The Secret To Freelance Writing Success
Most freelance writers struggle to pay their bills and the reason that is because they sell themselves short. Much has been said about freelance writing charges and how far we can go to make a solid income which in the end relates to your personal business success.
When I started out I started with very low rates and in hindsight I honestly think this wasn’t such a smart idea and I”ll tell you why in a minute. I was selling myself short because I was new to the game and believed that in order to break into the industry I had to set my rates low.
Today I think it was wrong. While I do think that you can price yourself out of the market, I don’t think that you have much to worry about if you continue to deliver high quality work time and time again.
Even for freelancers who use English as their second language, there are plenty of ways with which they can get paid while writing in their native tongue.
When I look at plumbers for example, I still pay $70/hour for an apprentice who has no industry experience and limited knowledge. The same applies to many other service related professions and while plumbers do absolve and apprenticeship to get fully qualified, so do writers, just without an official paper to say they did.
Making the mistake of short selling yourself can cost you a lot of money over the year and only YOU alone know whether you do this or not.
One way to price yourself properly is to establish your rates and here is how you can do this.
Establishing your freelance writing rates
I get a lot of emails from new freelance writers who are lost in regards to setting their rates and I can’t blame them because I was too when I first started out in the industry.
The only way I was able to get a good feeling on rates was by visiting other writers in the industry and see what they charged.
Over time this helped me in establishing my rates to the extent where I was happy. Since then I have seen plenty of other freelance writers who offer higher rates than me and plenty who offer cheaper. I figure there will always be a scenario like this and to be honest, this doesn’t worry me at all.
I do not need to compete with any of you who are in this line of business, because the pot of opportunities is deep enough for many more.
The secret lies in the billable hours
To establish your ideal rates you first need to look at your target annual income. Say you target $40000/year.
Add to this your fixed business expenses, such as Internet provider costs, social security, office supplies (software, computer costs, hosting,domain name, etc.) and health insurance as well as taxes.
Here is how this would look on a spreadsheet:
- Targeted yearly income = $ 40,000
- Extras = $ 20,000 (please note that this figure is just for explanation purposes and not an accurate result of actual costs)
- Total target annually = $ 60,000
So your targeted gross income is $60,000 according to this example. But how can you take this figure and work out acceptable rates when clients knock on your door?
Here is how. Usually, freelance writers work about 21 hours per week. This work is not inclusive of promotion and checking your emails, but the actual work you do for clients.
If you take your target of $ 60,000/year and divide this by 1,000 billable hours it will relate to working around 21 hours per week.
Doping this in our example would mean that your target hourly rate is $60 an hour.
If you want to run a successful freelance writing business, then this is how you should budget your rates. When you first start out, it won’t be that easy because most likely you will not be fully booked from the moment go. But once you are, you need to seriously look at your rates in order to achieve that income you target.
This can be done with the right attitude, a sound business mind, time tracking and networking.
Monika
About the Author: I'm a passionate freelance writer and problogger. To further build my business I'm also in the process of building my own niche empire which pays me residual income.
Venkat | Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika,
I am still contemplating the idea of making a living writing. Nothing much happened still. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge about the rates.
Tumblemoose | Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
Monika,
This is one of the things that I struggled with and to some extent still do. It is a balance beam to walk that is very narrow. I think folks need to keep in mind that they are in this for the long haul and that they can build their pricing as they gain more clients and experience.
Do quality work every time, for every client. Ask for referrals, for they are gold. Have the confidence to set a pricing structure that pays you what you are worth. Do all of the other things that are necessary to get your brand out there, and if enough time passes you’ll get to where you need to be.
Cheers
George
Monika | Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
@ Venkat: You are welcome. It is OK to take time to decide whether you want to go down a certain avenue or not. I think unless you are ready, you won’t go ahead and that is perfectly fine. You wouldn’t want to rush into something without being sure.
@ George: Dito, I couldn’t have said it better. I totally agree with you on the balance thing. It is one area of my life I have managed to balance up until now.
Terry Didcott | Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
Hey Monika, its good to see you back on writing form again!
I did drop in and say hi a couple of posts back (late to the party as usual!) but one of the problems of having auto-accept on posts with previously accepts is that you don’t get the moderate email, so you probably didn’t know that I and several other people have commented there! Ho hum, the joys of running a social blog…
Anyway, I like your new theme, very chic!
As to writing, I’m still working with that same guy from Oz and doing enough casino writeups to keep me afloat… god help them if I ever go back to Vegas as I must know all the games and the tricks inside out by now lmao!!
On the other side, I’m concentrating hard on building my own link farm, only now I’m more focused than I was and have everything down on a spreadsheet where I can see whats what. I’m seeing results from the first projects that I started only 3 months ago, so I’m confident this is going to get big.
Monika, I’m going to email you with something that you might not know about that is happening in the Bike Shed and its big for anyone who has the time and motivation…
There. Nothing like a teaser…
Anyway, keep well and keep on keeping on!
Terry
Davina | Nov 23, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika. Thanks for sharing this information. One question I have is how does a writer break into the freelance writing field? I’ve spent many years proofreading and have done some editing, but I haven’t had a lot of experience as a professional writer.
While I’m working on building a life coaching business I recognize that I need a couple of income streams and writing is one other choice. It’s something I’m passionate about. What would you recommend a new writer do to build a portfolio? Seems most people would rather hire someone with a portfolio, yet I can’t get a portfolio if I don’t do any writing. I wrote all the copy for my website and squeeze page, and of course my blog (which is more of a personal nature). That is really the only “portfolio” I have.
Cath Lawson | Nov 24, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika – I totally agree – underpricing is never a good idea at first. I’ve sent bills back to folk who have gone on their own and they’re charging half the price their previous employer charged.
Don’t worry, I’m not insane but I was marking their bills up by 20% to insurance companies for the work they did, so their low bills weren’t doing my any favours either.
If you charge low to begin with, you often attract the sort of customers you don’t want.
vodkamom | Dec 12, 2008 | Reply
That was very informative. I currently write a monthly column for our local paper, and also do a bit of freelancing for them. I am a kindergarten teacher, blogger, wife, mother and basically INSANELY busy person. I want you to just FIND me freelance work. How about that?
Lynn A Bacarella Wright | Apr 12, 2010 | Reply
Dear Monika,
At last, someone else who will put figures on paper. I just got my first writing job after only one month of grueling effort with Examiner.com. They work like Hubs do, or monetizing tools like Adsense. Even after I was accepted for the job and was infoemed in the acceptance level tha payment had t do with volume and “quality” of readers, advertizing and length of session, stc., Mr. Hall mentioned that they offered competitive rates, I sent an email asking for those “competitive rates. The terms were reiterated in greater detail as if I had simply not understood.
I ma being ashed for three to four post a week. I have an area of coverage, Religion and Spirituality, but beyond professional standards, I am free to write as I will. Of course I want to draw, maintain and build my readership, so I need to discover the hot issues, while using my intuition to field topics that may need to be explored. I am free to leave the the Examine at any point without recrimination. I will learn.
Lynn A Bacarella Wright | Apr 12, 2010 | Reply
Dear Monika,
My comment was quite involved, and by the time I had written “Sincerely,” It was stolen because “a duplicate comment was detected. We believe we have seen this comment(?) before.” This happened to me one other time with wordpress.
Thank you for putting figures on paper. I did have a question, but I will research online. Chances are you don’t need more work.
This is the second article I have read today in succession. I found you today. I both enjoy and learn from your work.
Sincerely,
Lynn Alessandra Bacarella Wright [Lynn]