And now, a few words on freelance copywriter prices, seemingly the gold dust of the internet. Why is it so difficult to find a clear pricing structure on so many copywriters' websites? Mine is here, and pretty straightforward for core content production, I think.
I'm speaking here as someone who's scouted out the competition, rather than as someone who's ever needed to use a freelance copywriter, but I imagine the frustration is the same - you need to know what kind of budget you're looking at for your project before you can move it forwards, but you're faced with copywriters who want to know what the project is and then provide a quote for it. It's a chicken-and-egg situation.
The thing is - and I'm not pointing fingers at freelancers here, as there's precious little help out there for people setting up on their own - but copywriters' entire purpose is to provide you with clear, informative text content for your website. So why do so many of them miss out the most important element on their own sites, or over-complicate it?
Perhaps it's a trust issue - freelancers are working alone and can ill afford to get ripped off - or a tracking technique (15 pricing enquiries with no contracts signed is arguably better than no enquiries at all). Personally, I much prefer an open and transparent approach, where my pricing reflects my availability but is in no way trying to extort my clients for the most I can get out of them.
It's a (reasonably) free and fair market, and I intend to do things my way - and hopefully in a way that like-minded clients will appreciate.
To that end, my pricing page will likely remain the single point of reference for my fees in future - and I'll try to keep the information there as simple as possible.