What's The Fair Rate For A 500+ Words Article?

Seriously???? I would love a writer who can write fast and with decent English.

 

Everybody wants a writer who can write good articles quickly... The problem is not many people want to pay skilled writers.

 

You would think anyone would, but everyone wants to pay peanuts. It's understandable to a certain point. Everyone has a budget they want to work with and the end game goal for every company is to make money.

A lot of people just want to haggle a great deal and instead of writing the content themselves, want cheap writers to do it. I would be willing to bet my left leg that none of the well recognized content sites were built utilizing Fiverr services.

 

Fast != cheap.

Personally, if someone wants me to write fast and well, I'll charge per article based on normal speed. I see no reason why I should be paid less for a better service.

As an aside, this is one thing I think Google does very well: many of their algorithm changes are to stop people gaming the system, but the ones which attempt to prioritise high-quality, useful content are a real boon to decent writers. Google is slowly clearing out the dregs at the bottom of the barrel, leaving people who can actually write (as opposed to putting words into a document) with better pay and their clients with better rankings. Everybody's happier... except the word-vomiters.

 

You are right, but Google still isn't good enough at identifying quality. In the future we will see the end of the word-vomiters, but I suspect they will be around for a few more years yet.

 

They've gotten surprisingly good at it. I think one of their most brilliant crap detection techniques is the bounce rate.

Cracked is one of my favorite sites to reference because the writing is brilliant.

It makes perfect sense logically. If a website is written with incomprehensible gibberish, then people are going to bounce a lot. No one wants to read:

"Today I has teach you how make money with paid surveys. I will today teach you how to make more money with paid surveys. Money is good. Surveys are easy. Making money with paid surveys is relatively easy."

If you want that "Cracked" style writing, you have to pay for it. They pay freelance authors $100 after the topic is approved.

The process involved in an article is a bit jaded for some people because they only have experience on Digital Point. Here's how it's SUPPOSED to work:

The client and the writer scope out the job details and agree to a price and deadline. In most cases, 50% upfront is usually the way to go but sometimes 100% upfront payment is paid.

A writer will begin doing research and probably make his first draft. He'll go through the article, edit it and smooth it out for perfection before finalizing it. Once it's finalized, it's usually sent to an editor to review for any grammar errors or anything that needs fixed. The editor will either fix them and send it off to the client or they'll make suggestions on what needs fixed and have the writer do it.

That's why some places can charge $100 to $200 for a single article. They will literally wait until an article is perfect before delivering it. A lot of clients come to forums like this because they have a low budget and are looking for a jack of all trades. They want someone who can deliver high quality content without that high quality pricing structure.

I'm not one of those beggars can be choosers people, but who can honestly sit there for $5 and research, create and edit an article?

You should never lower your rates for someone just because you know the topic well or you write fast. Those people are probably going to have a laundry list of requirements and be a nightmare to work with anyways. I've never once been asked by a high paying client to include images or upload articles to their website.

It's basically the $.50c and $1 people who want the full service special.

 

The way we prefer to do business is very simple - work for high paying clients and work with them long-term. I am not native english speaker, nor is my business partner who is a friend of mine. Nor is anyone from our writers we hire. And our clients are aware of that.

They know exactly what we are offering and exactly what we expect in return. We are doing articles writing services and we are doing them as best as we could. They are paying us 1.00-2.00$ per 100 words. We are able to pay to our workers and have some profits. And our clients have pretty decent content for that price. They know they cannot expect newspaper articles quality. We know we cannot charge them newspaper articles quality price. Because they don't need articles of that quality for their project. And this is exactly the reason we choose to work with them at the first place.

So - know your market. Deliver quality service, based on the price the client pays.

Out there you can find two types of clients - the ones expecting you do work for peanuts. And the ones who have serious project with serious investment ideas, who are ready to maintain those project in long-term. The first ones don't stay in the market for too long, so even if you work for them, sooner or later they cannot order more work from your, simply because they are not profiting from it. The second type business owners - they are in the market for a long time. And they are profiting thanks to your service. And you are profiting thanks to them. So you both know you have mutual benefit: you - to deliver quality work, them - to pay you the reasonable price.

This is how business works. And the people from Pakistan and India( I don't have anything against the people in those country, just expressing my general opinion of the sort who are in sites like Elance and Odesk) - they cannot change that fact. Because it's free market and there are stupid businessmen and smart businessmen, and you can choose with which one you want to partner with. Someone have to partner with the stupid businessmen after all. It just shouldn't be you.

