Hi everyone, I need help from the community and hopefully at least someone will have a clue about this. How much do professional writers charge per word? Or per hour? I am, of course, talking about writers that are experts in their field. For example, people who write articles for big companies/websites. I am taking one of my sites to the next level, and I was looking into hiring a few experts in the field to create part of the content for my site. But most of them came back to me with questions on how much do I pay? I am really stuck, because I never did this before, and only writers I hired were not specialists in the field. Thanks
It really depends on the subject and the business, but many of the people that work for big companies are employed by that company fulltime. This is one of those things that is tough to determine, its like asking “How much should I pay my developer?â€. Sure you could get a developer on elance for cheep but will it be what you’re looking for? It may look ok, but if you knew what was going on under the hood you wouldn’t have paid a dime. With that said I have been through MANY developers and writers so I will tell you how I handle this issue these days. I contact a developer or writer that has a portfolio I love. I then send the person a scope of work and I ask for a quote.... If the quote meets your budget, you hire the person for the job. In some cases there is room for discussion but not much, if the quote is way over your head then your not ready for that “level†of quality. When I say your not ready for that level of quality I mean your budget does not allow for it. I remember when I first started, getting a somewhat technical website developed for $1,000 was pushing it for me. Over the years $6,000 was pushing it, now I don’t even blink when I get quotes for five figures. The same goes for writing, but writing is a bit trickier to put a number on. But my point is your price is what your able to afford, if your website makes $20,000 a month you can afford a higher level writer then if your website was just getting started. I think its going to be real hard to give a “rate†for a writer since so many things depend on that rate. If I was to guess and you were paying by word for a specialist I would guess this: Low non technical article - $.10 -$.20 a word Mid somewhat technical article - $.30 - $.60 Technical article - $1 and up a word Again... just a guess.
I think it also depends on their location. Realistically, someone from New York City would want a pretty decent hourly wage, whereas people in 3rd world countries might settle for something much less for continuous work.