That said, when starting out as a freelance writer, I wrote a piece for the marvellous, now defunct, ‘Fire and Knives’ for free and I have zero regrets. I loved the ethos of the publication, and I still love picking the sturdy little book off the shelf and seeing my bio in there.

More recently my pro bono work is for my kids’ competitive swimming club. It started as an ‘I’ll build and write you a website’ venture and has morphed into PR work, social media and all comms.

It has led to paid work, but mostly it’s just really fun. Sports clubs (little ones) don’t have the budget for professional help from copywriters, etc and I love giving back to the community, club and sport with the writing, and creating a tone of voice that has helped set the club apart from its rivals. Perhaps it’s just an ego trip dressed up as a love for competitive swimming?! 🙂 I can heartily recommend it either way.

Also agree point about us all pulling together on rates rather than undercutting each other.

I ran a 30 strong salesforce for many years in the engineering industry and this happened on quite a number of occasions. What I learnt was, if you can spend some time determining the customers budget before you quote it does pay dividends. Sounds too obvious I know, but if this is possible, when the quote arrives on their desk there is often less of a surprise.

It also gives you time to assess whether you want to work for the budget and whether it sounds reasonable.

I would say, though, that customers are often not keen to provide budgetary costs and besides they often don’t have this information to hand.

To get round this, if you can make a quick assessment of the amount of work required and pitch them a few figures to get some feedback then this usually helps you to understand where their expectation levels lie. You can then decide what price to quote.

Of course, what is competitive for one company is expensive for another and it’s not always company size related. Understanding the clients culture as to how they make their purchasing decisions is also beneficial, are they purely price related or do they want quality and added value, but that is a bigger subject.

But here’s the rub. If they don’t pay, I don’t write. I don’t do free samples, I don’t balance work now against potential work later, and I don’t put pen to paper without a contract.

I’ve relaxed this rule once, and I’ve been burned. “Oh, write us a sample page and we’ll pay you it and the rest of the site if we choose you.” Sure thing – page was written. And I never heard from them again.

The current site looks like every page was written by a different person. I wonder if there’s a reason for that?

I tend to write for charities, and my core clients are large organisations that can afford to pay the going rate for professional services (though ‘going rates’ in the third sector are certainly lower than the commercial world).

I’m in year 3 of my freelance career and feel it’s time to expand my client list. In 2015 I was excited to get to pre-quote-briefing stages on interesting projects with a couple of small charities. It was all going swimmingly until my quote…I was waaaaaayyyy over their budget. We went back and forth negotiating amicably, but I simply couldn’t go as low as they needed – I only work part time and know what I need to earn.

It was tough to have to walk away and I beat myself up a bit at the time, thinking should I have worked to their budget to get them on my books, especially as I had no other projects on my desk at the time??

Subsequently, a bunch of work came in to the same timescales, and that paid me my full day rate so I felt relieved and vindicated that I hadn’t agreed to work for much much less.

What I learnt from my predicament is that I need to develop a ‘policy’ for myself on whether/when/how I wish to work with small/poor charities – even if it’s only in my head. This will give me a starting point on which to base decisions about working for less or pro bono, when I feel I can afford to do so.

Perhaps most crucially, I took away the learning that I must always ask what their budget is during the earliest conversations. This may be obvious to many, but it was an important lesson for me.

Here’s to a prosperous new year!