What are the right prices to charge for writing a sales letter and press release respectively? I have ghostwritten a good number of each till now, but I have a feeling that I might have undercharged from the middlemen. I will avoid stating my previous charge at present. I just want to know the decent charges for writing press releases and sales letters.
Depends on the standard of your copywriting, i know of pro copywriters charging over $2000 for a profesional sales letter
Are sales letters and press releases charged according to word length, or the time spent in framing them, or on per project basis?
I won't speak to sales letters specifically, but with press releases, no, it's not usually a word count. How much you can charge depends entirely on your background. If you're just a content writer, then not much. If you're a copywriter, you can charge a bit more. If you have an actual background in public relations or journalism, you can charge much more. I'm a bad example, b/c I violate my own normal pricing rules when it comes to press releases (b/c I use them more as a marketing tool to bring in other business than anything else). I'm a PR professional and charge about $100 per release. In reality, I could be charging $200-500 / release and still be doing really well. That's a pretty normal range for an independent professional in the industry. A mid-size to larger firm might charge much more than that, and well over $1000 per release. I'd say $100-150 for a copywriter with a good bit of experience, and at least some success in placing pieces in the media sounds about right, and I wouldn't pay more than $20-30 or so from someone who's just a content writer (they generally just write articles and format them to look like press releases, w/o knowing the first thing about writing "for the media."). So it depends a great deal on your exact background and past success with them. And as with any kind of writing, a key in what you can charge is how well you can actually market yourself.
If you want to charge the highest rates, then yes. Either you need the appropriate credentials, or you better have a heck of a portfolio showing potential clients that you can, and regularly do, get major media coverage. If you don't have solid coverage background, you won't be able to charge as much, especially if you can't prove that you can write for actual journalists as opposed to simply writing "by template." Of course, you don't need that background if you just want to market release writing for SEO purposes. However, the people interested in that w/o caring about news coverage are also the clients that won't generally pay hundreds of dollars just to have it written... if they'll spend hundreds or more, it's often on getting higher placement for more backlinks instead. I know a few who would pay quite a bit for it... but they're in the minority, so you'd have to understand that you'd be working in a very limited market.