All that has to be approved by the client first, though. It’s not really fair (or wise) just to drop it into the bill without warning. The mantra oft repeated by my more experienced colleague is “educate the client, educate the client…”
Thanks 
I will have to devise a list of things to ask them about their content.
I agree whole heartedly with the first part of what you said. However, your take on copy as an investment is out of whack.
Every website not only needs but also revolves around the content, whether it is served as writing, photos, videos or anything else the end user sees.
As website visitors (the end-users) are potential customers, that content needs to compel them to action. That’s why copy writing is an investment. The problem is that too many developers and designers are afraid to present it as such to their clients. Clients tend to look at is as an expense and no matter what you want to say, it is not an expense. It is an investment in their business.
When a business advertises in a print medium or, for instance, on televison, they do so with the expectation that their ad will generate a greater return than it cost. It is exactly the same thing with website content. Do you know of any advertising medium that will wait to be paid until the return has been established?
For that matter, can you invest in stocks on Wall Street and not pay until you receive your return? If you can, give me the name of your broker. I’d like to make him mine.
You can present the need for expertly written copy to your clients in any way you wish to present it… or you can ignore it entirely and end up with the situation that prompted you to start this thread. No matter how you present it, content is what it is.
If a large company goes under or decides to outsource elsewhere then you can quickly left strung and dry. You will probably gain more financial security from many small clients as oppose to one large client.
I use to work for large corporate clients, websites over 500 pages and most of this was done independently. Even if I made 2, 3 times a much I would still not be happy. It was too much work, and not enough time to get in a personal touch or give some idle chit chat to me clients. I prefer the small guy over the large guy any day.
I regards to investments. I will never ever give money out to somebody who says to me that by doing so I will be making money, never! I don’t care who they are. I simply don’t trust them, and if they were so confident then they should be prepared to work for free, and once I have got the money they so adamantly believe I will get, then I’ll pay them. So I would never hire a copy-writer to make money from them, but instead hire them to improve the readability of a website which will attract more people to read it.
In in this process, a developer, a designer, a SMO, a SEO get’s involved to make the wheel spinning to make money. This is a joined effort of many people’s efforts who worked very hard.
There is a limited amount of ‘value’ you can sell to someone on a small budget
As I said, it’s a world view problem. Enjoy the fruits of knowing you are absolutely, without a doubt correct. People without money are not going to spend a lot.
I’ll continue on in my delusion of not targeting people without the money or wherewithal to pay. Better yet, I’ll sell web design to the Amish. I will rationalize this with what every last person who’s used this line of reasoning knows “Everybody needs a web site.”
Attention Eskimos: Ice Cubes For Sale. Now I just have to start a web forum for people to pointlessly gripe about their customers not having an ice budget.
in-fact be prepared to pay a lot more for their website.
I question whether you viscerally “get what I’m saying.” A lot of people nod at the right parts …they just haven’t a clue of what might go into a site people pay more for. This isn’t the “golden gullible demographic” that has more money than brains. Quite the contrary.
To dip a toe into the mindset, perhaps it is best said they value web design differently. The upside is they pay more. The downside is they expect results.
They don’t want the dev’s confidence about what is supposed to work. They don’t care what everyone else says about a third hand regurgitation of web lore. You don’t get paid for raw, unfiltered, unqualified web traffic; no matter how highly the site ranks in SERPs. And you don’t finish a site at launch time when it happens to show up in all major browsers – that is merely the preliminary start of development.
In many cases they have a site producing X amount – that’s what is called their control. It has been rigorously tested, tweaked, and improved – each and every change paying for itself in provable increased sales or conversions.
Everything on the page, including every subhead and sentence, has earned its way onto that page.
It’s your job to beat a control that may have been developed over three or more years. You ARE NOT getting paid for code, or this week’s résumé stuffing dev fad. You are not getting paid because the site simply “works” in the most primitive, rudimentary, mechanical, childishly naïve way imaginable.
And the implications of what that means rightly horrifies a great many in the web dev field.
I suppose if you had much of the content re-written out, in a well written manner. I would think it might cost less.
I agree with your comments completely “content is king”. Having said this though, content writers will need to be supplied something so they can rectify the way it’s said.
You failed to understand what I wrote. Be prepared for an entirely different clientele. And very different types of web design.
I get what your saying. It’s like a Mini vs an Aston Martyn. So basically the clients who will be looking into this service would in-fact be prepared to pay a lot more for their website.
To be fair we always have to think about the clients, and many clients are not willing to through even 200 euros on content for the page, let alone 2,000.