 

I think there is no point talking about "fair rate" because everyone will have their own opinion on "fair rate". The main point is that the market dictates the prices. We should consider an average market rate for this type of work and how much customers are ready to pay. I would say that an average rate on this forum is $1.00 - $2.00 per 100 words and it is a bit stupid to expect that someone will pay you a 2 or 3 times higher rate. If you are a writer and your rate is significantly higher than an average market rate, you may find occasional clients who may order couple articles, but would you be able to secure long term work and find repeating clients?

I need content written on a regular basis and I can tell you that is possible (although not easy) to find a good native English writers on this forum and or some other forums who can do high quality work and thorough research at $1.00 - $2.00 per 100 words rate. A higher rate does not necessarily mean better quality.

A higher rate must be justified. As a customer I would expect a great knowledge of topic, high level details and much more. For example, if it is a blog article, then it must fully ready for publishing, which means keywords must be thoroughly researched and smartly used throughout the article, text must be formatted (paragraphs, bold and italic fonts, bullet points, etc.), number of relevant images must be included and image descriptions must be included, etc.

There is no point talking about hourly rate. Most clients do not care how long it would take a writer to research and write an article. Clients want a fixed price 'per article', 'per project', 'per word', 'per 100 words'. To avoid disappointments from both sides, do not try to write on topics you are not familiar with if you are a writer, and try to find a writer who has good knowledge of your topic if you are a client. Even if a writer has great researching skills, this may not be enough. For example, if a client need an article about heart surgery with high level of details, then it is very unlikely that most writers will produce a good article even if they spend 2 weeks on research.

There is a lot of competition in this business, and not just from Indian or Eastern-European writers, there are a lot of native English writers on this forum who are happy to write at $1.00-$1.50/100 words rate.

From time to time I receive 'special offers' from some well-known writers on this forum who almost in every topic say that they 'do not write for pennies', advertise here their services for $3.00 - $4.00 per 100 words and they are offering me 'special prices' that are within $1.00-$1.50/100 words range in order to get some long term regular work. This tells me that it is not that easy to find regular work if you charge too much.

 

In my opinion, this is badly considered advice. Yes, DP's rate may be in the range you suggest, but to say it's stupid to expect more is very short-sighted, for many reasons. Two spring immediately to mind: (a) DP is not the entire market and (b) the range of skills available at a given price is enormous.

Simply put, if you want more money, you need to produce good content and look for markets that do not expect high quality for crappy pay.

This is entirely true. You cannot even begin to imagine the number of writers I've hired who want $20 per article and can't string five words together... or those who accept $2 per article and write awesome content (usually in awful English, but I can fix that).

What you expect is far beyond what a writer does. You are demanding a writer, an editor, a proofreader, SEO skills (which are reasonable to require), image searches and web prep. Sure, it's not that much more work, but is IS more work and should be paid for accordingly.

The point of talking about hourly rates is that it's a good way to work out what you need to earn per article, per project, per word or per 100 words. If you don't know how fast you research and write, and how much you need to earn per hour, how can you set a price?

I don't agree, but it's all hypothetical so it's impossible to say. However, I agree with the point that it's best to try to find writers who know your subject... I also think you should be ready to pay for that knowledge. Why should you get years of experience at no extra cost?

This is the oldest argument in the book, and it's flawed. As someone smart once said, "The pie is infinite." Yes, there's a massive amount of competition. But there's also an endless amount of work - the Internet is not finite and the amount of content required never ends. Just because someone will work for 10c per article and says they're a writer does not mean they are in competition with someone who actually is a writer.

Saying writers have to compete on price is an argument based purely on fear of losing something. Therefore, it is not valid. "You have to accept crap wages or you'll lose the job" has no weight when you realise that there are thousands of other jobs.

Incorrect deduction: it could equally be an offer to show you precisely why you should be paying more for your content, instead of getting crap for low pay. Or simply because they like your subject matter and know they can write content quicker (so it works out the same for them). Or... there are dozens of reasons.

Here's the other side of the coin: I regularly run into threads on forums where writers state and re-state the vicious circle all writers run into. That is, clients don't want to pay decent money for good content, so they pay crap and get crap. Then they say that it isn't worth paying for content, because you get crap, so they keep paying low rates. And keep getting crap. Rinse and repeat.

To put it simply: the fair rate for an article is whatever the writer needs to earn for that article, balanced against the quality they produce. There is a market for content of all levels, at all rates of pay. Finding your place in that structure is not easy, but it is possible.

For example, I have two main clients - one works out at about $15 an hour for easy content, the other at about $30 an hour for tougher content. Calculating back to a "per article" rate puts them both at about $30 a pop, which is therefore my going rate. I actually worked out their rates by starting with my desired hourly pay and working backwards.

They're happy to pay that much because they ALWAYS get quality content that brings traffic and converts into profit. And in both cases, I have replaced other writers who were a lot cheaper - because those clients have realised that cheap content was costing them more in the long run.

