhancing it. Go with me on this. Much of the work I see advertised on these sites, around 75% of the time, goes to the lowest bidder, usually a ‘copy righter’ pun intended, from a country with no grasp of the English language, weather (again pun intended) it be spelling, grammar or sentence structure.

The reason I say that such posts are enhancing the industry is for this reason only. Does the term ‘buy it cheap, buy it twice’ resonate with you?

In conducting an experiment of my own across a number of freelance writing job boards I discovered that, no sooner had the lowest bidder completed the project requested of them, 68% of those who had commissioned the work had re-posted the job at a higher rate, within 7 days, in order for a pro-writer to undo the mess the previous contractor had made.

Whilst I still cringe at the site of people offering $2 for a project that can be classed as ‘technical copywriting’, with the employer expecting a professional copywriter, to produce a 500+, well written and researched article, I say carry on.

For those business owners and individuals who make the mistake of hiring a writer, for a pittance, and continue to post jobs offering pathetic rates, they will soon discover the error of their ways once their business brand, reputation and image suffers as a consequence of poor copy that I know my 3 year old son could have written ‘much more better’.