Lately, I have in been approached by some of my clients, not only to set up their blog, but to keep them updated. (damn!) Those of you who do this for a living, what is a fair rate to charge to update a blog with relevant information? Per Post? Per Month? Per year? Any info would be helpful. Thanks
On the rare occasion that I've done paid blogging (don't anymore), I didn't take less than $25 per post, usually closer to $50, for a pretty short post (200-300 word range). I'd charge significantly more now though even at a bare minimum... it's no different than writing articles, so charge what you would charge for that.
I do two professional blogs (ie, I'm paid to write them). One's pretty simple and I charge $25 a post. The other more complex and I get $50 a post (requires some technical knowledge). These aren't great sums but then again, they are daily which takes the difficulty out of meeting the mortgage payment. The trick to this type of writing though is never to try and sit down and "write the blog post for x". Just carry on surfing, reading the technical magazines, as you do anyway. When you come across something that might be worth blogging for one of your customers, bookmark it. Then, at the end of the day, whenever you decide you're actually going to update those blogs, you've got your story ideas all there. Commenting on something on another blog, thus engaging in the conversation, is what you're being paid for anyway, correct? That way you can use trackbacks etc to pull in the traffic and gain ranking. Shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to update a blog this way: assuming you're already spending a few hours a day surfing anyway. If you've got any blogs in my fields (economics, politics, finance, business etc) let me know and we'll see if contracting some of it out makes sense.
Thanks for the tips. I'll keep that in mind. Can you send me your contact info, and direct me to some examples of your work? Appreciate it!
It also depends on who you hire. Sites like Joystiq and Engadget were originally paying $400-500 for 150 posts, or approximately $3/post. Large sites can get away with this because so many people would love to say "I wrote for the largest gaming blog in the world". Anita