How to Negotiate Better Copywriting Fees

After read­ing some of my arti­cles on how to find copy­writ­ing clients, one of my stu­dents, Jeff, asked me an inter­est­ing question.

He’s an aspir­ing copy­writer and wants to build his own free­lance copy­writ­ing busi­ness. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copy­writer, he told me he was think­ing about doing the same.

How­ever, he won­dered if he should ask for some­thing, any­thing, in return. In fact, here was his question…

“Mike, my friends have a very small busi­ness, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a ref­er­ence and in my port­fo­lio. I think this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to get more expe­ri­ence, but my wife wants to see some money on the table.

“I value your opin­ion. Can you help?”

Here was my answer.

Ask­ing for a con­ces­sion in exchange for offer­ing one is always the way to do it. While I believe your trade-​​off is good in prin­ci­ple, it’s still mea­ger. I would con­sider some money — or some larger con­ces­sion on the part of the client. Here’s why…

Writ­ing sale­s­copy com­pletely for free is never good. I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence. What you should be look­ing for is a return on your “invest­ment” (because writ­ing copy for free is indeed an invest­ment on your part), for two reasons:

• To stop poten­tial nib­bling, grind­ing away your time and resources. If get­ting such a valu­able ser­vice for free was that easy, they are left won­der­ing, “What else can get for free?” It’s illog­i­cal, but they feel cheated if they don’t get more.
• And to add value to your ser­vices (because doing some­thing sup­pos­edly of high value for free paints a low per­ceived value and makes you, or the ser­vices you pro­vide and espe­cially the final prod­uct you cre­ate, look cheap).

In essence, there’s a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bal­ance between the value of your ser­vice and the value of the con­ces­sion you’re mak­ing, which will inevitably harm you.

So the goal is, you want to take the focus away from a trade-​​off based on free copy to one based on a con­ces­sion: apples to apples, or value for value, in other words.

Oth­er­wise, it can lead to a few prob­lems once the ser­vice is ren­dered — prob­lems that will be more dif­fi­cult to resolve if not impos­si­ble than they are to prevent.

For one, the per­son could ask you for more, and more, and then more, slowly nib­bling away at your time, your money, and your resources. They feel they can get more since it was so easy. Again, it seems para­dox­i­cal. But that’s how your clients will react.

(It’s manip­u­la­tion. While some will do this con­spic­u­ously, oth­ers will do this indi­rectly, nudg­ingly, and sub­tly, often even with­out your knowl­edge — espe­cially if they’re friends of yours, since your will­ing­ness to help will also make it eas­ier for them to do so.)

I know this from per­sonal experience.

Early in my career, I’ve writ­ten copy for free for clients who, after deliv­er­ing it, kept ask­ing for small tweaks, here and there, all the time. I never got paid for the extra work.

The worst part was, this hap­pened more often with clients whose copy I wrote for free, or copy offered at a sub­stan­tial dis­count after they hag­gled with me on price.

Even in those cases, when there was a signed con­tract, they still found ways around it, and con­tin­ued to ask me for more con­ces­sions after the copy was delivered.

Trust me. I’ve been in these sit­u­a­tions too many times.

One of my favorite speak­ers is Larry Winget, author of “Shut Up, Stop Whin­ing, and Get a Life!” and “You’re Broke Because You Want to Be.” On his pro­gram, “Suc­cess is Your Own Fault,” Larry quotes the San­born Maxim, which goes:

“The cus­tomers who are will­ing to pay you the least will always demand the most.”

(Re-​​read it. That state­ment is pro­found. It cer­tainly was for me.)

Nev­er­the­less, the prob­lem is that there is a “con­ces­sion mis­match.” Stated dif­fer­ently, the per­ceived value of each con­ces­sion is not equal to each other.

It’s not because the copy is free but because it is free and what you’re ask­ing for in return is mea­ger when com­pared to the larger con­ces­sion you’re mak­ing — the con­ces­sion being a fin­ished, com­pletely writ­ten piece of sales copy.

