I’ve been a writer most of my life. Most of my writing up until about 4 1/2 years ago was fairly private, though I did assist with writing projects in my various roles in higher education, including crafting communications to internal and external stakeholders.
And most of my life, I was led to believe that you couldn’t make any money writing — that only a lucky few would be able to make a living writing. In 2018, I started to learn for myself how untrue that is.
That’s when, in July 2018, I launched my freelance writing business on Fiverr. I read about another copywriter making a six-figure income on the platform. Back when I first started, I wasn’t earning a lot because I was building my expertise and social proof. Though I was a lifelong writer finishing my Ph.D. in English and had taught college writing classes, copywriting, and copywriting for clients, was new to me.
So I learned on the fly, developing my skills in this new and exciting vein of writing as I was generating a little extra money.
And soon, that little extra money grew into a lot of extra money. Eventually, my little writing side hustle exceeded my full-time income in part-time hours and then topped the six-figure mark, allowing me to quit my full-time job.
My main copywriting services include website copy, press releases, blogs, ebooks, emails, and social media posts. I currently charge a per-word rate for my projects. My average across all projects is around $250-$300 per hour, but there are many days that I earn around $600 per hour, to many people’s disbelief.
I’m a fast and efficient writer most of the time. Some projects take me less time than others. Websites are the slowest going for me, but when it comes to press releases and blogs on some topics, I can easily knock them off in 30 minutes. For press releases, if I complete two 500-word releases in an hour plus setup for distribution if a client orders that, those two jobs earn me between $650-$800, depending on the distribution setups the client chooses. Blogs are pretty easy for me, too, and earn me about $600 per hour unless it’s a highly complex topic.
Similarly, social media copy, email campaigns, and ebooks don’t take me a lot of time unless it is a topic I may need to do more extensive research on. So my hourly rate is usually high on these projects as well. I’m also an efficient researcher, in part thanks to my Ph.D., so researching usually doesn’t take me an immense amount of time.
While not everyone may be able to achieve these rates right out of the gate, they are possible and can come with experience.
On Setting Your Rates
And on the subject of rates, how do you set your freelancing rates? There are a few models you can use:
- Research what others with similar experience are charging or what industry standards are. Many industries publish average freelancing rates, and there are also sites geared toward freelancers that sketch out potential service rates, like Wethos via their Instagram page.
- The other model is to figure out your hourly rate by working backward. What yearly salary would you like to make? For instance, if you want to make $50,000 in your first year of freelancing, then follow this model (rounded figures):
$50,000/12 months=$4,167 a month
$4,167/4 weeks=$1,042 a week
$1,042/40 hours=$26/hour
That’s your hourly rate. In sending proposals to clients, you’ll need to estimate how many hours a project will take you in this model and base your total project bid off of that. If you want to work fewer than 40 hours a week, which I do as a freelancer, then divide the $1,042 by however many hours you plan to work in a week to arrive at your hourly rate.
It is possible to earn a high income as a freelancer. Many of the freelancers I know make more than their counterparts employed in similar roles in the public or private sector. Being able to set your own worth and only work with people who recognize it and value it is rewarding. I just wish I had taken the plunge sooner.
