One problem that I encounter fairly regularly is a mismatch between clients’ expectations and the reality of the writing profession. I encounter this primarily on Elance, although I run into it with corporate clients and small businesses, too. It seems that many people simply don’t know how much it costs to hire a writer, and have some expectation in their heads that writers will work for pennies per word – or less. This may be true in non-technical applications or with non-professional writers, but there are substantial differences between professional and non-professional writers.
Professional Writers have Years of Experience
Experience is a huge factor in hiring professional vs. non-professional writers. Non-professional writers are typically starting out, hoping to become professional writers, or they may be moonlighting to supplement their incomes. Or non-professional writers may be employed in other professions, such as marketing professions, and try their hand at writing because their company needs copy or other written materials and they attempt to fill that gap. This kind of experience can accumulate over time, but it takes a lot longer for a non-professional to garner experience.
Professional writers, on the other hand, write prolifically. They write many words per day. They have experience with many different types of projects. They’ve had an opportunity to refine their writing through practical application, and this makes a world of difference in the end product.
Think of it like this: a professional writer spends 8 hours per day, or 40 hours per week, writing. A non-professional writer may spend 2 to 4 hours per week writing, or even less. Over a month, this adds up to 160 hours of writing for a professional, or up 8 to 16 hours of writing for a non-professional; 10% or less of the experience that a professional writer gains per month. Over a year, a professional writer spends over 2,000 hours writing, while a non-professional may spend 100 to 200 hours writing.
A professional writer with 10 years of experience has spent 20,000 hours writing.
A non-professional writer, even with 10 years of experience, has only spent 2,000 hours writing; the same amount that a professional does in a year.
The experience scale is skewed heavily in favor of the professional writer. And when you hire a professional, you’re getting the benefit of that experience; which is part of why professional writers cost more than non-professionals.
Professional Writers Use the Right Words
I was recently working on a project writing school descriptions, and one school website described themselves as a “chain of schools” throughout a specific area. This made me cringe. To me, the term ‘chain’ evokes thoughts of a chain restaurant; overpriced, not particularly noteworthy, bland, generic, food-in-a-box, franchised dross. There are many ways to express the same general thought using words that don’t evoke such negative images. For example, they could have called themselves a “family of schools” or a “network of schools” – either of which would have been preferable to ‘chain.’
This is a classic example of non-professional versus professional writers. Non-professionals may be able to convey their meaning through words, and may even do so with relatively few grammatical errors or sound sentence structure. But professional writers have a sense for the cadence of language, and we think about the images that a word evokes. We don’t just use any word – professional writers spend time and energy finding the right words.
My tagline is: “I write what you meant to say.”
I don’t write what you tell me to write. I don’t write what you say. I distill what you say to write into its component parts, and refine it, and deliver it polished and shining. I write the best version of what you intended to say.
I write what you meant to say.
That’s the difference between a professional writer and a non-professional writer.
Yes, we cost more. But if your message is important, we’re worth the cost.
We deliver. We boost your ROI. We polish up your message until it shines, and reach more people, more effectively with our words.
When you hire a professional writer, you’re getting years of experience and skills. You get a customized message, tailored to your needs, designed to grab your audience and convince them that your product or service is the answer to all their problems.
When you hire a non-professional writer, you get cheap.
What do you want? A professional writer, or a non-professional?
Well place and ideally will be well-read. Whether or not I write something that hurts, I?d rather hear about it in comparison with wonder why in the world no one has said a thing. For me it was useful both equally as copy writer and as reader/commenter.