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Subject:OT? Per word freelance rates? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 13 Mar 2003 10:29:08 -0500
Rebecca Stevenson wondered: <<I've been approached to do some freelance
writing. This would be a new sort of thing for me; I think the project might
be fun, but I don't know what would be considered a standard rate for brief
articles to be published online.>>
Not off-topic at all! We're writers, after all, and many of us do more than
just "technical" writing.
Rates vary all over the map, from the "you're not serious? do you at least
provide stale bread crusts with that?" range (pennies per word) for small
publishers and genre magazines right up to the "why am I wasting my time
doing real work?" range (dollars per word) for the big glossy publications.
That being the case, any generalisation would be meaningless.
I'd recommend doing two things: First, do a Web search for sites similar to
the one you'd be writing for and see what they pay. That lets you know what
the going rates are like. Second, take a look at the annual Writer's Market
book to see what rates are for established _print_ publications similar to
your client's type of publication. That lets you know what online markets
_should_ be paying (i.e., what professional writers working for stable
publishers routinely earn). The two sets of numbers should give you more
than enough data to come up with a fair price.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the
earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do
so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly
paid."--Bertrand Russell
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