Content writing – competing on the basis of rates
I get lots of work from abroad. In fact, in the initial years, there was no work from India. Back then people didn’t understand the value of quality content in India. Many didn’t even have a website.
People in the USA and other Western countries on the other hand appreciated good writing. They started having websites in the early 2000’s.
They also understood the importance of content vis-à-vis Google search engine rankings earlier than people in India. It was also a time when outsourcing was at its peak as one of the most preferred ways of cutting costs.
Although, at my end, I never tried to charge less but who am I kidding? Most of the people in the West outsource their work to someone from India assuming that they are going to pay less.
Even when I was charging less (doing it, but not accepting it), even those rates were a lot for Indian clients. Hence, when I started getting assignments in India, I charged a lot less compared to what I was charging my clients from abroad.
This began to trouble my conscience. The foundation of my business was built through the support of people who believed in me – even if it was for the sake of saving money – and now I was charging more from them and less from people who still didn’t understand the value of good content and were simply being arm-twisted into working with a better content writer, by Google.
Clients from India can be lousy. One shouldn’t take it personally because that’s how they are. Our sociocultural environment makes us mistrust even our neighbours. They want to pay the minimum possible rate and they want to extract the maximum possible from you, short of killing you.
The only benefit is that once they understand that there is no escape from hiring a good content writer, they appreciate your talent and somehow manage to pay what you’re asking for. Besides, once you have made a name for yourself, there are so many clients that you can conveniently pick and choose.
Coming back to different rates for clients from abroad and clients from India: even that phase passed, and I gradually started increasing my rates to what I was more comfortable with, even with my Indian clients.
My conscience stopped troubling me. Even when I was charging them rates clients from India would never agree to, they were paying me less than they would have had to pay a native writer.
These days my rates are more or less the same. I’m comfortable with my rates. I don’t compete based on my rates. If a client calls me and tells me that there is a certain content writing agency or there is a certain content writer who is charging a lot less than what I am quoting, I tell them, “Well, congratulations! You have already found the content writer of your choice. Go to him/her.”
Even from my clients from abroad, after doing some reading on the web, I have realized that sometimes I charge slightly more than their native writers. I’m fine with that. I’m charging for the value I deliver, not for the fact that I am a content writer from India. Instead of attracting clients who are more interested in saving costs by hiring a content writer from India, my objective is to attract clients who are just looking for a better content writer.