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Early, all freelancers face up a critical selection: how much to charge for their piece of work.

This question almost always has more than than i answer because some clients tin can afford to pay more than than others and some freelance writing platforms limit writers' leeway in setting their ain rates.

Only the rates you earn on your first projects acquit directly on how much you tin charge in the future — affecting the size of hereafter charge per unit increases.

And so you must examine the key factors to consider when setting freelance writing rates and empathise how to accomplish higher rates over time without scaring away clients.

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Pro tip: Take you been thinking about becoming a freelance author but unsure how to get started? Consider taking an online course that volition show yous step-by-stride how one writer congenital her freelance writing business to over $200,000 per year.

Setting Your Freelance Writing Rates: Factors to Consider

The economic value of a given slice of copywriting — and its author — depends on a multitude of factors.

None of these factors is immutable, though some are easier to modify than others. For instance, it'south easier to piece of work on improving the quality of your writing as yous gain experience than to put yourself through law school or amass a massive Instagram following.

Knowing what these factors are and how they affect freelance writing clients' hiring decisions puts you in a ameliorate position for long-term freelance writing success.

The Quality of Your Writing

Writing quality is hard to quantify — and to some extent, it'southward subjective.

That said, it'due south undeniably one of the near important factors affecting what freelance writers can charge. Good writing is worth more than mediocre writing, and excellent writing is worth more than than either — simple as that.

You're non the best judge of your writing quality. Ultimately, it's clients' opinions that thing since they're the ones willing to pay (or not) for your piece of work.

Rather than wait for clients to reject to hire you or end your working relationship because they're not satisfied with the quality of your piece of work, plug some of your piece of work into a grammar or writing analysis app. Compare your results with available examples of splendid writing, such as glossy magazine articles.

Clarify My Writing is a useful costless tool that assesses factors similar overall readability, give-and-take density, and passive phonation usage. Grammarly is a more robust tool that offers suggestions and corrections to meaningfully improve the quality of your writing.

Some freelance writing platforms, such every bit Textbroker, automatically or manually evaluate writing quality as well, with feedback and tips for improvement from homo editors.

Play around with these resources and have their recommendations to centre.

Prior Writing & Editing Experience

Like whatever profession, writing rewards those with prior experience. Writers with extensive bodies of published work or verifiable career experience related to writing and editing generally accept less trouble finding clients willing to pay what they're worth.

If you're returning to the writing market later on some time away, collect your best clips (published or non) and post or link to them on your website, blog, or a free professional portfolio website like Clippings.me.

Add any relevant professional experience, such equally writing-related jobs or recurring contributorships, to your LinkedIn profile and any freelance website profiles you create.

A total lack of freelance writing experience isn't the finish of the world. All writers begin somewhere. Just exist realistic about discerning clients' willingness to work with unproven freelancers and prepare for lots of unsatisfying, relatively depression-paying assignments in the early days.

The Type & Field of study Matter of Your Writing

Some types of writing and subject areas pay meliorate than others.

Despite the outsize success enjoyed by a pocket-sized minority of novelists and essayists, writers generally observe it challenging to make a living in creative pursuits — whether poetry or prose — than in practical, pop nonfiction domains like personal finance, careers, and business.

Practicality and popularity aren't the simply ii variables at piece of work here. A given subject's marketability also depends on the level of noesis or expertise needed to create valuable content.

For instance, recipe websites are incredibly pop but considering amateurs can easily postal service cooking content that readers find useful, publishers rarely pay for those contributions.

Paying assignments are scarce for entry-level food writers, and the best-paying work oft involves working directly with food brands' marketing departments rather than cooking or dining websites similar Allrecipes and Eater.

Professional Credentials, Experience, & Subject Matter Expertise

Prior writing or editing experience is extremely helpful for freelance writers hoping to concenter clients' attending and increase pricing leverage early on.

Formal professional credentials and verifiable field of study matter expertise are even more essential, specially in the absence of a significant trunk of prior writing.

If you have a professional person caste or certification — whether that'due south a law caste, medical license, or Lean Six Sigma certificate — or relevant career experience in a cognition-driven field — y'all tin can find plenty of clients willing to pay for your work.

If you're a highly compensated professional, freelance writing most likely isn't and won't be your full-fourth dimension task. But in addition to serving equally an fantabulous source of side income, information technology could be a boon for your bodily career.

Any published or publicly available work that underscores your expertise is reassuring for prospective patients, clients, or employers — non to mention your existing clients or bosses (if you have them).

The Strength of Your Personal Brand

Freelance copywriters with professional person credentials and objective expertise often leverage their work to accelerate their personal brands. Often, however, a strong personal brand comes starting time.

If you're recognized every bit an expert or influencer on a particular topic and have the social media post-obit or heavily trafficked website to dorsum it up, y'all stand for a premade source of traffic and clicks for publishers and brands.

