Welcome to our new subscribers and to the slightly late March issue!

There were a few hiccups along the way, but my new book is finally available.

It seems to have been a long time coming, but I'm very happy with the results.

This is a book that has been requested many, many times over the past couple of years. 

If you feel as though you're chasing your tail all the time, or don't feel as though you've achieved much by the end of the day, this book will definitely help you.
 

In the midst of my preparation for the launch of The Writer's Guide to Time Management: How to Boost Your Productivity and Earn More! my site manager, Craig Campbell, resigned.

He realised he'd spread himself too thin, and the result was not being able to complete all the tasks he needed to do in order to keep Writer2Writer.com working smoothly. Craig does a similar job for other website owners, and I totally understand where he's coming from.

I have not secured a replacement at this point in time; my husband Alan has taken over Craig's duties. we're not sure yet if this will be permanent or temporary.  I guess it depends on whether Alan has any of his very limited hair left after a few weeks of doing the necessary tasks. <g>

I've fairly busy over the last two weeks since the last issue. I've taken on two copywriting jobs, and also accepted a request to become a mentor for a client. Plus I have another copywriting job that will begin tomorrow, so it's been pretty full-on.

I'm getting - on average - one sales page job per week.  This is exactly what I want as it gives me a decent amount of copywriting income, but since it usually takes no more than one or two days to write a sales page, it also allows plenty of time each week to do other things.

As I've become more experienced at writing sales pages my charges have also crept up.

To work out your copywriting charges, work out the hourly rate you would like to receive.  Then calculate your 'project' time frames and cost it out that way.  For instance, if you want $60 an hour and you know you can write a brochure in about three hours, then the flat rate for a brochure would be $180.  This is how I work out my rates, and it's worked very well for me. (Some writers and/or clients prefer to work on an hourly rate, and that's fine too.)

I've talked about this before, but I would like to reiterate that writing for really low rates is not good.  Not only does it mean you don't get a decent return for your time, but it also causes a ripple effect.

Other writers end up having issues getting paid a reasonable amount of money when you have writers doing sales pages (for instance) for under $100.  In many cases, they're doing the work for up to $50.

I won't even touch on the quality aspects, but want to talk about the hourly rates.  I am currently charging from $60 to $140 an hour for my copywriting services.  I know writers who charge $250 an hour and up, and on the other end of the scale, I know writers who charge $5 an hour.

I know I sometimes sound like a broken record, but please don't charge unreasonable amounts for your writing services.

In the ebook arena, it is well known that low prices products (i.e. $3-$5) often means the content is of a very poor quality.  The same applies for copywriting. If you are charging a few dollars for work that other writers are doing for five and ten times that amount, it could easily bring the potential buyer to the conclusion that the quality of your work is poor.

I've had several jobs where my job was to rewrite poor quality work. Not only does this mean the buyer won't use that person's services again, it also means he has paid additional money for the one job.

The end result of this is the first provider (the writer of poor quality) will get a bad reputation and in the majority of cases, will not get additional work.

Don't let this happen to you! (Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now!)

In the last issue I mentioned Kevin Riley's Product Creation Lab 6-Week Workshop. Several people have emailed to ask how long the discount price will be available.  It will be for the first 100 people only.  As you know, I twisted Kevin's arm to negotiate this price, but because it's a massive discount, I could only get it for a limited number of people. To read more about this terrific new product, go here:

http://www.product-creation-workshop.com

Those people who have received the product already are more than happy.

Quick reminder:  The Writer2Writer forum is up and running.  There are a few posts there now, but not many.  This is your forum - please use it!

http://www.writer2writer.com/forum

Last time I asked for moderators, but since the forum doesn't have a lot of movement at the moment, I've realised it would be silly to flood the forum with moderators.  When we get a bit more activity, this will definitely be put in place.

Okay, time to move onto the current issue!