Get Paid What You’re Worth!

Freelance writers often ask me what they should charge for various writing jobs. There is no easy answer to this question because I don’t know how efficiently they work and can’t possibly tell them whether to charge by the hour or by the job. The fact is, no freelance writer can know what their professional services are worth unless they first know how many written, corrected, rewritten words they can produce in what amount of time.

Here is what all writers should do from the beginning of their writing careers. If you’re already producing written copy for clients or magazines and have never done this, start now! This is the only way you can ever know whether you’re being paid enough for what you do.

1. Start keeping time sheets for each writing project. And this means any writing project, even if it’s only something for your church bulletin or a piece you are writing for yourself. On the sheet, list the time you begin writing (and researching, if that’s part of the job). Also jot down the time you stop writing on that project. If you start and stop, note the start and stop time every time you sit down to write and get up to do something else, even if only for a couple of minutes.

If you are working for a client, include any travel time or time spent on the phone discussing the project or receiving instructions.

2. When you complete the project, add up your time spent on the project and count the number of words you’ve written. Divide the number of hours into the total of words and you’ll have your average number of words per hour. For instance, say you produce a 1000-word article and it took you 10 hours, you have averaged 100 words per hour. Now at first you may produce many fewer words per hour than 100, or you might produce more.

When I first started writing, I read everything I could on getting published and writing for clients. One leading author on writing stated that he averaged 50 words per hour, and would charge accordingly on any project. So he could confidently charge by the hour and would know how to price out the job for an estimate if, say, he was given an assignment to produce a 1000 word article or a 50,000 word book. After a few assignments, I found that I could produce 1000 words of copy in 10 hours, so I knew that I could confidently state a fee based on producing 100 words per hour.

When you first start out writing for magazines, most of the articles you write will be produced “on spec.” meaning magazines will not give you an assignment but will, instead, ask that you send in a completed article and they’ll decide if they want it or not. Some magazines only accept articles “on spec,” so if you want to write for them, this is the way you’ll have to write no matter how long you’ve been writing for a living. You can then determine their rate of pay from their “writers guidelines” and decide if it is worthwhile for you to write for them.

If you receive an assignment and you’re offered $200 dollars for a 1000 word article, that means you will be receiving $20 dollars per hour if you produce 100 words per hour. It will be up to you to decide if that is fair, and if it isn’t, negotiate for a higher fee. If someone offers you $20 dollars total, then you will be working for $2.00 per hour—hardly worth anyone’s time. That’s also 20 cents per word.

But if you are typical, you will run across some who will offer as little as $20.00 for a full-length article. For 1000 words, that would be .02 cents per word! If you know that you can produce 100 words per hour, then you can confidently question your client or the publishing company whether they would be willing to work for $2.00 per hour. It’s not likely they would!

Writers tend to settle for less pay because they work at home, and sometimes they simply aren’t confident enough to expect professional pay for a professional job. However, those writers who have already completed a few assignments, so know they can sell their work and know the facts about how much writing they can produce each hour, have a much better bargaining position than those who don’t have a clue about how much or how well they can write.

Many clients who seek to hire a writer think that it doesn’t take any more effort or training to be a writer than their secretary has or needs, so they don’t expect to pay more than they pay their clerical help. It’s up to you, the writer, to educate them on what is involved in writing copy, and on what the benefits of hiring you will be. You understand their business and the project’s goals (or you’ll learn) and you can produce words that explain their products or services clearly and in words that convince their prospects to do business with them. You can produce copy much faster than a secretary because this is what you do for a living every day. If it comes down to convincing them further, remind them that you operate your own business and, therefore, they don’t have to be responsible for paying your benefits, taxes, workers comp, or providing you with space to work.

Above all, stress that you are a professional and that you will agree to complete one re-write if the client is not happy with some part of the work you turn in.

And remember, you don’t have to make the same per hour for each job you complete, but you do want to make a fair living because you will be paying your own taxes, including the full amount ( employees’ and employers’) share of social security taxes.

Start keeping track of the time you spend on each project so that you can know that you’re earning what you’re worth.