Good day fellow writers! I've begun to think about starting my freelance writing career considering I do have a decent enough portfolio to get started. My question is though, how much do I charge for articles and such? Thanks, Anthony
If you've written articles in the past, how much do you currently charge? You might want to just stick with that rate now. If you haven't had a consistent rate in the past, you'll probably want to go with a rate that provides a comfortable income for you. This might be $0.01 a word or $0.05 a word. I personally charge $0.02 a word, but that's only because I'm not looking to go full-time with this--yet.
I am currently charging $5 per 500 word article and its getting annoying to write those and only get paid that much. I made like $30 over the course of like 5 days at that rate. Looking at other peoples income, it seems as though I should be making WAY more.
Most people charging only $5 per article are from other countries where the cost of living is cheap and a lot of people, mainly US businesses and marketers outsource work there, but the main problem is that a lot of times the wording isn't up to proper English standards simply because English is their second language. But if your English skills are up to par, there's no way that you should be charging $5 for a 500 word article. It will be hard to get people to buy it, but you should get at least $30 per article to make it worth your time.
doh XD Thats why I've been seeing so many people advertise there prices that little. I raised my prices to $20 per article so. English is my native language so that shouldn't be a problem.
I already got a lot of quality articles for 5$ / 500words, from writers that are from England... You can set your price up to 20$ per 500words article but it's going to be hard find buyers.
It depends on your "skill." Knowing English, if you're writing in it, is great, but that doesn't even begin to qualify someone. We've got about 300 million in this country who know English and most of them can barely write their name. My advice would be to keep working on your ability while increasing your rates to find out what you're worth. Perhaps if you're doing straight SEO-type writing in the minor leagues (to get experience or whatever). Pro writers charge more and have plenty of opportunity. And the value of a "word" fluctuates with its purpose.
Don't worry about things like what others are charging. Instead, figure out what you need to charge - I wrote an article about this a while back, b/c not understanding freelance writing rates is one of the big reasons a lot of new writers go into a burnout phase and fail - Setting Freelance Writing Rates the Right Way Once you know what you need, figure out if your skills and credentials can back those rates up. If they can, great! Go for it. If your skills and such would justify you charging even more than that, then good for you! Charge a bit more to earn what you want based on what you can justify to clients. But if your skill level and background don't jive with the income you need on a freelance basis to get by, then you're not ready for freelancing yet, and you need to work on that background, your writing and marketing skills, and building your credentials some more.
You can set your rate anywhere you want based on your needs, desires, skill and "self-marketing" abilities. If you charge higher rates, you may need to find different clients or markets. I doubt that many people would give a starter or even a moderately experienced writer, 20-30$ per 500 word article here in the DP content creation forum. "Right market, Right skills, Right marketing" seems a pretty good formula to me for those who want to obtain higher rates.