How to charge as much as One dollar per word as a new freelance writer
If you are looking to make money in the freelance business, you need to know how much you are worth. Even before you start looking for jobs, or start promoting your business, you have to do research, and find out what your own business is worth.
Charging by the Day or by the hour?
One of the first things that any freelancer has to know is just how much their work is worth. Freelancers should do their research, and see just how much projects, or articles are charged online, and how much other freelancers are charging for their own services.
Freelancers can charge by the day if they have a big project due. This is of course if the freelancer agrees to this, and the client does also. Many freelancers charge by the hour, because they work for more than one client. It all depends on how much time the freelancer has, and how much they charge on separately.
Freelancers can also do BOTH. Depending on the client, and how much work the writer has to do. This is all about balance, and knowing that all of your hard work will be paid off at the end. You have to know what your strengths are, how much research and work you have to put into each project, or article, and finally how much time you are going to spend working on the project.
In order to make a living from freelancing -or enough to live- a person needs to know where to go to find jobs, or where to go in order to sell their writing and put their own price on their work. Most freelancers that actually do their research before they start working do two things right off the bat: They make or work on a blog or website and they make sure they put a price on their work. As any new writer may see on the hundreds upon hundreds of freelance writer’s websites that there is out there, many writers have extremely high rates, or have packages where they do a lot of work for one fixed price.
Many people say: well, they have been in business so long, of course, they should be paid these prices.
What to take into consideration when Setting a price.
- How many hours do you work on a single article?
- How many words do you write per article?
- How many articles can you write a day?
- How many words in a SEO article do you write?
These are just some of the questions you have to consider when you are setting your prices. Basically: Everything counts! Remember, you are living off of your business, so you have to take everything into consideration.
Many writers make their living charging per word. Some go as little as .15 a word, others go as high as $1.25 per word on special articles such as SEO, SEM, and long paper type articles. So, its all about what you think your work is worth, and what it takes for you to make money.
Do your research, and update your BLOG.
As you start working on your business, you will find out that it can be easier for clients to reach you, than have you search for clients. This means that you need to do your research, and update your blog just as often as you get approached by a client so that you offer your most recent prices on your blog.
When clients reach you is because they are interested in the services that you offer. This means that you need to have your blog or website up to date so that you don't settle for less money than what your work is worth.
Comments
Thank you for these useful information.
Good article, but wishful thinking on the amount you get paid. Bottom line is dont' quit your day job. NO ONE short of the New York Times will pay you a dollar per word. That's simply never going to happen, except, possibly for spam sites.
I started writing in October 2011 and currently I get 0.01 per word for what I would consider to be quality work. Places like fiverr, is where I am writing currently. I tried charging 0.02 per word and find that the people coming with requests to me are not willing to pay extra. While I have more than enough work writing articles, it is still difficult to make ends meet. I am thinking of starting a blog where I post samples of my work and the excellent reviews I got from it. It is great to be a writer, but is can become very time consuming when you spend just about the whole day and most of the night writing. Sometimes your offline life does not even exist. I am currently looking at writing novels to post them on Kindle. You will need good software for formatting your work properly before you create your novel as you want the format to look good.
Jessi,
Thank you for all of the great information!
Helen
- Author
I would love to talk to you too about where are some of the best sites to make money, and find work. If you would like to talk one on one, e-mail me. My email is on my About me page!
- Author
ebookshack: WOW, amazing answer! Thank you for your comment! I have charged as much as one dollar per word. While the work lasted, it was great. Magazines, newspapers, and even Blogs can pay that much when writers and bloggers look for the right jobs. I know many bloggers that make that much money a day! Its pretty amazing.
While I agree with much of what you have written here, what you earn also depends on a few other variables too. With places like odesk and other freelance sites where freelancers from all around the globe can bid, you may find that finding work for a higher price per word is near impossible. I find that if I bid more than 0.02 a word on most of those sites I will not be chosen but when I get private clients from my own site the lowest I usually end up getting paid is 0.05 a word.
Freelance writers should know that most places that pay the prices like $1.25 a word are magazines, publications or big companies that have a lot of subscribers or a bigger budget.
While I can say I pretty much make a living from writing myself, I have never been paid more than .25 a word from an online company who hired me. While I do know the jobs are out there if you spend the time looking and applying, many people just need to make as much money as possible so learn how to research and write quicker so they can write more content over less time thus making more per hour instead of worrying about per word(for example, I can make $30 an hour writing but it still only works out to an average of $0.05 a word when breaking it up)
I would rather make $30 an hour and have steady work than make $125 for a 1200 word article(example) and only get that kind of work once a week.
The more your work becomes known and people recognize your name or clients pass your name along, the more money you will make. When I started out 5 years ago, I made $3 an article(500 words) and now I make $20 for that same article because I can research, write and seo an article ten times better than I could back then.
Anyways, I don't want to take over your hub here so I just want to say thank you for sharing this information and I would love to discuss with you more about the best places to look for getting decent paying content writing jobs now that Google has made so many changes lately.
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