There’s a certain amount of elitism and entitlement mentality that comes with the “creative class” which I find disheartening.

I want to talk about web design and writing.  I’ve been paid to web design for over 10 years.  I want to get paid for writing.

I’m the first person to tell you that anyone can create a website.  Whether that website will be effective and produce desired results is a different matter.  This is how I feel about writing.  Anyone can write, but whether it’s crap or not depends on the skill and experience of the writer. 

When you pay someone else with more skill to write or design a website, you’re paying for a service.  Even though you end up with a finished product like a website or a page of copy, what you’re actually paying for is the skill and materials it takes to produce that product.

Services are calculated at an hourly rate.

If you’re a writer, how much should your the hourly rate be?  $25/hour?  $100/hr?

The simple answer is as high as you can sell your services.

Web design projects are not paid by the hour, but they are calculated by the hour.  The designer gives the client a quote for the site design. Most good designers I know can finish a comp (design composition) in 20 hours plus another 2-10 hours for client changes.  That’s 22-30 hours of work.  The designers I know charge between $40-$60/hour which means they quote the finished design at $880-$1800.

The most important part about what these designers charge is their sales skill.  Clients don’t randomly email saying, hey, I’ll pay you $1800 for design work.  They are successful designers because they are able to find clients and sell their skills at that price.

So how much do I want to be paid for writing?  I write slow.  Maybe 200/words per hour.  If some magazine or website is paying 10 cents/word.  That works out to be $20/hour.  I know many, many people who would be ecstatic at making $20/hour. I’d be ecstatic if someone paid an unpublished newbie like me $20/hour.  Here’s the rub.  It’s called competition.  There are thousands of better and more experienced writers clamoring to be paid .10/word that I would be competing against.

The “creative class” tends to ignore competition.  There’s a “I deserve to be paid what I value myself at” mentality.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with valuing your skills highly.  Thinking everyone else should value your skills just as highly because you say so smacks of elitism.

I think many artists confuse value and price.  Competition brings the price of goods and services down to it’s marginal costs.

I love my mp3 player.  I figure over the last 4 years, my mp3 player has saved me $400 or more in time and convenience.  $400 is the value I place on it.  I need a new mp3 player, but I’m certainly not paying $400 for one.  Competition prices an mp3 player between $60-$200 depending on brand and bells and whistles.

Just because an artist values their work at $100/hour doesn’t mean competition isn’t going to drive that price down to marginal costs.  Marginal costs being the least amount an artist is willing to be paid and still make a profit.  Sometimes that price is zero and the marginal cost of creating the work is paid in terms of prestige or exposure.

This is why many high traffic blogs pay ZERO, nada, zilch.  Competition has driven the price down to zero.  These blogs attract writers willing to be paid nothing to be published because the writers feel that they can make up their marginal cost (time spent research and writing) by leveraging the exposure into something else they can monetize.

Also, I think artists overvalue the content and undervalue the distribution.  It’s the “these sites would be nothing without the writers” attitude.  These high traffic blogs didn’t create their readership and community overnight.  Telling someone how they should run their business, i.e. you should pay writers, after the thousands of hours the blog owners spent to build their business is just entitlement mentality.  I’m entitled to be paid by you because your company makes money.

Of course, these sites need writers.  They just don’t need writers that want to be paid in dollars. If an writer wants to be paid, don’t write for blogs or magazines that don’t pay. 

I don’t do spec work.  However, I don’t berate my fellow designers for doing spec work.  If they want to spend their time on a gamble to be paid, that’s their business decision. Telling other writers they shouldn’t write for free because it devalues writing is saying you don’t know how to compete in the marketplace.

But doesn’t free work drive the marginal cost of what I do to zero? Only if you consider those doing free work your direct competition. I don’t consider designers doing spec work my competition. It doesn’t effect how much I charge for my services in the slightest.

It seems like many artists feel that marketing and selling are four letters words.  Marketers fall somewhere between puddle slime and any movie starring Tom Green.  It’s beneath them.  They’re artists after all.

Regular people have to do it all the time when they go to interviews to get that job as a garbage collector or rocket scientist.   A job interview is nothing more than selling your skill, experience and attitude to an employer willing to pay you.

If you want to be paid more, find someone who’s willing to pay you more.  Whether you’re a photographer, writer or web designer, someone has to pay you.  The business of making money from your art is finding that someone who’s willing to pay you the amount you want to be paid.

Hey wait a second, general employment is about finding someone to pay you what you want to be paid for the work you want to do.  Regular people do it all the time.  If regular people can do it, so can artists.