Get Paid to Write, Set your Rates Right
If you are going to become a freelance writer remember this: you should get paid to write. In other words, you do not want to work for free. Sure, there are some cases when you may want to write a free article or offer free advice, but you should limit these situations. Remember, you are a professional and the only way that you can make a living is to ask for payment from clients. How many professionals do you know that offer free work?
Many people want to get paid to write, but do not know where to start. In other words, they do not know how to set their initial rates. This is a common problem. Some freelance writers are worried about setting their rates too low, and others are worried about going off the high end of the scale. This is common, but it should not hold you back. Every freelance writer runs into this from time to time, and you are not going to be any different.
The best way to set your initial rate is to determine how much money you want/need to earn. For example, if you want to earn $40k/year you should break this down into an hourly rate based on how much you can work each day. For instance, if you know what you will work 40 hours per week, you need to earn approximately $20/hour to hit your income goal. When you break down your career into an hourly rate it is easy to see just how much you should be charging.
It is not as hard as many people think to get paid to write. Does this mean that anybody can do it? Of course not. There is a big difference between getting paid to write a few words and becoming a high quality, successful freelance writer. If you know how to set your rates right, you should be able to earn a solid income while also reaching corresponding goals.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
One thing to keep in mind when computing your hourly rate is that this should be based on your BILLABLE hours each week. The time that you spend on administrative tasks, looking for freelance writing gigs, reading emails, and so on are typically unpaid and, as such, need to be “rolled” into the billable hours in some way. Many freelancers figure that an article takes, let’s say, one hour to write, so they charge one hour of time. What they neglect to charge is the time spent getting that job, preparing the invoice, conversing with the client, collecting payment, and so forth.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Michael - Great point! You are dead on, and this is something that I forgot to mention. Thanks for the addition.