Take it from a person who was asked, when he started, why he wanted to be “just” a writer… it can be, with caveats.
The hurdles are high and plentiful.
- For one, Asian society looks down on creative work, so that’s going to be a consistent (and annoying) hurdle to overcome.
- Where people/organisations don’t see value, they won’t pay well or pay at all.
- Fresh writers and creatives are conditioned to see their jobs as “less than”, so that poisons the market rates. (I don’t believe in market rates — more below.)
- Global agencies use cheap local talent to churn campaigns, and that leads to quick burnout — but there is an abundance of greenhorns to gap-fill because they want to work with a big-name agency, so talent acquisition is not a concern.
I’ve been doing this for well over a decade, so here’s what I learned:
Is it difficult and stressful?
It can be if you’re working for a creative factory or content mill. You know, the ones that rely on caffeine to keep their sleep-deprived creatives working, which passes off for edgy or cool until the creative talents burn out…
Writing work is becoming more difficult because:
- Large companies are consolidating their creative work with big agencies for simplicity of billing and because it’s impressive to be associated with a big-name company. However, the quality of the executives selling the agency and the writers doing the job can differ tremendously. In my experience, I’ve heard senior regional marketing directors of billion-dollar companies complaining of having to sit down with junior agency writers to teach them how to write. Imagine that.
- AI is automating a lot of low-level writing work that’s popular on sites like Fiverr and Upwork and does it near-instantaneously, culling a lot of low-value writing services.
- Companies are looking for one-person marketing teams and candidates are promising more than they can chew on just to secure the job.
However, this creates opportunities:
- Unsustainable ways of working are, by definition, pressuring agencies to deliver more with less even as their talent pool circles a revolving door. This creates a need for highly skilled writers to gap-fill what agencies lack: Good writing from self-sufficient writers who can deliver winning work on time.
- Likewise, writers promising too much are going to underdeliver. There’s a lot of unlocked value in writers niching down, being damned good at it, and providing high-value writing that overburdened generalist writers cannot deliver.
- Companies feel cheated by agencies and creatives that overpromise and underdeliver or don’t deliver at all. There’s a lot of long-term work to win when you can fix this perception and deliver writing that works for the client.
Are writing jobs in demand? Is there a high demand for copywriters?
The total addressable market (TAM) for writers is every company in the world that trades using your language. However, not all of them see the need for good writing, so it’s your job to find the ones that do — and odds are they’re not in your country. That’s okay — we live in a time when you don’t have to be constrained with working in your city or country. I’ve worked with clients in Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, London, Chicago, Munich and more. I cast my net and cold outreach worldwide because I want to work with clients that celebrate, not tolerate, what I do.
Can you earn a high income from writing?
I don’t know; can you earn a lot from acting? From being an athlete? Of course, you can. But it depends on WHERE you are, WHOM you work for, and WHAT you deliver:
- The WHERE is related to commerce and energy; if your clients are in a vibrant market and strong commercial environment, that improves your odds of earning a high income.
- WHOM relates to their ability or willingness to pay. The best clients are those that see the value in good writing. They are aware that they need good, persuasive writing to secure, let’s say, a $2,500,000 project. Are they going to risk it with a $200-a-gig writer? Of course not. That is why bid writers for large public sector projects can earn upwards of US$1,000 per day — and that’s not unusual in the slightest.
- WHAT you deliver should be to help big companies solve difficult creative problems. In a (communications) world saturated with mediocrity, even a 5% better message is head and shoulders above the rest.
What should I charge?
I make it a point to remind writers and creatives about being paid properly, not because I’m money-faced. Let me offer a few perspectives about money and creative work:
- No one wants to admit it, but there is no such thing as a “market rate”. What a person is willing to accept for work is coloured by so many unique circumstances. Imagine if one writer has parents who bought them a house and a car, and another that does not have that privilege. How do you think they would colour their financial position? To wit, the “market rate” really is the “compromise rate”.
- You only have a finite amount of time to work. As you age, you just won’t have the same amount of energy or health to work. Make hay while the sun shines.
- Creatives are terribly underpaid in Asia. In my experience, they are being paid half as much less than they should be, if not more. Essentially this means it will take twice as long, if not longer, to make the amount of money you ought to be making. Put another way, if you had a peer at the same stage of their career as you and they were properly paid and you are not, their annual income would be worth two years of yours.Now, extrapolate that over decades. Perish the thought!
- Unfortunately, money is the only acceptable form of payment for most of life’s/your career’s important things: A home, a workspace, health insurance, professional work tools, software, and time off to rest and recharge. NOBODY is going to make it their life’s mission to ensure these personal needs are met except you and NOBODY in the real world accepts a pat on the back as payment.
- Mature businesspeople know that money talk isn’t personal. It’s ridiculous to ask for more than you’re worth, but it’s equally harmful to accept less than it’s worthwhile.
The best pricing strategy is to bill according to the value you deliver, not per unit of time. There’s no sense locking down a $1/word gig if the value of the work is in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
I hope you've learned something from this. I wish you much success!
