How to determine your freelance writing rates
+ pitch to Nat Geo Travel (and 8 other freelance opportunities)
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It’s the million-dollar question everyone is asking; how do I determine my rates as a freelance writer? How do I make sure I’m not undercharging, or overcharging (and ‘scaring’ prospective customers/publications away)?
Let me start by saying that this topic is complex. There’s a lot of negotiation involved and a bit of give and take. If you’re just starting out, for instance, you may be happy with a few low paying articles just to get your name out there. That way you can use those articles to build your portfolio, pitch other clients and grow your income from there. Don’t get stuck in that first stage for too long though - know when to give yourself a pay rise (more about this in a different newsletter).
In my opinion, a few things are really important aside from building experience and honing your skillset over time:
Never miss a deadline
Write high-quality copy that needs little to no edits
Be open to revisions and feedback
Know how to pitch
And last but not least, find your niche
I’ll explore the topic of finding your niche, and how to find work, in other upcoming newsletters but in short, by maintaining the points above, you’re showing your client/editor that you’re professional, reliable, an expert in your niche and easy to work with. Now we’ve got those foundational aspects sorted, how do you set your rates?
Set a goal salary first
A good place to start is figuring out your preferred annual salary before tax and dividing it by the hours you want to work in a year. What you’re left with at the end would be the minimum hourly rate you’d have to charge to meet your income goal.
Here’s a hypothetical example (all in USD):
Tip: HubSpot has a great hourly rate calculator on its site too.
You want to work four days a week - eight hours a day - 48 weeks out of the year
You’d like to earn $80,000 a year before tax
You want four vacation weeks a year
That means you need to work 1536 hours a year
Which comes to an hourly rate of about $52
Do keep in mind that depending on the country you’re paying taxes in, as much as 50% of your freelance income will go to taxes, health insurance, other overheads, sick leave, paid annual leave and (I’d recommend this) an emergency fund. So while an hourly rate of $52 may seem like a lot, you could end up with only $26 net per hour.
Just like many other freelance writers I know, my rates are still a bit all over the place. What I charge depends on:
the type of work (opinion piece vs research-based article for instance)
the type of client (enterprise vs startup for instance)
if the work is expected to be a one-off gig or a long-term relationship
To account for all of those different scenarios, I work with a minimum hourly rate, a minimum rate per word and a flat fee per x amount of words.
Tip: when negotiating rates, always ask the client first what they’re looking to pay for the work you’re discussing before mentioning your rates. It’ll give you a good indication of their budget and you can negotiate from there.
What about a rate per word or a flat fee?
Whether to charge your hourly rate, rate per word or a flat fee depends on both the client and how they prefer to work as well as what makes sense for the project. You might, for instance, decide to charge in a different way - as well as a different rate - for an article that requires a bunch of interviews and research versus an article that’s mostly your opinion.
This is also why it’s important to find a niche as a writer: it’s beneficial for both you and the client. For instance, let’s say a client wants you to write 500 words for a research-based article and you know you can do it in two hours because it’s right up your alley, you have lots of expertise on the subject and you already know which research papers you could refer to.
The fact you can turn that article around relatively quickly saves both you and the client time and money. It also makes it easier for the client to reach out to you with work. More on this in another newsletter.
The takeaway
In some cases, you have to think about the bigger picture and weigh up the importance of steady work versus better-paid work. Let’s say you’ve got a client who can give you two articles a month, each month, but they can only pay $45 an hour. Then there’s another client you work for sporadically, but they pay $100 an hour. The work you do sporadically for the latter client balances out the cut you had to make for your hourly rate to work for the first client. Determining your rates isn’t an exact science but hopefully the tips above will help you to make the process a bit more streamlined.
Like what you’re reading?
Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash
This week’s great reads
I think it’s important to read widely, so you can expect to find a broad range of topics in this list every week:
Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash
Freelance/contracting jobs opportunities
Cold pitching companies and publications you’d love to write for is a great way to grow your confidence and your network, but if you’re keen on “warmer” leads - here are a few opportunities I found.
Apply for a freelance copy editor position for a website about cats
Use your writing skills to help CXL.com with email outreach experiments
Note: I try to only include opportunities that are decent and well-paid. However, more often than not rates, unfortunately, aren’t discussed in the call for pitches/writers. You can check Who Pays Writers? or Contently’s freelance rates database to see if the publication or organisation is listed and what they tend to pay.
That’s it for this week’s WordCount! If you’ve enjoyed reading this edition, please feel free to share it with fellow freelance writers. Or have a look at last week’s newsletter.