by Rachel Smith
02 March 2016
Hey Rachel and/or Leo. I’ve been freelancing for nearly a year now and am currently branching out to new clients. One of them has asked me to set up a profile on a platform, which includes setting my rates. My current client pays what I’ve been told are ‘quite low’ rates, so I was wondering what the industry standard rates for a freelance blogger / copywriter were? Obviously they vary based on experience, but if you could provide a median estimate that would be awesome. Gene
I’m guessing by freelance blogger/copywriter you actually mean content writer – that is, a creative who produces relevant content for different websites. (Which may often mean writing blog posts for a client’s blog.)
In terms of payment for this type of work, it’s a tricky one. Don’t get me started on sites which offer you content / blog posts for as low as $5. Still, I’d love to know what ‘quite low’ means in terms of your current client. Is it $50/post? $20? Less? There doesn’t really seem to be an industry standard yet, so more than ever your negotiation skills (and of course your writing and SEO skills, too) come into play.
We’re actually in the midst of running our latest pay rates survey, and don’t have 2015 figures yet, but you’re welcome to check out the infographic from the previous survey we did, with results released Dec 2014 – that’s here. In a nutshell, 15 percent of content writers told us they got paid between 20-50c/word, another 15 percent of respondents said they were paid between 50-70c/word. A further 19 percent were paid by the ‘package’.
I’ve also written before about how I’ve been paid flat rates for content – everything from $200-600 depending on length, interviews required (or not), so I think it really is about setting a rate that you feel is fair in terms of work involved and your experience/skills and quoting that to clients. I hope that helps, Gene, and maybe some of our digital veterans will weigh in below on this rather grey area.
(Hint: for anyone who hasn’t done our current pay rates survey yet, you can take it here. Please do! The more responses we get, the better in terms of providing a solid snapshot of where the industry is currently at and what we’re all being paid).