All other things being equal, it's much less hard to break into writing near the subjects y'all know best and commanding a off-white cost for your work.

Copyright Assignment

Nearly freelance writing contracts include a clause assigning copyright to the client. Substantially, copyright consignment gives the customer free rein to use the work as they wish — publishing or not publishing, updating, editing, and removing it from the Spider web as they see fit.

Once the author assigns copyright, they can't plough effectually and sell the same work to another client or self-publish without the client's permission (other than as office of a professional portfolio).

Client-freelancer relationships in which copyright is assigned are commonly known equally work-for-rent arrangements. Considering they give the client sectional rights to the finished product, work-for-hire arrangements invariably pay improve than arrangements that don't involve assignment of copyright.

Don't agree to a lower-paying arrangement that doesn't assign copyright without thinking carefully most what you'd really do with the rights to the work.

Compensation Structure

Oftentimes, how and how much you're compensated for your freelance writing go mitt in hand. Mutual compensation structures include but aren't limited to:

Per discussion
Per give-and-take, plus a bonus per unit of traffic (oft 1,000 views) to published work
Per article, post, or assignment with longer or more involved assignments paid at college multiples
By the hr (hourly rates are more than common for longer assignments and those that involve working closely with clients, such equally editing or ghostwriting manuscripts)
Apartment fee or servant (likewise more common for longer or more research-intensive assignments, such as compiling a technical transmission).

Although every author-client human relationship is dissimilar, flat-fee and per-work compensation sometimes result in lower pay per unit of work (such every bit words or time). Likewise, clients who offer traffic bonuses accept elbowroom to offer lower pay per give-and-take in exchange.

That isn't to argue against those types of arrangements — challenging, highly involved flat-fee projects that earn acclamation from clients could be a boon for your writing career. And traffic-based bonuses are liable to increase over fourth dimension as the human relationship continues.

The State of the Labor Marketplace

Like pay in other fields, freelance writing rates are highly dependent on the laws of supply and demand. Writers and editors tend to take better pricing power when labor is deficient than when aspiring freelancers overflowing the market.

Having written my way through a full business cycle, I can personally adjure to this phenomenon. The writers I knew were much more likely to lowball clients and take piddling hourly rates in the weak labor market of the late 2000s and early 2010s than in the stretch of full employment that closed out the decade.

Tips to Increase Your Freelance Writing Rates Over Time

Freelance writers don't take to charge the same rate forever.

Follow these well-worn strategies to lay the groundwork for higher freelance writing earnings down the road and to increase your chances of success when yous're fix to request (or demand) a rate increment.

Keep Your Body of Work Electric current

Your free online portfolio doesn't do much good when it'south two years out of engagement.

To ensure clients accept an accurate picture of your entire body of work and a improve sense of your true value as a author, brand a habit of updating your public portfolio whenever y'all complete (or a client publishes) an assignment.

Relieve published works to PDF to avoid broken links from your portfolio. And back everything upward to your computer and an external hard bulldoze for safekeeping.

Create a Visible Online Presence

Every active professional freelance writer needs a three-pillared online presence:

A Social Media Presence. To start, focus on LinkedIn. Even if freelance writing isn't your sole profession, your LinkedIn profile should make information technology patently that you're a writer in active search of new clients and freelancing relationships. Every bit your writing career progresses and your body of work grows, use other platforms — Twitter, Instagram — to promote published work, announce forthcoming releases, and evidence off your subject matter expertise.
Freelance Work and Portfolio Websites. Create and maintain active profiles on freelance piece of work sites that cater to freelance writers, such equally Upwork and Freelancer. Even if they're not your primary source of writing work, they're visible in Google search and frequented past paying clients looking for writers with the correct skill set.
A Personal Website. Use your website to highlight your value as a author: your areas of expertise, methods, media, upcoming releases or events, and whatever past work you're exceptionally proud of. Update your website'due south web log regularly, if only to sustain a perception of expertise and activity.

A well-rounded online presence creates the impression — existent or non — that yous're a prolific, highly marketable writer with lots of satisfied clients, an expansive trunk of work to your proper noun, and some combination of expertise and skill.

If yous work hard and produce pieces y'all can be proud of, perception can become reality over time. Meanwhile, leverage it to increase your freelance writing rates.

Pro tip: If you lot don't have a personal website started, you can become one up and running chop-chop through Bluehost. Set a domain name and hosting for as low as $4 per month.

Demonstrate Subject Affair Expertise

It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of demonstrating relevant skills and expertise to prospective freelance clients and anyone else whose opinions matter.

