How much should I charge for freelancing?

Vivo, being knowledgeable on a subject is definitely desirable but only part of the picture. You also have to have very good writing skills. With all due respect, based on your post above I think you have some work to do in that regard. You have spelling errors, grammatical errors, and very poor sentence structure. I realize that's a forum post and not an article, but if it's an indication of your writing skills then I would recommend hiring someone to edit your work or spending some time to hone your skills.

No no no no

Stay away from Fiverr at all costs if you value your work or your sanity. You'll only get paid $4 per article, that's before any associated fees and your clients will be some of the pickiest and hardest to please people in the world. That's what you'll get when working for cheap clients, trust me.

Honestly, starting here is a great starting point to get a portfolio built up so you can advertise yourself to high end clients via your own website if that's the route you want to do. If you want to make a career out of freelancing, you have to eventually step away from the forums or else you'll end up starving for work most of the time because people take days or weeks to respond to messages usually.

I'd definitely stay away from Fiverr if you're trying to market a writing gig. First, people don't want just one article - they think they're getting a deal with multiple articles for $5, which is a total waste of your time and talent. Also, you don't make $5 - you only make $4 after Fiverr takes a fee, so it makes your return even worse. You can find a lot of other sites and work your way up.

You can definitely work your way up to $.05 or $.10 per word, but you may want to start a little lower. I think I started at closer to $.025 per word and worked my way up.

Tiffany Lambert (formerly Tiffany Dow) has a great program called Ghostwriting Cash where she helps you set up a ghostwriting/freelance writing business. Highly recommended.

Not to sound stupid about this, but at the time when I was writing this, I was slightly distracted. Sorry if it sounds like an excuse, but if you don't believe me, check my other posts. I am generally very careful with punctuation. Thanks for the feedback.

You can offer your services for a cheaper rate, then once you have a few paying clients you can increase your fees. It would be a good idea to have a blog and/or Facebook fanpage. If you start selling writing gigs on fiverr or on forums, you can add a link to those sites. If they like your work, they are likely to buy more expensive articles from you.

I would start out selling on free forums or freelance sites. Once you have some money rolling in, advertise on paid sites like WF or others. You will reach a larger audience and get more clients. Good luck.

Well, here are the subjects I have experience with: investing (personal account), Asperger's (I have it), dealing with the loss of a loved one, I am very political (mostly niche political topics), video games, among other things. The first three seem to be the most likely ones that would sell. So to answer your question, yes, it is a medical niche. But I might consider writing about other niches I am knowledgeable on.

The reason I would like to do this is to tide me over until my site starts earning a profit. Plus, it would help me improve my writing (not grammar, but more my style).

You can charge 5 to 10 cents per word or even more, but just starting out, you may need to do a few sample projects at a lower rate.

Fiverr is a joke for writers. You may find some good projects at elance.com or freelancer.com.

I would be very careful about this unless you don't care to find clients in the forum.

You can use the edit feature to go back and fix your mistakes. Be careful posting over and over without anybody else in between. You could lose your thread.

Market directly to other site owners in these subject areas. If you go to them and you can provide high quality content, you can charge more by contacting them directly instead of posting some type of ad.

Not bad, but not the best either. You can start here, but I recommend contacting potential clients directly.

Benjamin Ehinger

There are people willing to pay far more than $15 per article.

1. Have a look at some of the job boards (e.g. freelancewritinggigs, problogger, mediabistro) and filter out the LOW paying jobs, there will be quite a few that pay $15 and more. Occasionally you'll find these people on Elance (and possibly Odesk) but they are very, very rare.

2. Search for print and offline customers. There are literally hundreds of them listed in the writers market book - it's worth your while.

3. There are lots of lists of decently paid jobs - for example http://beafreelanceblogger.com/wp-co...50-or-More.pdf

You need to be thinking BIGGER than $15 per article

I wrote a book on freelance writing. I advise writers to work backwards to determine rates. Figure out how much you need to make per hour and then you can decide on your rates. Factor in consultation time along with your expenses (electric, computer etc.)

Invest time in revenue share/residual income opportunites....things that will pay you over and over. Consider writing Kindle eBooks. Having to do something again and again to get paid is not as lucrative as having to do it once!

Are you serious?? I'd be very interested to see where you got the data that resulted in $5 - $15 becoming the "current standard pay"?

Why not get the data from iWriter and drop that down to $1 per 500 words? Or Fiverr and say that $5 is the standard.. or corporate and publications where the standard is $200 per 500 words or higher? In fact at that level they don't even talk about word count, as the value is in the story being served properly and to completion.

I can understand that maybe you value your writing at $5 - $15 per 500 words but to make that the "current standard" is not only misleading, it's blatantly incorrect, as you are drawing conclusions based on a very biased data set.

But hey, let's assume that I'm wrong on the data, and move away from that for a second.

You are saying that if a writer is "skilled and experienced" then you "advice" (sic) that a person charge between $5 and $15 per 500 words.

Based on what? Is there research to be done? Will interviews be needed? How much time are you allowing for that? What about editing? Are these articles being edited or are they churn and burn?

Do you know how long it takes to write a well researched, perfectly edited piece of content?

For me, it takes an absolute minimum of 2 hours. That includes research, writing at least 1000 words as a "starter" article and then editing and polishing until the article gleams.

What do I charge? For a corporate client who gets that sort of service I charge US$200. Admittedly I will rarely stick to 500 words for those guys, and the content normally goes to around 800 - 1000 words. That'll take me around 4 hours to do properly, including editing and rewrites.

I'll often let the article "sit" for a day or two as well before going back to edit again with fresh eyes.

For a regular IM type client who doesn't expect such rigorous quality I still take an absolute minimum of an hour, and charge US$50 for the article.

Looking at my thread I have an outdated page that still reflects my old rate of US$25 per article. (edit: now changed to reflect current rates)

If I only charged $15 per article I could only get 4 done per day, and would net US$60, or US$1200 per month based on a 20 day month. And that's at the high end of your "skilled and experienced" rates. I'm not even going to look at what you would earn at $5 per article because it's insulting.

Have you ever tried to live on $1200 per month? If you can do it, you're either living on the street, living with parents, or have a partner that is subsidising you.

The only content that you get for $5 are hastily written, poorly researched articles that receive no editing whatsoever, or are written by soon-to-go-hungry writers who are new to the industry.

And in my experience the only people who buy them are the folks that still think that building huge sites full of spun crap is the way to Google's heart. You'd think that Panda and Penguin would have settled that once and for all, but the belief still persists.

Sadly Mr MarketMaster there are plenty more out there just like you who help to propagate the idea that writing is a low value commodity. Crap writing may be, but real writing will always command a professional's rate.

My advice to writers who are out there and are just getting started?

Don't listen to anybody that says you have to work for slave wages.

Assuming you approach your writing as a professional would, then your profession is one that has value, and you should charge for your output accordingly.

Anyone who says differently is exploiting you, and you should move on.

Believe me, there are bigger and better fish in the sea who will pay you what you are worth. You just have to take the trouble to find them.

Sorry but that is horrible advice.

A skilled and experienced writer shouldn't be writing a paragraph for $15, much less a 500 word article.

You are completely right with the idea, but you're pricing is waaaaaaay off.

Excellent point! I agree.

Even if it may be necessary to do SOME writing for others temporarily, this should be the goal...