Writers, Charge What You’re Worth
This has been a hard one for me. When I first started freelancing, I accepted a job for $20/hr. and I thought I had it made. Having just left Corporate America the year prior to be a stay-at-home mom, I thought, “$20 bucks an hour to just write at home from my couch?! Sign me all the way up.”
Do you know how much WORK it is to make any kind of decent money when you’re only charging $20/hr.? Ask your teenager, they’ll tell you, it’s a lot. But I figured I was just starting out so that was fine. The next job, I asked for $40/hr. ,and again, I thought I had it made. But unless you have a very hefty roster of clients that will keep you busy over 40 hours a week, these checks are going to be small. And I didn’t want to work full time, I wanted a flexible schedule.
I had a mentor tell me that I really should be asking for more, especially with my background, education and skill set. So I did a LOT of research. I read a lot of books and looked at a lot of forums and pricing guides to get an estimate of what my services are worth.
When I launched FOXTALE, I thought I was going to aim higher with my rates. A friend with their own digital marketing firm told me “never charge hourly because you’ll only be punishing yourself for getting faster.” I didn’t believe her at first, if I’m being honest.
Until I started billing by the hour with a growing client roster. I quickly realized that the email that took me 2 hours last month now only takes me one hour and I just halved my take-home for no good reason. So it was back to the pricing drawing board.
Charge a flat fee
Another downside to charging by the hour is that you’re only getting paid when you’re writing. You aren’t getting paid for client outreach, emails, networking, admin work, all those other day-to-day tasks that if you had a salaried job, you’d be getting paid to do.
So I decided to structure my fees as flat or per-project fees. That way my clients always know that a blog post will be $200, for example, no matter if it takes me one hour or three. There are no surprises on their end when the bill shows up, and you’re getting paid what your time and skills are worth.
How to best do this is get an idea of what you want to charge per hour, then estimate how long a typical project will take you. If an article typically takes you an hour and a half to two hours and. you want to get $100/hr., charge $200 per article. There will be ones that take you a little more time, and some take you a little less.
You can get into charging per word and all sorts of other pricing strategies, but this is what I’ve found to work best for me so far.
And don’t be afraid to ask for what you want
People will pay what you ask if you are confident and have the skills to back it up. And if you’re pricing your services too high, you’ll figure that out soon enough and be able to course correct. Don’t sell yourself short; your skills are worth the money.
