As a freelance writer, I find it challenging to determine the price on some of my projects. I usually end up selling myself short. Kate is here to share her ideas with us on how to determine the correct price for our work.
Freelance writing is a dream job for a lot of writers and bloggers out there, and with good reason – you get to basically set your own schedule and write what you want to write about. One of the biggest obstacles is figuring out how much to charge for your work – after all, you can’t be too expensive because you don’t want people to pass you by because you’re too pricey, but you can’t be too cheap either because hey, you’ve got bills to pay too! So how do you determine the right price for your writing projects?
Monthly Fees
To start, you have to determine how much money you need to survive. That means factoring in how much your rent or mortgage costs, your static monthly bills, your grocery and gas costs, and how much extra you need in case of an emergency or for some extra padding. At the end of the day, no matter what you’re fees are you have to be able to pay all of your bills otherwise freelance writing isn’t going to work out.
Experience
You’ll need to establish if you’re charging an hourly rate or if you’re charging per project – or if you’ll do a combination. Your rate per project should be loosely based off of your hourly rate anyway, so figuring that out is key when setting your rates. Be careful when charging hourly rates because you don’t want to end up in a position where you finish a project much sooner than you first thought you would and are now making less on a project then you originally thought you would. You’ll also have to take into consideration how much experience you have writing – seasoned writers with a lot of credible references and examples of work can charge more than those that are fresh out of school. If you’re moving from a salaried position to freelance writing, take a look at your current salary and see how it translates to what you’re moving into, especially if you’re leaving a full-time copywriting or writing position to freelance.
Regularly Evaluate
As your experience increases, your rates should to, so you’ll need to go through a few times a year and look at your rates, your work, and the feedback you’ve received from clients and assess if you’re still charging enough money. If you can back up higher prices with glowing accolades to a job well done, go for it. If you can’t back it up though, you’ll need to evaluate why you can’t raise your prices yet and fix it so that the next time around you can. Also, figuring out the market value of freelance writers in your area is a good way to determine if you’re charging too much or too little.
Don’t Sell Yourself Short
Freelance writers, especially new ones, have a tendency to low-ball their prices and thus ask for less then they’re actually worth. If you know you have a good product, charge for it. Freelancing can be a scary world to jump into, but people will pay a good price for excellent work – don’t sell yourself short.
Kate is a regular contributor to InternetService.net and can be reached at [email protected].