Information technology's not just about keeping your LinkedIn profile up to date. It means:

Listing all relevant skills and credentials on your LinkedIn profile, including esoteric certifications or recognitions that hateful lilliputian to amateurs
Seeking endorsements and breezy reviews from past clients on LinkedIn and whatever freelance piece of work platform profiles
Using LinkedIn updates to promote published work and demonstrate you understand what you wrote and why it'south relevant
Posting client testimonials and professional reviews or praise for published piece of work on your website, ideally from sources considered authoritative (such as experts or leaders in the fields you write most)

Resist the Temptation to Give Work Away for Gratis

When the alternative is forgoing a published byline altogether, giving away work for gratis makes sense for novice writers. At to the lowest degree it results in a publicly visible example of your piece of work for hereafter clients.

Hard equally it is, specially in the early going, you should avoid freelance writing relationships that condition time to come paid assignments on your willingness to work for free — even on a single assignment.

Many freelance clients ask new writers to submit i or two original articles to showcase their writing skills and general expertise. You lot won't completely avert this ask, but you're well inside your rights to insist on one of two conditions when it comes:

That whatever exam submission be compensated at the client's going rate, even if unpublished
That the client accept unpublished samples you lot've already written for this purpose

Bailiwick is essential here. Agreeing to work for free from the jump creates the impression among clients — warranted or not — that you're a pushover. That can adversely bear on your negotiating ability when the fourth dimension comes to increase your rates.

The client could reason, perhaps correctly, that you lot'd rather proceed working at the aforementioned charge per unit (and getting paid) than walking abroad from the relationship altogether.

Make a Reasonable Inquire & Be Prepared to Negotiate

When negotiating a charge per unit increase, you can do two things at once: brand a reasonable simply ambitious first ask and prepare for at least i further round of negotiation from there.

Don't preemptively limit your first ask to a charge per unit y'all're pretty sure the client will have rather than get into an extended back-and-forth.

The typical client is happy to negotiate and won't hold an ambitious merely reasonable enquire against you lot, especially if you've been working together happily for months or years and you lot make a good case for why you lot deserve more.

At the same time, asking for way more than your writing is worth (or than the client's upkeep can muster) just prolongs the process and can lead to hurt feelings.

Think alee to where yous want the negotiation to end up — say, a net increase of 15% over your current rate — and target your commencement enquire accordingly.

Wean Yourself Off Freelance Platforms That Take Large Cuts

For many aspiring freelance writers, prioritizing paying writing gigs over satisfying engagements with the potential to turn into something more, freelance chore websites like Upwork and Freelancer correspond the path of least resistance. They have arable work and a steady stream of lenient, inexperienced clients who are easy to work with on a one-off footing.

Merely contest on these sites is fierce, the pay ofttimes insultingly low, and the platforms' cutting of client payments substantial (Upwork's is v% to 20% of client payments, depending on chore size).

As expert every bit they are for exposure, you lot should wean yourself off them every bit before long as y'all're able and seek out direct client relationships that afford better pricing power.

Collect Testimonials From Satisfied Clients

Go on to collect testimonials from satisfied clients and highlight the most flattering on your website, your clips website (if the format allows), and your LinkedIn profile. Recent testimonials carry more than weight with clients than outdated ones.

Piece of work Toward Bigger, Longer-Term Projects

If you lot aim to make a living equally a writer, a long cord of insecure contributor relationships and one-off assignments brokered by freelance platforms with low rates can't be your endgame.

A career built effectually longer-term relationships and bigger projects is one more likely to value your piece of work accordingly and advance your professional standing.

How your stable, successful contained writing career looks depends on your skills and interests. The nigh successful and satisfied writers I know by and large piece of work within narrow niches or provide very specific services.

For example, one professional editor I know supplements his total-time income past ghostwriting vanity memoirs and family histories for prosperous people not notable enough to attract professional person biographers. With a wealthy client base and an impressive body of work, he'due south basically able to proper noun his price — something all freelancers, skill set nonetheless, can aspire to.

Final Word

Freelance writing is not difficult to break into. With dozens of freelance platforms catering to writers and other creatives, getting started is as easy every bit creating a writer profile and bidding on clients' projects.

But don't expect to earn a full-time living or stop living paycheck to paycheck during your showtime months equally a freelance writer. Without prior experience, you must outset on the everyman rungs of the ladder, working for clients with tight budgets and often uninspiring assignments. Building a robust body of work takes time, fifty-fifty for prolific writers.

Proceed at it long enough, though, and the moving picture should ameliorate. You tin settle into a productive niche, connect with clients willing to pay you lot what you're worth, and feel less urgency to hunt lower-paying or unsatisfying work to make ends run into.

Y'all'll also gain the confidence to asking a raise when warranted. And and so your freelance writing rates, along with your total take-home, will increment.

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Source: https://www.moneycrashers.com/factors-consider-set-freelance-writing-rates/