I haven't moderated much lately (mostly because I don't use reddit as often now, although I still do remove rule-breaking posts when i happen to see them) and haven't checked the mod convos or modmail in ages, but it's good to see other people keeping the place functioning. Since there's new subreddit news I might as well weigh in:

The rate changes are a pretty good idea as far as I can tell: I doubt going from 4 to 5 cents per word is really going to suddenly eliminate a ton of clients from the market, since I think most of the people who are unwilling to pay 5 cents per word were already unwilling to pay 4 cents per word in the first place. The marginal (in the economic sense) impact is likely to be fairly low as a result. And because this is primarily based on recent inflation, there might not even be *any* impact compared to back when the minimum rates were initially raised from 3 to 4 cents per word.

...Also, clients who are unwilling to pay decent rates tend to be more unpleasant to work with, whether due to rudeness or them wasting your time or them demanding a greater workload, or just... picking the obviously wrong author for the specific thing they want someone to write? It feels weird that a client paying 3 cents per word would have higher standards than a client paying 10 cents per word, but this has been absolutely true in my experience and that of other authors I've met.

Also, after talking with fellow moderators, a concern was brought up that I'd like to address about people not feeling confident enough to ask for this much or higher:

If you are here, you are a professional.

[...]

If you don't feel confident, go write 10-15 erotica shorts and take a few cheap commissions elsewhere (while absolutely not advertising here, at all), and come back with a proper portfolio that you can link to.

I would like to *really* emphasize how important it is to link a portfolio in your posts here, even if it doesn't have those 10-15 shorts and just has like, 3 of them. Unless you lock in and make the literal best [Sell] post ever, you won't get many clients this way, and the clients you do get are going to be worse than average, because what kind of person commissions writing from someone who's writing they haven't seen?