Look at it this way: offer­ing copy for free is like a mar­ket­ing invest­ment. (That’s how I looked at it.) But if you offer copy for, say, $2,000, would you there­fore spend $2,000 on a sin­gle ad to mar­ket your ser­vices just to get that one client? Of course not.

Psy­cho­log­i­cally, by writ­ing copy for free you are not adding enough value to your con­ces­sion. More impor­tantly, you are lit­er­ally tak­ing value away from your product.

Think about it. By mak­ing your end-​​product the con­ces­sion itself, then the per­cep­tion will be that the end-​​product will be of low value, too. Why? Because the con­ces­sion they are mak­ing, in exchange, is mean­ing­less in com­par­i­son. You get what you pay for, right?

Sure, build­ing your port­fo­lio is impor­tant to you. But giv­ing you the abil­ity to add their copy to your port­fo­lio is worth how much to your client? How big of a con­ces­sion is that to them? What are they really giv­ing up in return? In many cases, not much.

Since you are not ask­ing the client to make a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion in exchange for your con­ces­sion, then you’re not only devalu­ing what you offer but also your­self.

To be clear, ask­ing for trade­offs is good and you’re doing well in ask­ing for one. It adds value to any con­ces­sion you’re mak­ing by always ask­ing for some­thing in return.

Never make a con­ces­sion, even if it’s as sim­ple as a dis­count, with­out ask­ing for one in exchange. Call it a “counter-​​concession.” This is noth­ing new. Most of the top nego­ti­at­ing experts out there, like Roger Daw­son and Herb Cohen for instance, teach this.

This is an impor­tant con­cept to grasp, even if they’re friends of yours: the per­ceived value of the ser­vice depre­ci­ates imme­di­ately after the ser­vice is rendered.

Why is this impor­tant? For one, if the copy doesn’t do as well as expected, who cares if you did it for free? (Your client cer­tainly won’t.) But it goes fur­ther than that.

If all you had were rights to the copy and it did per­form well, and if any­thing should hap­pen between you two, would you ever con­sider stop­ping your friend from using your copy? Even to the point of send­ing them a cease and desist, or tak­ing legal action?

Friend­ships notwith­stand­ing, would you be will­ing to work twice as hard try­ing to sat­isfy an insa­tiable client when you could be work­ing on other, bet­ter, pay­ing clients?

It’s some­thing to think about.

Ask­ing for a larger con­ces­sion before work starts helps to stop the poten­tial grinding-​​away process after the copy is deliv­ered. If they try, then each time they ask for a con­ces­sion you in turn ask for one. Always ask for a counter-​​concession. Always.

Plus, by ask­ing for a sub­stan­tial con­ces­sion in the begin­ning, you also increase the per­cep­tion that each counter-​​concession you will ask with each one they request from you will be just as large, which will force them to think twice before nib­bling for more.

If they are demand­ing (and cheap clients usu­ally are), ask yourself:

“Am I pre­pared to do two to three times the work, deal with a high-​​maintenance client, and divert my atten­tion away from other, pay­ing clients (let alone away from mar­ket­ing my ser­vices in order to find bet­ter clients), for a mere addi­tion to my résumé?”

On the other hand, mak­ing a bal­anced con­ces­sion — giv­ing a dis­count instead of doing it for free, for exam­ple — will increase your per­ceived worth. And a good way to do this is to raise your fees. Rais­ing your prices is not just about increas­ing per­ceived value.

By rais­ing your fees and giv­ing a more sub­stan­tial con­ces­sion will allow you to ask for a larger con­ces­sion from them in return. So ask for some­thing upfront, even if it’s little.

Say: “I under­stand this may be out of your bud­get range. In exchange for a spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion (a dis­count), may I sug­gest (what­ever con­ces­sion you want them to make).”

Even bet­ter, let them make their counter-​​concession for you. They might sur­prise you, as it might be a lot more than you antic­i­pated. Say some­thing like: “In exchange, what can you do for me?” Then let them tell you what they’re pre­pared to offer you in return.

