Freelance Writers: How to Gear Up for Work in 2009 (Part III)

This is the last part of the series. Now that you’ve chosen your target market and selected a list of services, as discussed in Parts I and II of preparing for more freelance writing jobs in 2009, it’s time to set your rates.

How to Set Your Freelance Writing Rates to Make a Real Living

There are probably as many ways to set freelance writing rates as there are freelance writers, so I’m going to simply share with you how I do it, for it is the only honest advice I can give.

Consider Your Financial Needs: When I offer a service, one of the first things I do is figure out how much I need to make. Some will say that you should first research what others are charging for the service. And, we’ll get to that.

But, the reason I consider my financial needs first is – no matter what others are charging, I need to know exactly what my financial needs are moving forward to know if it’s going to be worth my while to offer a certain service.

For example, when I first started writing SEO content, I knew that my hourly rate needed to be, at minimum, around $35/hour to meet my financial obligations. I kept this in mind when I moved on to the second step in the process of setting my rates, which is . . .

Research the Market: This is when you want to research what others are charging.

Continuing to use my foray into SEO writing as an example, when I started to look into what others were charging, I found this type of writing paid between a low of $3 for a 400-500 word article, on up to $35-$50. I found some that charged significantly more, and plenty who charged significantly less.

Time: The last thing I do is figure out how much time it will take me to produce a service. For example, after writing a few SEO articles, I soon found that it took me between 20 minutes (for topics I knew intimately) on up to an hour (for subjects I had to research) to produce a 400-500 word article.

So, I initially set my rates at $25 for a 400-500 word article (my rates have since increased). Why did I settle on this rate? I simply kept my minimum financial requirements in mind, along with how long it took me to write an article.

And, I figured that if some were getting at least $35 for an SEO article, then there were clients out there who would pay $25. All I needed to do was find them, and stay away from those who wanted to pay bottom of the barrel rates – and there were a lot of them!

That’s it – then I started to market.

My Personal View on How to Set Your Freelance Writing Rates

When I first started SEO writing, I set my rates somewhere in the middle – high enough to make a living, but low enough to attract a lot of business.

I knew that with my writing skills, education and experience, I could charge more. BUT I initially wanted to build up a cache of clients in this new niche. So I kept that in mind my first year as an SEO writer. Then, and only then, did I start to raise rates. And, even though my rates are still far below what many charge, the thing I keep in mind is NOT what the market is doing, but do I make enough to pay my bills.

As a freelance writer, this is always my overriding objective. Freelance writing is a field where rates are all over the place. Some will harangue you for your rates, ie, “you’re bringing the industry standard down; you should charge more.”

But, when the mortgage comes due at the first of the month, I’m the only one who has to pay it. So, my view is to that you should set your freelance writing rates with your financial needs in mind. Period.

Good luck as you gear up for more freelance writing work than you can handle in 2009! Happy holidays everybody.

Written by Yuwanda Black from Inkwell Editorial
Posted on December 24th, 2008 and filed under Writing
Do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates

3