Question about rates and what to do when the offer is too low

Hello,
I have a question for you all. I have recently gotten work from a company to do corporate writing and editing for them, and my rate is $50 an hour. This company is NYC based.

They agreed to my rate for the first project. But they want to give me more projects, and they rejected the rates as being too high. They said they are paying btwn $15-35 an hour right now in NYC. The thing is, one of the jobs is an edit... they wouldn't need me to edit the site if they had paid for a better writer in the first place.

My questions are...

1. For the edit, it's 13 pages of content, and I quoted then $275. They want to pay lower. I'm willing to go to $200, though even that I think is pretty low. Do I offer $200? Or will that then later work against me, since it's going lower than my typical rate?

2. One of the jobs is commercial writing, a mission statement, and I quoted them $75. I can not imagine going lower than $75, when I know (think?) that is awful low for the service, especially given I have 8 years experience as a writer and editor. So... how do I write back that this is it?

Should I tell them I'm interested in the work, but I can't go lower? Or should I go lower? What is the smart thing to do? My gut says stick to the $75, but my head says, "But they might give you more work, and more work IS more work?!" But then, I think, but shouldn't I just seek work elsewhere from someone who will pay me what I charge??

3. Do I tell them, should I tell them, that my rates are higher, but they won't need to hire an editor later for the work I provide? Like, should I bother trying to explain that my rates are higher than what they are currently paying, but that's because I'm better than what they had? I don't want to sound cocky, you know? But... but... ahh!

I'm not good at this part of the job. I wish I had an agent for the money part, so I could just do the writing. lol

Thank you so much!!! This is the encouragement I needed to do what I thought was right in the first place. I emailed them, so we'll see where it goes from here. If they change their mind about affording my rate, fine, and if they decided to pass, no problem for me. They came to me in the first place, so it's not even them rejecting me, but the other way around, sort of. (It's always about rejection in the writer's heart, yknow...)

And you're so right... I'm sure they don't sit and negotiate their rates, they charge what they charge.

What I don't understand is how I can be doing this for almost 8 years now with tons of experience, and still get jumpy when someone questions my rates. You'd think by now I wouldn't care.

Hey

I wrote back to them, and they replied, and now they said ok! For one project, anyway. And the other, they said they want to wait for now, and look at it again later, perhaps as a part of a bigger project.

So, thank you! I'm glad I stuck to my rate.

(And thank you for the welcome I've been a lurker for years and years, so I'm glad I finally joined. I'm a huge fan of Jenna's books, and always recommend to people the newsletter and the boards here.)

Rachel

I came in late, but congrats RachelW on getting your rate.

And I'd listen to LoisP on the mission statement issue. That's one thing that can turn into a black hole for your time. If you decide to talk with them further on that gig, you will *definitely* need to discuss limitations, specific deliverables, timelines, and not-to-exceeds. Otherwise they'll keep coming back with, "We need you to change this, we're not happy with it, and we already paid you for a finished product."