You failed to understand what I wrote. Be prepared for an entirely different clientele. And very different types of web design.
It’s a different world. If you have never been paid 2,000, you can’t imagine anyone else being paid 2,000.
To be fair we always have to think about the clients, and many clients are not willing to through even 200 euros on content for the page, let alone 2,000.
We’ve covered this issue into the ground.
I could not really go back and ask him for more money, so I did the best I could be separating the content and referring it with internal anchor points.
Aside from the obvious “why not,” one big reason for this is the probable default: You have nothing whatsoever to to with written content.
It doesn’t matter if it is writing, or logo design, or whatever. If a certain service – we’re talking about a naturally occurring obvious service – isn’t mentioned as being handled in some way by you during site construction, then it will become an issue.
Sooner or later, the client will hand you the work and lean on you to do it for free. And the game they’ll play is “I assumed it was included with the site.”
When you include a content writer and/or copy writer, two things happen. First you’re not an individual who can be pressured so easily, you come off looking more like a team or web shop.
Next you show how important content is. Writing is not some weird kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” issue you just hope goes away. Deal with it on the site and there will be a lot less wiggle room for issues regarding who handles content in future.
If content drives design decisions – if the whole project is content driven and you explain that on your site – you get less procrastination and prevarication.
Finally try portraying the business as content driven. Not Jquery driven. Not Flash driven. Not gimmick driven. Address and portray written content as paramount in importance and you’ll get writers who will actually want to work with you.
Treat writing as an unwanted, unforeseen calamity you have to deal with and expect writers to flee.
Apologies I have not yet worked with a copy-writer, so most of this is new to me.
Copy driven site design is really a different mindset and world view. Many copywriters may regularly get two or three (or more) times what you charge for the whole site. Understand that and you may be working with a copywriter in future. Expect any copywriter worth their salt to want the design to support the copy, with specific “dos” and “don’t” that go against most of what you have come to expect about web site design.
When you run ten of fifteen split-run tests to prove out exactly what drives results, then you may dictate “copy goes here” and hand off your design to a copywriter. When the copywriter gets paid $2,000 for one page of text …no markup. …no CSS. …no layout. You don’t edit. You don’t tell them to keep it short because the lore of the 'net says people don’t read.
Save that for the keyword stuffer content writers you hire off Craigslist to spam Google with.
When they person is getting paid from four to ten times more for the text than the whole rest of the site, you listen to every single syllable that comes out of that copywriter’s mouth. Otherwise I practically guarantee you will not be working with a copywriter (no matter what they decide to call themselves.)
Any copywriters you would want to work with work on a different kind of site, and with a different kind of client, who expects a different kind of deliverable.
Related:
I’m not suggesting he just dump it silently into the bill, but educating a client who isn’t equipped to write for the web to-do so is going to sap time, money and energy… why not teach them web design while you’re at it. There’s only so far you can acceptably go in educating a client before you’re getting them a degree!
Now, now DCrux. Let’s look at this from a different perspective. As a writer, I would certainly want my work presented within a crummy design rather than risk offending my client or making any other suggestion as to what might get him conversions instead of page views and back-outs.
To the OP: If a client can’t write good copy – if his visitors don’t get his message – then what use does he have for a website?
I don’t believe you can “guide” a poor writer “through the process”. Let your clients know why they need help and then help them get it. If you need backup, Google copy writers. You’ll find an encyclopedia of reasons for hiring writers who are experienced in writing content for the web.
That’s not my experience. Usually they haven’t got a clue, and need help with that, so you can either help them or encourage them to get a writer involved. If they do supply content that’s not up to scratch, you can encourage them to get it tidied up. Presumably they will want it to look professional, and it can be optimized for search engine findability too. If they don’t care about this, it’s their funeral.
I think I missed something!
Presumably they will want it to look professional, and it can be optimized for search engine findability too. If they don’t care about this, it’s their funeral.
Well, yes. But a lot of evil hides in the nondescript word “professional.”
Professional does not automatically mean pretty. Professional does not mean page after page of “pretty nothings,” words without meaning or definition.
Much as the word professional has be reduced to meaninglessness by the web design field. Message to market match trumps raw, generic, pretty. (And sorry, the generic ‘Web 2.0,’ when coupled with the word professional generates so much nonsensical babble it’s laughable. Two words devoid of meaning don’t mean something when put together.)
Related:
Anything regarding content is purely based on your thoughts and on your idea. Insist your content writer till what you are expecting to say
purely based on your thoughts and on your idea.
To the extent those ideas don’t fit the target market, that is a recipe for failure.
Writing for the web has become writing in a user-free, competitor-free vacuum.