{"id":7732,"date":"2020-02-06T13:50:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T21:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/?p=7732"},"modified":"2020-11-23T07:58:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T15:58:47","slug":"ive-charged-from-50-a-page-to-500-a-page-heres-what-ive-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/uncategorized\/ive-charged-from-50-a-page-to-500-a-page-heres-what-ive-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve charged from $50 a page to $500 a page\u2014Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jenna Inouye <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Indeed, the average salary for a Freelance Writer is $22.22 per hour<\/a>. But as freelance writers, we don\u2019t get paid by the hour. We get paid by the piece, by the page, or by the word. That can make figuring out our own rates complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over\nthe course of my career, I\u2019ve spoken with perhaps hundreds of freelance\nwriters. Some worked for $0.05 a word\u2014roughly $12 a page. Others wouldn\u2019t even\nlook at a project for less than $500. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s\nmy confession: I made more than almost all of them. And to start, I did it at\nvery low rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nentered into<\/em> the freelance writing\nworld making over $7,000 a month, and I did it by writing at around $0.05 a\nword or less.<\/em> Over time, I\u2019ve started\nworking at progressively higher rates. But even as my rates shifted, the amount\nof work I did never really changed. Today, I\u2019ve held rates anywhere from $50 a\npage to $500 a page, and I can say with confidence: My hourly <\/em>rate remains largely the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\nfor a simple reason. A $500 page is invariably going to take me ten times as long<\/em> as a $50 page to\ncomplete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early\nin my career, I simply stopped caring about the amount of money I asked for.\nInstead, I let clients tell me how much they wanted to pay, and I tailored my\nwork product to that. If they wanted to pay $20, they would get a research\nfree, off-the-cuff blog post. If they wanted to pay $200, they would get\nin-depth research and some light editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve\ngotten a lot<\/em> of criticism for this\nthroughout the writing community. Many believe that whenever a writer accepts a\nlower rate, they are driving the rates down for everyone. I would argue that\nthe higher paid work has always been out there and will always be out\nthere\u2014it\u2019s just more difficult to get, and for some of us, not always worth it.\nAnd I would argue it\u2019s not about the length of the work itself, it\u2019s about how\nlong it takes you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nme, a $10,000 project is simply going to inhabit a different mental space than\na $100 project. When writing an eBook for $10,000, I need<\/em> to be focused, on task, and available. When completing a $100\nblog post, I can simply drop in and drop out. Once the project is done, it\u2019s\ndone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And,\nmore importantly, a $100 project is always going to be available. For a $10,000\nproject, I need to do a pitch<\/em>. I need\nto make a proposal.<\/em> I need to do work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve\nfound that \u201clighter\u201d projects are what I need to mentally reboot after larger,\nlonger, and more extensive projects. When I\u2019ve spoken to writers who command\n$500 per page rates as a rule<\/em>, I\u2019ve\nfound that they work very little. Their projects are, of course, too demanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s\na certain feeling as writers that we want<\/em>\nthat. That we want every<\/em> article we\nwrite to be a $500 article that merits critical approval, and that we want to\nbe paid to our very best every time we write a piece. But for me, personally<\/em>, making every article a $500\narticle would be exhausting, bordering on impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nmake the amount of money that I do, I need to have that \u201cpopcorn\u201d work. I need\nto have work that I can pop in and pop out of; I need to have work that is\nlight and transient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nwhile that work may not be very highly paid, it is, at very least, consistent.<\/em> As a freelance writer,\nconsistent and constant work is an investment in yourself.<\/em> The more you write, the easier it becomes to write. The more work\nyou do for clients, the easier it becomes to procure additional clients. You\u2019re\npaying your future self through your experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to remember that as a freelance <\/em>writer, your hours aren\u2019t just wrapped up in your work<\/em>, but also the administration <\/em>of your work\u2014there\u2019s an invisible overhead to taking higher-paid jobs. For me, interacting with clients is a nightmare<\/em>, and the more I need to interact with them, the more my anxiety grows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus,\na $10,000 project may pay more per page, but how much time am I spending\nsending emails? How much time am I spending courting clients? How much time am\nI spending avoiding<\/em> them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nmy personal experience, I found that obsessing over rates didn\u2019t help me. There\nwas this sort of internal, instinctive valuation of my time that was always\npresent. If I was going to charge more, I was going to work more<\/em>, too. It was always going to even out, regardless of what\nI asked for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I would say as a writer, that you should pay attention to both your per-project rates and your per-hour rates\u2014and you also need to make sure to value your administrative time as well. There may be patterns there that make it much easier for you to value your work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I can look at a project and value it in terms of hourly rate<\/em> rather than words. \u201cThis project is going to take me five hours, so it\u2019s a $500 project.\u201d And it goes the other way, too: \u201cThis project is paying $50, I\u2019ll spend an hour on it.\u201d This has made my earnings remarkably consistent over time and<\/em> allowed me to be flexible about the types of projects I take on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Bio: Jenna Inouye<\/strong> is a professional ghostwriter with the Michael Levin Writing Company, as well as the owner of Commonspace Game Cafe. She focuses primarily on the areas of technology, finance, and marketing. She can be found at GhostOnDemand.com<\/a>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenna Inouye According to Indeed, the average salary for a Freelance Writer is $22.22 per hour. But as freelance writers, we don\u2019t get paid by the hour. We get paid by the piece, by the page, or by the word. That can make figuring out our own rates complicated. Over the course of my career,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":8536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7732"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7736,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions\/7736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomwithwriting.com\/freedom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}