Advertising Dinosaurs and Five-Dollar Whores

Today I learned that I am a dinosaur. No, really. I am the product of a long-gone age of advertising. (And I’m not really all that old.). When I started in the industry, we measured our work in column inches and seconds. Now we measure things in impressions, click-throughs, and word-count. Yes, the advent of the Internet brought exciting new possibilities. But as with most exciting changes, the Internet came with a dark side.

My story begins with a layoff. Ten-ish years ago, though I was the only writer on staff, I was jettisoned in favor of a platoon of cheap freelancers (and the company’s owner, who dabbled in copywriting). So I figured I should join the freelance army myself. I began charging $50/hr. for my services. It was a fair deal. I was an experienced copywriter offering well-thought-out concepts and artfully crafted copy. Companies paid. Most seemed happy.

To supplement my paltry income, friends suggested I check out some of the Internet’s then fancy, new freelance solicitation websites. The way they work is that a company posts a job request: “I need a brochure for my landscaping company,” “Seeking a writer to do a series of ads,” etc. Then, contractors bid on the jobs: “I’ll do it for $75/hr.,” “I’ll do it for $35/hr.,” “I will do job for $10/hr.” After the deadline, the company would go back and award the job to one of the bidders. I quickly noticed a trend that the lowest bidders–many of whom had email addresses in Southeast Asia–were winning.

Companies were unwittingly (or perhaps wittingly) outsourcing copywriting services overseas before outsourcing was really a thing. Like with most outsourcing, that devalued the work I did. After all, anyone can write, right? (If you’ve read my other posts, you know that I firmly believe that notion to be like the excrement of the male bovine. Marketing writing is both an art and a science. People shouldn’t trust the copy of someone who dabbles in writing anymore than they’d trust the cutting skills of someone who dabbles in surgery.)

But now, it seems that $5 is the going rate for copywriting services. Not $5/hr. Just a single $5 bill. Yes, there exists a site where you can find someone to recommend five restaurants to visit in L.A. or read your tea leaves from 10,000 miles away for $5, then find someone who is willing to write an ad or blog post for $5.

At my 10-years-ago rate of $50/hr., that’s six minutes of work. After reading a few of the $5 blog posts, I can say with absolute certainty that I could do a better job with six minutes in front of a keyboard.* Just imagine if I were given a living wage and/or a whole hour.

*This post took me some 30 minutes,** and in my opinion (and perhaps my opinion only) it’s worth way more than $5.

**OK, creating the image of Lincoln using a MacBook Pro (Get it? $5 copywriting? Hello?) added a bit more time. I’m not a designer.