Finding out fair writing rates before you find a freelancer is a challenge. Comparison shopping is important to an informed decision, but writing rates of freelancers vary so widely, it’s hard to know what a good rate is and what is overcharging. How can you tell if you’re getting a good deal?
Those are tough questions to answer. Writing rates vary from $1 to $125 and upwards for 500 words, which is about one page of text. The Professional Writers Association of Canada offers a guideline of writing rates you can use to compare against some of the writing rates freelancers quote. (I haven’t been able to find the same sort of authority for the U.S. – if anyone knows of a national association or organization that suggests writing rates, let me know.)
The short answer on writing rates is that a writer sets his or her own rates. Writing rates depend on plenty of factors, such as expenses the writer incurs, fair pay for experience, skills and the time involved in the task. Writing is a skill that takes years of practice to learn.
Keep in mind that an expensive writer doesn’t mean a better writer, nor does a cheap writer mean a better deal. A big, popular name isn’t always best either. Some big names charge $250 for 500 words, but you can often find plenty of writers who’ll do just as good a job and charge $50 for the same amount of text.
With a little searching, you can find a very good writer that offers reasonable, competitive writing rates, plenty of experience and the required expertise. If the writing rates charged seem fair for the time and effort involved, and you feel comfortable with the writer, then you’ve found a good match. Wasting time searching for a better deal just isn’t cost effective.
Of course, if you’re reading this article, you can save yourself the time of looking for great web content writers, because you’ve already found an expert team that has affordable writing rates for web content and the skills and experience you need.
Now wasn’t that easy?
Like everything else, the ecomony has flattend freelance writing rates like the price of real estate. Keep in mind, there are two realms of freelancing, and each has its own rates: there is corporate professional freelancing, which pays writers like professionals and expects quality of that level, and there is the new proliferation of online writing barter sites, such as Guru.com and Elance.com, among many others (Elance is the eBay of these types of sites.)
I’ve been writing on Elance for two years, and I’ve seen it go down from a reasonable market for professionals to a hotbed of greed and naivete among buyers. These buyers are largely newbie online entreprenuers who have no idea what professional writing is worth, and won’t ever learn because there are so many new and inexperienced writers here, many from far off lands, that will work for two dollars an hour that buyers who care only about price will always have choices.
When I started I charged — and regularly landed work this way — from $25 to $45 per 500 word article. That’s impossible now — the average article job posting pays $2 to $5 per article… one guy for whom I bid a whopping $15 an article complained that I was being very unrealistic. To which I replied, earning $4 an hour was perhaps even more unrealistic, and that you get what you paid for. Which, I have no doubt, mattered to him not in the least.
I’m in contact with Elance toward an effort to create quality and fairness standards for listings, to match the quality standards they already have in place for Providers.
Just wanted you to know the real lay of the freelance land these days. Unless you have a corporate communications resume, expect to work for less than burger flipping wages online.
Heh, too funny. I came to reply and saw “1 comment.” ONE? WTF? Where’s 46 and 58 and all that?
Then I saw the date. Blast from the past, to see that two years ago, no one knew who we were. Funny.
Onto your points, Larry.
I have a feeling you’re looking for article work in the wrong places, if you’d like to achieve better rates. I know personally that article work that pays $25 to $100 exists and buyers are willing to offer that much to great writers. You are a great writer, so you should have no problem getting rates like that.
No, there’s not TONS of it, but it’s out there. Not at Elance though, correct.