About low-paying, low quality writing assignments

Aug 14, 2008

I really am not sure what are low quality writing assignments but you can feel them when they are around and their presence becomes more amplified when they are also low-paying. Of late I have been turning down low-paying, low quality writing assignments on quite a regular basis and in fact at one time I was worried that very soon I would run out of work – something that I am exaggerating perhaps because right now I have got plenty of good quality writing assignments. Now you may wonder what is a quality writing assignment. Is it an assignment that pays you well? To an extent this is applicable but it is not totally correct. Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, even high-paying writing assignments can turn out to be low quality writing assignments. The experience has taught me that high-quality writing assignments constitute of:

A good payment
Challenging work
Great learning experience
Stretching of your skill muscles
Genuine appreciation
A client that understands the importance of quality writing

If all these factors are present in your assignment then you have got yourself a high-quality writing assignment.

Coming back to the topic of turning down low-quality writing assignments: should you turn them down at the cost of your business? I suggest you only turn them down if you have got a good amount of the work that you really want to take up. Low-quality assignments – although they can fetch you some quick money – take their toll in terms of the time you spend on them and the amount of money you lose by not focusing on the work that can improve your finances as well as your skill. Clients who approach you for low-paying and low quality assignments are generally not interested in their business as much as it takes to succeed and therefore they don’t respect your business too. All they are interested in is getting done lots of work and paying as less as possible. They basically live in an illusion; they are getting lots of work done but that work is not performing well for them. 500 badly written pages can never compete with 50 well-written pages.

Once you get stuck with low-quality assignments it is very difficult to move on to the next level. You get used to getting pittance for lots of labor and very little intellectual involvement.

Low-quality writing assignments make sense when there is lots of work and even if you outsource the margin sustains you easily. If you have to do all the work then I suggest you stay away from such work unless you are living on the brink of starvation and destitution. Be aggressive, be proactive and get good work for yourself.