How Much Should I Get Paid for Freelance Writing?

"How much should I get paid for freelance writing?" I hear this question all the time. I could just answer with a vague, "It depends," (because it really does!) but for my No-Fluff readers out there I'll break it down. Here are the basics to determining how much to charge as a freelance writer, no matter if you’re new, or have been a professional writer for years.

How Much Money Do You Need?

Before anything else, you need to decide how much money you need. You see, you can make anything from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars per week. As a freelancer, you get to decide what you get paid and what hours you work. So sit down and do the math.

1. Start by deciding how much money you need to survive each month. That includes paying bills and buying essentials like clothing, food, medicine, etc.

2. Take your first figure and decide how much more than that you would need to live comfortably, meaning you could afford a few extras or keep your savings account well fed.

3. Now, break that monthly total down into how much money you need to make per week by dividing the amount by four.

4. Find the daily amount by dividing your weekly amount by seven or however many days you want to work per week.

5. Finally, decide how many hours you want to work per day.

6. How much you charge per hour, multiplied the number of hours you want to work per day, should equal how much money you need to earn per day.

So: What you want to make / Number of hours you want to work = Hourly fee

Say I decided that I needed to earn $2,000 per week to live comfortably. Then assume I only want to work five days a week so that I have weekends off and I only want to work five hours per day, tops. That means I need to make $400 per day. To achieve this, I charge a minimum of $80 per hour.

Charging by the project

Usually, freelance writers don’t charge by the hour, they charge by the project. For example, I wouldn’t tell clients I charge $80 per hour. I charge a set price for a project by deciding how many hours it will take me. So a blog post that will take me around two hours would cost a client around $160, bare minimum.

My prices are higher than my bare minimum, though. The bare minimum is just a guideline so I know how low I can haggle with a client without shooting myself in the foot. Also, I usually round up to the nearest $100. So, the cost would come out to $200. Why? Because I can! I also round up the hours. If it will take me 30 minutes, I charge for an hour.

Consider all the factors

There are some other factors that can add to your bare minimum pricing. Add more to the price if the piece needs interviews, research, images… or the client seems like they are going to be a pain in the butt (more on how to deal with them here).

Articles per day matter, too

We’re still not done. Now you need to decide how many articles per day you want to do. With the example above, if I charged $100 per article, I would need to write 20 articles a week or four articles per day to make my $2,000 per week goal. But that’s a lot of articles. I myself can’t write four a day. My limit is two.

If your brain blitzes out after one article, then you’ll only be able to do one article per day. No need to be ashamed or try to press yourself past your limit. That will lead to poor product quality and burnout.

Ultimately, you’ll need to up your rate to meet your income needs and your mental needs.

Experience

But Alina, you may be saying, if I only write one article per day and my goal is $2,000 per month, I would need to charge $400 per article and I’m not experienced enough to charge that much! To that I would say, maybe. If you’re approaching clients and proposing charging that much, I would agree. But there’s a loophole.

There are plenty of online magazines that will pay that and more. All you need to do is come up with a great idea, pitch it, and then nail the article. Now, I know it’s harder than that, but most editors don’t care if you’re new if you have a great idea and you can prove you can write well with a couple of clips. So, you have the potential to make way more than your minimum per article, meaning you can write less to meet your goals.

Make sense?

In the end, my answer to the question, "How much should I get paid for freelance writing," is simply:

"How much do you want to get paid?"

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