When The Phone Doesn't Ring

In my first post I had originally crammed several topics into one long-winded diatribe. While the topics are all related, it will be a lot easier to read and discuss them if they are given their own space.

Obviously, the past year has been a tough one for many creative and production freelancers in the Promotional Marketing industry. With my recent down time I've been giving a lot of thought to our situation. I think that many of us consider the economic nose dive that this country has been in to be our biggest concern. It seems that quite a few of us are even considering drastic measures that we wouldn't normally consider. One of which is lowering our rates.

Brothers and sisters, I don't believe that lowering your rates should even be an option. The problem isn't our rates, it's the fact that entire freelancer budgets are being liquidated and/or shifted to other areas within an agency. We could drop our rate to $10 an hour and our phones still wouldn't ring.

Let's say we do drop our rates and an agency does hires us at that discounted rate. What happens when the economy swings back (which it always does)? And how will we know exactly when to boost our rate back up? After the economy has picked up for 3 months? 6 months? A year? You know as well as I do that as soon as we hit the agencies with a rate increase, they'll try to hold us to the established lower rate. I don't know about you, but I HATE price negotiations. Actually, I'd rather give my grandfather a Brazilian bikini wax than have to haggle over my rate with a client.

Listen, once we start dropping our rates it could take years for the precedent to be broken. And that, my friends, will be a very bad thing.

"Allright Grampa, just lie still. This will only take a minute!"