P.S. I love this discussion. Loads of really sensible input with actual debate instead of trolling and flaming.

 

This has been my experience also. I'm still waiting on payment for 4 articles I sent on the promise I'd get $50 apiece based on my previous submissions. I've written off and on for years, and the only consistent payment I've had has been writing for myself either on my own sites or article sites like Squidoo - cheesy, I know, but at least I get a bit every month for my efforts and don't have to wrangle with the buyer trying to get my paycheck - which adds more time and more stress to the job.

Competing against other writers to get Churn and Burn copywriting gigs won't work because to make it worth our while we need $$$ per article while in middle eastern and oceanic countries they're giggled to bits to have a few cents on the dollar - and buyers who churn and burn don't care.

You can get higher end writing gigs but it's still very competitive.

 

Well for me, these days, a 500 word article is worth ten cents a word, and NOT a penny less. I look for my clients wherever they are advertising and actively looking for a writer...NOW. I leverage that NOW, into a premium service-instant; with my highly polished, creative writing skills! It's a win/win for them, and win/win for me! I just love when we all win.

 

The price is largely dependant on the quality one is seeking. There are so called writers who would bang it out for as little as $5. This garbage they would hand you is never 100% original, and you'd be spending valuable time editing and correcting punctuation mistakes.
Other more experienced writers might do it for as little as $10-15. But if you want the highest quality available, you'd be looking at around $100 for a link bait 500 word article.

 

Actually, it depends. If you are looking for unique articles, it should cost $3-$5. If you are looking for SEO based article it will cost $5+. I hope you got an idea.

 

This is what you would get for $5.......I rest my case.

 

Then you must be a rare talented writer, or have a domain that just pulls clients in by the groves....
I think the highest paid writer on DP charges around 3 cents per word, so if you charge 10 cents per
word, then you would be charging 3 times of what the highest writer gets on this forum, and I am not
so sure he is a good writer, but he certainly has a domain that does the selling for him, in other words,
he probably is not writing all the content himself, which makes me think he outsources content...
ironic, pay someone 3 cents per word so he can outsource to a 3rd world country, and not due to
his popularity, but the popularity of the website that he has...

Just because the milk is $5 at one store, and $3.00 at
another, that does not make the $5 milk any better then the $3 milk.
It just means they want to sell the $5 milk for more...

 

I'm don't write for a living, but just reading this thread is interesting. Perhaps a better way to get paid what you feel your article is worth, is just to make an arrangement to get paid off the performance of the article e.g. views, resulting sales, other conversions, etc. instead of charging per word.

 

Some fantastic answers here.

Personally, my 2 cents is this - when you're first starting out I would charge about $1 per 100 words.

Then, as you prove yourself as a writer, you can double that... then triple it... and quadruple it... and so on... easily.

Here's the thing: if you write in a way that gets results. ie: the prospect clicks a link, buys a product, and makes your client $30 dollars in Clickbank commissions, you're making a HUGE mistake pricing your services so low.

If you're client is selling a $997 consulting service and your 500 word email or article is good enough to get him at least
one client...

...and you KNOW it's good enough to get him that one client....

...then you shouldn't have any issues with charging $200 per email if that's what your service is worth to the end user.

~E

 

I've had some good articles written for cheap and I have had some really bad ones--had one article where the girl thought a South American country was in Africa!

I'd love to find a great article for $20 instead of an ok article for $5 but I'm skeptical. Sure you can see samples of some of their work but it is usually something terribly boring that I have no interest in like an article about medicine. Kind of hard to judge quality if you are bored. Then you wonder is it the writer that is just a boring writer or the topic?

 

Well, I guess here is my take on it. Writers get paid what they want to. I get paid for alot of written content, from in depth 1000ish word projects to easier 1000 word projects and guess what I charge. It depends on the project! If I am writing a sales letter, I charge an average of $30- $50 and I get it, because the client knows that it will make them possibly thousands. I have another client I write for regularly that gets an article for around $30, these are usually in the 1000-1500 word mark. Why are those articles cheaper, because I price like a designer. The work for him is easy, it is a viral style site often just adding something funny to each image. I know that he gets articles written more cheaply by other writers in foreign countries a lot cheaper than mine. Why does he pay my rates. Because of the 27 articles he has had written, mine are the only ones that get comments and shared, that is results for him. So I get paid more because I deliver results.

For the writers complaining about what they are getting paid. Look at the work you are putting out. If English is not your first language, there are so many nuinces for the language and if you are writing for a UK market or a US market that it is hard to learn them, the only way you compete for these jobs is by price.

 

I was able to get a 300 words article for just $8
I had no problem with the quality because I know that it is the writer's forte.
Besides she's able to deliver it before the deadline.