-Mig

Miguel | Simply Blog´s last blog post…SimplyBlog is Powered By Thesis Theme

Too much goes into making a post to give hard and fast payment rules.

brad hart´s last blog post…Shooting at Jew Mueseum – BFD

That said let’s assume I wasn’t a jerk and that some discussion on your points can still be made.

I agree that a 15 minute post takes effort. I just don’t think it takes enough and I wouldn’t be able to put out a piece of my writing after only 15 minutes attention on it. If a client demanded it be done that quickly, I’d turn down the job.

As to my grammar on my blog, that’s a fair jab and reveals just how long it’s been since I took a university English class. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that I’m consistently wrong with how I write, (I basically just write in a way that sounds as entertaining and as much like a conversation with me as possible) but I am consistent.

Back to the article though, I agree with your premises that when the brain gets tired that it gets slower. It’s a valid and important point when valuing a blogger’s time and should be taken into account when quoting one’s time.

Anyway, I’ll be sure in the future to not ruin your comment section with my moody days. My apologizes.

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I’m not really sure if I really was making a similar point to Veneretio. I focused on substance while he seemed to focus on writing technicalities.

I did suggest that true value for a client may lie in longer posts, and clients may be overestimating the value of a short blog post based on a silver-bullet belief in blogging. See for example Law21 which discusses how new law blogs today have to do so much more than the first founders: http://www.law21.ca/2008/10/07/branding-blogging-and-the-attention-economy/. That article describes the core of my opinion much more eloquently than I do. Then again, as you pointed out, there are some benefits that can be had from short, sharp articles. I myself should probably do more “press release” stuff just to cover the field.

However, a different issue which I agree with you on is that a professional can turn out a decent quality post in a short amount of time.

And really, the point I made is rather off topic to your main point here which I agree with. James put it well in that last comment that if the client is paying for 10 blog posts, then they are not so much paying for one post, but for 10 consistent, coherent posts. There is added value in that simply because the value of 10 posts is much greater than the sum of its individual parts due to the way blogs work and reward consistency.

I hear you on what you’re saying. Clients don’t care, agreed. They want a single product to achieve a single result, and the time it takes professionals to do the job is irrelevant. Highly agreed.

The problem is that while professionals like you, Taylor, myself, and many others here may know the average amount of time it takes to write one post, five posts, ten posts or more… Well, many new bloggers don’t know. At all.

“10 posts? No problem! Heck, I can write those in three hours flat!” The client thinks so, too. So the client assumes that $15 a post is a great rate – that’s $50 an hour.

Buuuuut… No. It doesn’t really work that way, sorry.

It takes more effort, consistent stamina of skills, reliable creativity and dependable quality (not to mention knowledge and well-crafted work) to get the true value of the post – each one of the ten – shining through.

To get that post getting results for the client.

And that doesn’t take three hours, and that’s worth more than $15 a post.

And I believe that’s the root point that Taylor was trying to make. Blogging isn’t an easy job worth $15 a post (or less, in many cases). It’s worth a lot more than that.

@Aeryn – Hey, woot! That’s the kind of stuff we like to hear!

Also, if it truly takes you three times longer at the end of the day than it did in the morning, then something’s wrong with either your metabolism or your attention span. Take a break between each blog, hydrate, do some push ups, have sex, whatever… then get back to work.