Actually, technically it’s impossible for both methods to make the same amount of money if the writer charging more is correctly marketing their services to keep a full plate. Freelance writers are service providers. Time is a primary asset. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many billable ones at that. It’s therefore technically impossible for someone charging $5 per article to earn more than someone earning $50 per article (just an example to keep nice round numbers). Remember, we’re talking about freelancers here — not content companies who employ a bunch of writers and what they might be able to do with that content (although years of experience at it also tells me the cheap content very very rarely earns more as long as the publisher knows how to actually use the more authoritative content — but that’s a topic worth a post of its own, so maybe I’ll talk about that on Thursday). That’s precisely why bloggers, directory owners, and SEO firms have been coming to writers like me much more over the last two years — they’re slowly but surely realizing that authority content has more value to them and their own clients in the long run.

The common assumption is that the $50 per article writer might not earn as much because there are fewer gigs. That’s bullshit if we’re talking about anyone who knows anything at all about managing a freelance career. There are a lot of those $50 per article clients out there. It often comes down to lack of effort on the writer’s part — constantly trolling job boards instead of working to build their own visibility (which doesn’t take nearly as long as some people think — but I have a separate blog entirely devoted to that at QueryFreeFreelancer.com, so I won’t explore that much here in a comment). Even on the off-chance the writer couldn’t fill their billable hours with $50 per article gigs, they could still earn as much as the cheap writer with TEN TIMES less work coming in! And it’s very unlikely that anyone who can command $50 per article would be that bad at marketing their services still.

The other issue is the one I talk about in the post. It’s assumed that the $50 article takes longer — let’s say 2 hour to write — as opposed to the $5 article which might take 20 minutes. So people convince themselves that the cheap articles earn $15 per hour and the more expensive ones earn $25 per hour — not a huge difference. But that’s only true if the more expensive writer is targeting the wrong clients. When it comes to basic SEO-style web content, I can write a $75 article in 20-30 minutes (and very often do). The higher price isn’t about the articles taking longer. It’s about hiring someone who has some authority in their field who can add something from real experience instead of solely rehashed content from the Web, because it lends more credibility to your own site. Even on the low hourly spectrum, I might spend an hour and a half to two hours on a $150-200 article. A) It’s still a pretty damn good hourly rate, and much better than anyone’s going to make cramming in those $5 articles, and B) having one train of thought for that hour for a longer piece can be far less stressful on the writer than bouncing around endlessly through a dozen different topics throughout the day. There’s a reason so many of the cheap writers either burn out or realize over time that it’s not a sustainable income, so they quit. Want more bullshit? The claim some more “experienced” writers make that these cheap gigs are a great place for newbies to start off their careers — a jumping off point so to speak. The joke of that of course is that several of them are still writing these cheap articles themselves after years of working as a freelancer — not exactly a great demonstration of a jumping off point when people still have to take those gigs, even as fillers, years later.

But like I said… these are things not really worth talking about in the comments. They’ve been explored here and elsewhere numerous times in much more depth looking at specific issues of content mills, setting rates, etc. so if you’re that interested in the topic, I invite you to check some of that out — I believe a few are highlighted near the top of the sidebar.