(Inci­den­tally, doing it this way also gives you a pretty good idea of what they think of you, and how much value they place in your ser­vices and your copy.)

Ulti­mately, your copy no longer becomes the object of the trade­off. Your con­sid­er­a­tion — e.g., a dis­count or what­ever con­ces­sion you’re mak­ing — is. Apples to apples.

Also, don’t limit your­self to a dis­count. You can offer a bonus (such as an extra revi­sion, free of charge), an extra con­sul­ta­tion, an extended guar­an­tee, an add-​​on ser­vice (such as writ­ing the opt-​​in page copy, for­mat­ting, or even test­ing the copy), and so on.

That’s why the key is to break­down and denom­i­nate each com­po­nent of your ser­vice — from research to revi­sions. In other words, give each com­po­nent a price tag. Sure, give a flat rate. But break the project down into indi­vid­ual parts, with indi­vid­ual values.

Not only will each ele­ment have a price tag, which can be used in the nego­ti­a­tion, but also it will help to jus­tify your higher fees. It will seem less “pulled out of thin air.”

When a prospect sees the value behind every indi­vid­ual com­po­nent, they also get a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of what you do, how you price your work, and how much they are truly get­ting if you were to con­cede on any one of those elements.

For exam­ple, if a client asks for a dis­count, you can say: “As you can see Mrs. Prospect, your project includes one post-​​delivery revi­sion, which is worth $1,000, absolutely free of charge. Here’s what I can do. I can throw in an extra one. Fair enough?”

In the end, you add weight to your trade­off, and your copy thus retains its value.

On the flip side, your client’s con­ces­sion doesn’t have to be just a mere addi­tion to your port­fo­lio, which is min­i­mal at best. (In fact, adding your copy to your port­fo­lio should be auto­mat­i­cally included in your agree­ment with any copy you write, anyway.)

Remem­ber, you want to match their con­ces­sion with yours. Bet­ter said, you want to match the per­ceived value of both your con­ces­sions. Per­ceived value is key.

So here’s another option. Ask for roy­al­ties or com­mis­sions. You can offer your friends a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion in exchange for a per­cent­age of gross sales your copy pro­duces, for as long as they use your copy if not for a pre­de­ter­mined period of time.

If roy­al­ties are not an option (par­tic­u­larly if you’re new, or if you don’t know the client or their busi­ness well enough), you can ask for other things. For exam­ple, you can barter — in fact, bar­ter­ing is often the most over­looked nego­ti­a­tion strategy.

Or have them write a tes­ti­mo­nial about you, get them to give you qual­ity refer­rals, or ask them to send a broad­cast to their lists pro­mot­ing you. The trick is to get this in writ­ing, and to ensure they deliver their end of the deal within a spe­cific period of time.

Remem­ber, the per­ceived value of your ser­vice — includ­ing the per­ceived value of the con­ces­sion you’re mak­ing — depre­ci­ates imme­di­ately after the ser­vice has been ren­dered. The longer they wait to com­ply, the less mean­ing­ful your con­ces­sion becomes.

That’s why this is prefer­ably spec­i­fied in a writ­ten agree­ment before work begins.

If they they fail com­ply within a spec­i­fied period of time, then you can charge them your full fee — or for the amount of the con­ces­sion, if they already paid you (have an agree­ment in place before work starts, so you will have legal recourse to do so).

In fact, hav­ing a writ­ten agree­ment prior to com­menc­ing any work is essen­tial. Get it in writ­ing, even if it’s a sim­ple let­ter of under­stand­ing or intent. When it’s writ­ten down, it’s more than just for legal rea­sons. It’s also a psy­cho­log­i­cal commitment.

Finally, remem­ber that it’s bet­ter to nego­ti­ate on a con­ces­sion (whether it’s a dis­count or not) than it is on the entire copy itself — such as by offer­ing it for free.

If they want apples, stick with apples. Not oranges. And cer­tainly not the orchard.

About the Author

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