Acquisition Rate – Freelancer Tip #12

Checking Guru.com’s site this morning, I noticed that my Acquisition Rate is being reported at 18%, which raised an eyebrow, as I sipped my coffee, and also gave me the idea for these Freelance Writer Tips I’m posting. This is a relatively new thing for Guru to be doing, and I’m not sure I like it, because I’m not sure how many Employers really understand what an Acquisition Rate is, or means for a Freelance Writer on a service like Guru.com. – and, perhaps they do. Which is why I’m not sure if I like it or not.

I haven’t been paying much attention to some of these new “Rating Systems” on Guru, mostly because I’m too busy writing bids and writing the eBooks and articles my bidding efforts have brought in.

In my last post I explained that a 10% Acquisition rate was more than reasonable to make a decent living as a Ghost Writer or Freelance Writer – this of course is dependent on what you are bidding for your jobs.

Something that should be pointed out to new Freelancers is – If your Acquisition Rate is above 30%, you aren’t charging enough.

As I explain in the last post, 10% is bringing in 1 out of every 10 new clients you bid to. With 80 available bids a month, that is 8 new clients a month. Repeat business is almost a given as a Freelance Writer, or a Ghost Writer. Once people find a writer they can work with, they don’t want to go looking for a new one (most of them,.. let’s face it, some clients are just silly and do all kinds of weird things). I still get work from Clients I started with years ago. So, with the barest effort of Customer Retention, two of these clients are going to give you more work, this month and probably next month.

So the boundary you are shooting for is between 10% and 30%. At 10% you are making enough to continue working as a writer, at 30% you are not a Ghost, your are a God at writing Marketing sheets, and you should be charging accordingly.

Put this in the Employer’s eyes. You are a writer who can produce a Landing Page which is Converting for 1 out of 10 hits on the web site, for a given set of search phrases. The Employer uses your skills and with his PPC campaign, paying $.30 a click, he is making a sale, at a NET profit of $20.00 each.

How much is that page worth?

Now, let’s say you are a writer who is creating blog posts for SEM/SEO purposes, and are able to bring to that Landing Page (the one we just imagined above), a rise of Organic Traffic, landing on that page, with an increase of 20% in his traffic. So… just to keep the math simple, he was getting 100 focused Organic Hits a month, and you have raised it to 120. Next month it rises to 144 and then 173. With the Acquisition Rate of that Landing page you are bringing in another 2, then 7 then 16 more sales, increasing each month. Really you are bringing in even more than this at 3 months (the number is probably at the level of 40 by that time, with you continuing to blog). Your efforts on the blog posts aren’t going to begin to deteriorate for three weeks after you stop blogging.

How much is your blog posting worth at this meager level of focused traffic increase?

I’ll tell you one thing for sure, they are worth a lot more than $7 each.

I’m cluing you in on this, not to give you angst for The Man Making his Money on the Sweat of your Labor… I’m cluing you in, to illustrate why an Acquisition Level above 30% means you aren’t charging enough.

There is nothing wrong with a client telling you, “Man, I would really like you to work on these articles, but your bid is too much.” – Thank the man! Seriously. Tell that man, “Thank you for your praise, but I’m worth every penny I charge.” – and throw in a bit more of a secondary sell to explain why you are worth that money… like for one thing… your page sold him already!