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Question

I'm a noob on this website and a couple of days ago I asked my first question (How does a freelance copywriter determine the right price-per-word to charge?), which got put on hold by a mod and today closed.

I understand there are rules to follow, but after the mod left a comment I wrote another one myself asking clarification on how I should have asked the question in order to respect the rules and I didn't get any answer. After that I left another comment asking why my question wasn't allowed while there were other similar questions that didn't get banned, still no answer.

I understand this can be seen as a useless polemic but an answer would have been useful anyways in order to better understand how this site works, but I never got any response and I couldn't find a way to send a private message, which I understand isn't an option when it comes to user-to-user interaction but having the possibility to ask for clarification regarding the way this site works would be nice (I know there is meta for that, but I doubt this place is for question like "why did my question got closed?").

Answer 1

It can be incredibly easy to miss comment replies in your inbox, especially if you're active on quite a few sites. If you really need a moderator to take a look at something, your best option is to flag your post as 'other', and then put as much detail into the reason as you can. For instance:

I've made some edits based on the comment that [moderator] left, but I'm not entirely certain of where to go from here. Is my question now suitable to be reopened, or what else would it need?

Allow some time for the flag to be processed, especially if it's a weekend. A mod will have a look and give you some feedback. Alternately (or in addition to), you can post a question on the per-site 'meta' (for discussions about the site itself), which is always meta.<site-url>. Tag it 'support' or 'discussion' as appropriate. If a day or so has passed and you have yet to receive additional help from meta or a response to your flag, contact us and let us know, we'll do our best to guide you.

Regarding your question, we'd love to give you an answer but we'd need to be you in order to do so accurately. It's a question of the industry standard in the area that your client serves, how much you're comfortable charging, if you suspect that you'd be competing, and a multitude of other factors.

It's entirely conceivable that the question you wanted to ask is how to determine compensation for copyrighting given a region and industry. You've got great context in the question, but in order for it to be a useful artifact for someone else, the better ultimate question is what method can I use to figure this out for myself?

Answer 2

Being new to Stack Exchange sites and their ways is fine, we all were at some point.
You'll do yourself a big favour if you read the tour page and help center of the site you are using.
You can find links to both of these in the "Help" drop down on every Stack Exchange site :)

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I wrote another one myself asking clarification on how I should have asked the question in order to respect the rules and I didn't get any answer

After that I left another comment asking why my question wasn't allowed while there were other similar questions that didn't get banned, still no answer.

You seemed to get a lot of good information in that question, on the same day the question was closed.

closed as primarily opinion-based

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

The moderator who closed your question quite politely commented to you at the time of closing your question:

Canadian Luke♦ Jul 21 at 22:04:

HI user, welcome to Freelancing.SE! Unfortunately, this type of question (how much do I charge) is quite opinionated, and would vary throughout the world, and for your skill level. Because of this, the question is getting put on hold. Can you edit to show how this problem could be helpful for other people as well, and to maybe find out how to charge a good rate given xx skills? Finding a rate after you know expenses, costs, profits, etc makes it easier to help. Thanks!

And from user halfer the next day:

Any questions about the going rate for an industry and a level of experience are always going to be too localised or opinion-based for SE sites. Are there any chat rooms for copywriting specifically? I wonder if Reddit would have something helpful? - they have a much more free-form chat approach, and so this question might work well there.

So you had about as much explanation as possible in regards to why the question was closed, and info on how to resolve it if possible.

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It can be daunting when new on the Stack Exchange sites, but honestly, if you take some time to learn how the sites work, you will benefit from it greatly. As the fact we close questions of low quality means more likely that when you are searching for an answer, you will get a quality question and answer(s), rather than unhelpful ones :)

This is why/how we differ from most other sites, and certainly forums, where chat and distractions from actual info required often occur.

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You might also find the FAQ quite useful.
It's too much to just read it all, but bookmark the page and search for anything you're not sure about in the future.
With that, the help center, searching the sites, and tour pages, you should have most of your questions covered :)

If not, of course always feel free to ask. Best on the Meta of the site in question if possible (the Meta site is for asking questions about that specific site), but if it relates to all sites you can post here :)

Answer 3

As the moderator who put this question on hold, I'd like to explain my reasoning:

This question is still based mainly on opinion, as outsourcing from different countries will always have vastly different prices. My rate for my work is much higher than someone in a developing country, due to costs, experience, knowing the market/language/regulations, etc. It's too much opinion, as halfer explains above, to ask "what should I charge"? I think the question you linked to should be closed, but they also explain about what they have been charging, and are asking if they should increase/decrease their current rates for foreign clients doing the same work. This question is asking, outright, what is a good rate? That's a very difficult question to answer definitively, with the ability to be helpful for other SE users. That is the reason I put this one on hold

Tim Post and James have good replies about how the SE system works, and we do still want you to post. We do want to help you, but we need those special questions answered to help you. I left the comments on your post, and it includes a link to Freelancing Chat where some more experienced users (as well as some mods) spend time hanging out, and we would love to help you work on the question.

As Tim Post mentioned, if you feel we overlooked something, or acted too hastily, feel free to use the 'Flag' link, and choose the last option to contact a mod directly. If we can work on improving your question, and we edit it, it will also get booted to the 'Reopen' queue, allowing other high-reputation users to choose to reopen it automatically. Don't feel we are punishing you though; we simply need questions that meet a certain criteria to be answerable.

Update

The question has been edited, after working out some issues in chat, and is ready for new answers.