How Much You Should Charge for Freelance Writing?

by Darren Krause

When you first start freelance writing, you are probably wondering how much you should charge for a project. You don't want to price yourself out of the freelance writing market, but you want to get paid for the quality of your writing. So, what do you charge? This is a question that gets asked hundreds of times by new freelance writers. They just don't have the experience yet to figure out what they should charge.

You can go about pricing your project in a few ways, and I have provided a glimpse into each of those ways. Before we get into that, the first rule of thumb is this: Don't ever sell yourself short!

How much do you want to make?

This would be my first question. Freelance writing isn't necessarily a cut and dried business where someone with a certain amount of experience and colorful credits behind their name gets a specified amount of money. What I would do is set how much you make by coming up with a rate per hour that you would charge. Then, when bidding on a job, you will estimate how many hours it will take to do that job and voila! A price! And how do you come up with a price per hour? Here's how I would do it.

Figure out how much you want to make freelance writing over the next year. Let say you want to make $30,000 annually. You will probably work 220 days per year - if you are lucky, maybe around 200. For argument's sake, we'll use 220 days of work per year. If you divide the $30,000 per year by 220 days, you need to make $140 per day. How many hours of work do you want to do in a day? Let's say seven hours are dedicated strictly to freelance writing. So, take the $140 per day, and divide it by the number of hours - which is 7. There is your hourly rate - about $20 per hour. I think that's a little bit low for a per hour figure as a freelance writer, but to illustrate the example, it will work.

This is a formula that will work for you if you have the potential for steady business, but also as a backup when you are asked to bid on a project that just can't be priced any other way (per page, per word, etc.) Note: Most novice freelance writers would be safe charging between $20 and $25 per hour for large project work. With that said, your price may vary depending on the scope of the project or any other curveballs that might be thrown in.

The price can be set for you.

If you have queried a magazine about an article and it gets accepted, chances are they pay freelancers a standard rate (especially new freelancers), and you are likely going to have to stick with that rate for the first few articles you write for them. It is impossible to give you an accurate idea of what many of the magazines pay because the range is from $.05 to $2 per word and up. You can check with such resources as www.writersmarket.com, and they provide the current rates of most magazines in North America.

Once you have done a few articles with a particular magazine, and you have built a good rapport with an editor, don't be afraid to up the ante. They obviously like your work, and you have paid your dues to become one of their reliable freelance writers. You are well within your right to ask for an increase in your per word, or assignment rate. If they have been paying you $.50 per word, there is no reason why you can't ask for $.55 or $.60 per word. In most cases, editors are happy to have a quality writer working with them because it is one less thing they have to worry about.

You may also run into projects that have a specified budget. These are good projects, because you know your price isn't going to get ground down to the bare minimum. What you have to decide is whether or not you can do a job for that price. If the job budget is $1,000 and you would estimate it might take you 50 hours to do it properly at $25 per hour, that's $1,250. You might just take a chance on it and hope you can trim some hours on the job by working efficiently, and make your hourly wage. But, if you think that $1,000 job is going to take you 80 hours at $25 per hour for $2,000, you are going to want to leave that one to the vultures.

The price is right.

After you have a few jobs under your belt, and you know how much time and effort is involved in doing a project, you will have a much better idea of what a job is worth. This is probably going to be the best measuring stick for pricing future jobs. You are still going to land jobs that are worth much more than you are being paid, but hopefully with experience you will have just as many that you are well paid for, with less work than you thought.

Always keep in mind how much you want to make each day, and at the end of the year. Try to stay on target with that daily or monthly goal and you can adjust your wage as you see fit. Try the magazines and work with what they have to offer, and build your portfolio along the way. Eventually, you are going to be making the wage you want, and working on the projects that you enjoy writing!


About The Author

Darren Krause has been writing for 16 years, with thousands of published credits - in print and online. His website - http://www.imaginethiswriting.net helps new authors with tips and insight into the world of freelance writing. His blog is also updated several times a week.

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