You pay peanuts and what do you get?

[PoppyPopcorn]

Yup, monkeys.

Yet again I've picked up rewriting work from a client who has commissioned blogs to promote her business, and who initially paid a writer in the Indian subcontinent £20 for 5 x 700 words. Funnily enough, what he provided her with is piss poor, badly written, poorly researched, written in a weird mix of American English and UK English and is in essence substandard.

Client is now stressed to the hilt about impending deadlines and is in a full on flap to get these blogs done by 5pm tomorrow.

So, so tempted to tell her not to try to cut corners next time. Quality costs. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

I had this with a client who insisted on writing blog posts himself. It took me longer to go through and edit than it did to write one myself. Just out of curiosity, why doesn't she commission you to write them in the first place? In theory you should be able to phrase the above in a more positive way for you both.

I think because she wanted cheap. Obviously someone who has English as their first language, has a degree and has been freelancing for donkey's years is going to cost more than someone living in Bangalore.

But some clients only learn that the hard way...

£20 for 3,500 words! FFS, what did she think was going to happen?

I sincerely hope you charged double for the timescales and inconvenience!

It wasn't a tricky brief. Client wanted three blogs which were fairly general about her industry, throwing in a couple of mentions of her company. Then another two which were more specific. Chatty, informal style, not a lot of research needed. it was more a "rattle it off in good English" rather than a "lots of research and carefully crafted" job. 5 blogs took me about 3 hours, tops.

You see it all the time on freelancing sites though, clients setting budgets ridiculously low and then being disappointed with the quality of what they get. The savvy ones pay a decent rate and aren't horrified when you tell them 3 hours work will cost £100, not £6. I also prefer to work with clients from the UK, Ireland and places like New Zealand as they seem more realistic about cost.

It's the same in the building industry.

We are on a site atm. 7 floors. Top 3 done by cheap labour. We have 2 floors. Been on job half the time. Floors nearly completed. Top 3 floors have had twice as many subbies on it. Nowhere near complete. Numerous issues which will need resolving.

Client now putting pressure on us to finish ours and go sort the issues out upstairs. We have put a big price in for it because we aren't sure what issues we will find. Plus we would make more on a straight job with no issues.

Client now upset because top 3 floors will cost more than the other 4 floors as they have already paid out once for the substandard work.

We would be more sympathetic but have argued all the way through about rates for us vs rates what they have paid upstairs.

Sigh.