How Much Do You Think Freelance Writers Are Worth?

Something tells me "grammatically correct keyword dribble" - is exactly what most of the e-commerece websites are looking for. :/

A big error a lot of writers make in this business is selling themselves cheap. Some people will absolutely REFUSE to pay 5$ dollars for an article assuming that it will be poorly written.

It's better to market yourself as a premium writer and charge whatever you want for your service. This way, you'll attract better customers (bargain hunters are usually absolute pains in the a$$), and get more return business since cheapos usually end up falling flat on their faces.

Me personally I pay $20 or more for an articles and have 10+ made each day. It only makes sense to pay for top writers. The better your content the more people will share or continue to follow you.

Some are worth nothing... some are worth thousands of dollars plus a percent of sales.

Remember Marketing 101: People buying drills don't really want drills... they want holes.

Same with writing... results are what determines value.

I fully agree with what's been said here already, and the problem I've found is that most site owners have no idea what they should be buying to begin with.

For example, I've been looking for a local apprentice for awhile now to handle my overflow, and the person I interviewed this week sent me a sample that was on a B2B tech company's site. You literally couldn't read it though because it was so overly technical, and I had to explain to her that the content was horrible from a consumer standpoint.

Of course, she said, "But that's what the consumer wanted," and she did right by delivering it, but that page will never make that company any money. Because anyone looking within that niche will see it and think, "Okay...I have no idea what this means." So regardless of what she was paid, it was a bad investment.

Others are at the opposite end of the spectrum and they just want words on a page, because they don't know that a website's success ultimately hinges on how people react to it. The same goes for email marketing, video marketing and all the other tools as well...the words really matter.

So to get back to the original question, a solid freelance writer is worth (in my opinion) the return on investment their content provides within the first few days of being live. Because that's what the client should be willing to pay since it's easy money in their pockets from day 3-4 forward. Now, this makes it a little harder to bid on because you probably don't know how well that client can use your content...but it's still your job to try and figure that out since you're the one giving a bid amount.

As a rule of thumb though, if they seem clueless about how to monetize their site then I try to stay clear. Because they definitely won't be able to recognize your value.

As a freelance writer you get to decide what you should be paid.

If you have good reputation and reviews, you could do
very well by setting a standard for yourself especially when
your piece is irresistible.

It's not surprising to see someone asking for 20 articles at $9.
That's even fair, some people don't ever buy or write articles,
they believe in scraping and spinning.

Many more still know the value of good article, you probably
should double your marketing effort.

I find that 'copywriters' often seem to better understand their customer & audiences needs, as well as seo structure, and it may be a completely different product (of writing) then the standard customer is willing to pay for, it does seem that by changing the title from 'freelance writer' to 'copywriter' may be a solution for you.

I visited a link from here the other day, and viewed a copywriter's landing page, and the cost was in excess of $4 per word and that didn't include royalties or other contractual costs.