I understand that there are a lot of copywriters who charge per-project, per-word etc. However, I want to know what some members here at digitalpoint aim for. I justed wanted to hear the personal opinions of dp members, and to find out if they were happy with the hourly rate they are getting. Obviously,when charging a fixed-price, the amount of time spent may go over your original estimation
I would think that you would want to aim for at least $10 per hour - why work one hour for a project that only pays you $5?
yes, clearly it depends on quality. Just wanted to hear what some members here charge. Thanks for everyone's feedback.
I don't target a specific hourly rate exactly, but it's rarely less than $100 / hr (for things like press releases and corporate blog posts), and sometimes as high as $400-500 / hr (for things like larger business articles in my niche where I don't need to do much research). It depends a lot on the type of project.
You go girl! Gold Star! (Of course I knew this already.) I've had $100 hours, but generally stick to around $50.
Atleast a $20 hourly rate is what i required and there is a fixed number of hours per day... that i work but atleast i could complete approx 3 articles in an hour of about 300-500 words keeping the articles unique and can be on any topic...
lol Well, if it were much less than my consulting rates, I couldn't afford to devote any time to it. That's my range for client work. I'm not making that for most of my own writing though - about $50-100 / hr for my main blog (don't spend a lot of time each month on it), and next to nothing for the other two or three I'm trying to focus on right now because I still haven't figured out how to monetize them more effectively yet. Congrats on hitting $100 at any point. It's a great milestone, and knowing you can do it will make it easier to do it more often in the long run.
I've been floating in the $25-$50/hour range for a while now. I'm perfectly happy with it. Definitely not bad for an 18 year old
This is great, where do you find jobs that pay these kinds of rates because you are not going to find very many here on digital point.
It's not about "finding" gigs at the higher rates so much as building your own reputation (through your own sites and blogs, a few key clients, and networking in places like forums, newsgroups, etc.). If you put the time into doing that well, the better gigs will come to you. The keys are: 1. Specialization 2. Networking 3. Marketing While you have to have decent writing abilities, that's far from the top factor in who makes the most money. It's all about who you know, what you know, and how well you can market yourself.
Thanks...there's lots of great info. in this thread. So, for someone starting out and just building a rep., what's a good rate to start charging? Lots of potential clients don't want you to make them an offer, and I was wondering what would sound reasonable without getting short-changed.
That depends on your writing ability, knowledge on a particular topic and marketing skills. Here are some VERY broad guidelines for articles. Of course there are exceptions and a huge variance within each category. If you are a specialist in a particular field with work, even your own blog, to back you up, charge $0.09/wd or more. If you are an excellent writer and can discuss a topic fully and well, charge $0.04/wd or more. If you are still struggling with casual and conversational English, have trouble remembering where you need commas, plan on just reading Wikipedia and regurgitating content or rewriting someone else's material (which is ILLEGAL!) charge less than $0.02/wd. I plan on writing a full report or ebook on the topic one of these days. But here is a related one free through my site if you're interested.
Rebecca's right. It varies far too much to give you simple numbers of what to charge. Her examples are a good start for the kind of market you'll find here on DP. If you want tips on how to actually go about setting your personal rates, you can check out this post I wrote on the topic a while back on crunching the numbers and setting freelance writing rates.
Best of luck to you. Jenn is right - those rough examples of rates are for the kinds of projects around this and other webmaster forums. If you can write well, there are many other kinds of projects out there that pay considerably more. I'll let Jenn tell you how to find them.