It's not a one variable equation. You charge: What your work is worth... keeping in mind what the market will bear... which should provide a rate that pays the bills... and be a rate that you can live with. But that only works some of the time. If you are an expert in a given field or pretty close to an expert you can charge more to write about that area. Example: If you worked in a casino, gambled professionally and know the ins and outs of the gambling world, you can charge professional ($0.10+ per word) rates for your content - assuming you can write engaging material that is magazine quality. If you skim Wikipedia to gain a bit of background knowledge, throw some content together that is essentially free of grammatical mistakes and heavy with keywords, you charge general content writer rates ($0.02-$0.06 per word) The better your work is, the more you charge. If you speak and write English as a second language, don't have a firm grasp of grammar or conventions, or simply write material that is designed for keyword saturation rather than readability, you charge "bargain" or SEO rates ($0.00125 - $0.01 per word.) These rates are by no means set in stone and professional level writers will write for less for many reasons including for fun or if bills are due. The cost of living is a factor as well although a good writer in any country can charge adequate rates. There is no exact guide of how much to charge, and many will disagree with my summary. This is just a very broad view of my own experience and observations of writing online. Rebecca