Tag Archives: Naomi Dunford

Why I don’t do $25 bios anymore

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Back in March 2010, I decided to conduct an experiment: I offered my biographical writing services for $25 a piece. This means that anyone in the world with a Paypal account and a mere 25 US dollars could request a personal biography for use in print (press kits, promo material) or on their website. The offer was aimed primarily at the broke-ass artists I knew, and I encouraged them to tell their friends about it.

$25 is not a lot of money, in general; it’s about the cost of a decent restaurant meal for two. For a solid biography that tells your story for the purposes of:

  • Drumming up more business,
  • Emphasizing your skills to win you a dream job, or
  • Landing a book or record deal,

$25 is actually a very paltry sum indeed, no?

Fast forward to the results of this experiment:

I received a grand total of ONE request for my services.

Shocked? So was I. Why wouldn’t people shell out for such cut rates on such a quality offering? $25 for 500 words—that’s only 5 cents a word, which is well below the average payment of even small community newspapers! Was there something wrong with my pricing?

As the ever-insightful Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz puts it: my pricing is not the problem, it’s people’s perception of the value of my offering (click here for her great post on the subject, entitled “6 Things They Mean When They Say They Have No Money”).

Does this mean my bios suck, and I should charge less for them? Absolutely not. In fact, I should charge much MORE, because they’re worth the price.  The fact that people do not perceive this service as being worth $25 doesn’t reflect so much on me as it does on them; I know my work is worth more than $25, and I will even guarantee it by throwing in two free rewrites to make sure you’re happy with the final product. There’s really no question of it turning out awesome, unless you are just the type of person who is never happy with anything—in which case I strongly encourage you to write your own bio and save us both the trouble.

Anyway, my point is that these days, I charge a lot more than $25 for my beautiful bios. And people pay for them. Some still complain that they’re not $25 anymore (even though that was a very limited time offer I put up as an experiment six months ago), and that what I’m charging now is too steep. But I’m not going to change my price for these people just because they’re unhappy about not getting a deal.

My current rates are still insanely cheap, and if you email me at laura@buttontapper.com to ask “How cheap?”, I promise to give you a good deal and excellent results, with two free rewrites included to make sure everything turns out just right. You’ll get a high-quality, custom biography  written by a professional writer at a ridiculously affordable price.

So tell me, what could be better than that?

An open letter to so-called SEO experts

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Dear so-called “SEO Experts,”

As you may have noticed (since I’m sure you have carefully read through my website before attempting to contact me, rather than heading straight for the “Contact” page), I am a highly competent writer with many years of experience writing specifically for the web. While I appreciate your concern that my “SEO” might need help, and have received your ultra-spammy email indicating that, for a fee, you would be glad to help me out, you might want to address a few concerns I have regarding your tactics:

  1. When I say your email was “spammy,” I mean that it had a certain odor indicating a lack of professionalism. In fact, it reeked of the types of tactics employed by robots, which made me question your humanity altogether, and certainly did not make me want to further a conversation about search engine optimization.
  2. Speaking of which, please don’t ever use the term “SEO” on me again. I know what it stands for (see above), and despite the fact that I’m sure there are people out there who are properly trained to optimize websites for search engines, I doubt you are one of them. The term itself is associated with spammers and other scumbags, who seek to persuade people that there is a “quick fix” for getting your website ranked #1 at “the Google.”
  3. Certainly, there are good tools for optimization efforts out there (like the inexpensive SEO School by Naomi Dunford, which even has a money-back guarantee), but I would never buy them from someone who didn’t even take the time to address me by my proper name in the opening line of their email. If you don’t know what my name is, you aren’t even trying. Perhaps you are legally blind, and your computer’s Stephen Hawking voice has been temporarily muted? Seriously, it’s not like I’ve concealed my identity here. Your lack of personalization gives you away, spammer.
  4. Considering the possibility that you actually know anything at all about optimizing websites, you should be aware that I have many tags on my posts, some pretty eye-catching headlines, and some well-ranked pages, including one about writing scams and content mills. I am, in fact, the #3 page that comes up when searching for my (frightfully common) name on Google, and that suits me fine. The two that rank higher than me are Laura Roberts, MD and a consulting firm that has managed to capture my full name for their URL. It’s not like I’m behind loads of content aggregators and such, so I must have some idea about how to work the great Google machine, no?

In closing, no, I have no need of your supposed skills at this time. But even if I did, you should probably try sending me a personalized message first, asking if I might be interested in what you do, including a proper link to your website and some contact info that ventures into the real world (i.e. phone number, physical business address) that would make me feel like you are working at a reputable company that might actually have a clue.

Just my two-bucks worth (as time is money),
Laura Roberts, Professional Writer