WRITING | FREELANCING
4 Ways to Change the Conversation on Writing
How freelancers can position themselves to charge what their writing is worth
Negotiating freelance writing rates can be a minefield. There are several reasons why.
Sometimes, it’s just about being new and uncertain. When I first started freelancing, I was a terrible negotiator and felt pretty unsure about whether any client would really pay what I felt my experience was worth. (I’d been a pro writer for a long time, but since I was only just moving online, it felt like starting from scratch). The result: clients often got what they wanted, but I rarely did.
Working for copywriting agencies didn’t help much, because in order for them to make money, they didn’t pay writers very well. I got valuable online writing experience, but I wasn’t going to get rich any time soon.
Something had to change — and that something was me. I set out to put myself in a better negotiating position.
1. Finding Out about the “Going Rate”
The first step was to get informed, so that I had a baseline for charging for writing jobs. Since I was mostly working for US clients, I used the Writer’s Market rates guide as one starting point…
