Guide to Setting Freelance Writing Fees

Don't Confuse a Freelance Writing Goal with a Salary

Sometimes freelance writers have the misconception that to quit (or replace) a full-time employee position, they should target yearly freelance earnings equivalent to an employee salary. However, the two totals aren't even close to meaning the same thing. Don't look at an employee's salary as a goal when setting freelance writing fees. Instead, freelance writing rates are more comparable to an employee's total cost to their employer. That includes the salary, any employer contributions to health insurance, retirement savings, or other benefits, the employer's portion of Medicare and Social Security taxes (in the US - the employee only pays a portion whereas a freelancer pays both the employee and employer amounts as self employment tax), and any other expenses incurred for the employee (from phone calls and basic office supplies to expenses such as the cost of running a marketing campaign).

I recommend: Use a tool like Salary.com to find the average salary plus bonuses plus benefits for an employee in your area doing similar work to what you offer as a freelance writer.

Differentiate Working Hours from Billable Hours

Freelance writers (especially new writers) planning to freelance full-time often set their freelance writing fees based on a forty hour work week. What they neglect is the fact that forty hours only represents a freelancer's "working hours." Not all of those hours can be billed out to clients. Those, in turn, are called "billable hours." After accounting for administrative work, financial tasks, and marketing, many independent professionals will find that their billable hours are just over half of their total working hours.

I recommend: Don't underestimate the time administrative and marketing work can take. Solid record-keeping is important for any freelance writer, and even when your schedule is filled, you should never stop marketing (never wait for a slow period to begin marketing). I offer a variety of marketing tips for writers at AllFreelanceWriting.com.

Freelance Switch is a blog that can enlighten any freelance writer on the business aspects of freelancing.

Diversify Your Writing Income Streams

Billable hours, by their very nature, are limited. All freelance writers will eventually get to the point where they can't work any more hours, so the only way to increase their income is to increase their freelance writing fees. Is that really the only way? There are actually other options, such as outsourcing work to sub-contracted writers while keeping a cut of the writing fees. An option that I prefer and recommend is to turn your writing services into products that can serve as passive, or close to passive revenue streams. You can do this with e-books, pre-written content, self-published books and more, all of which can be set up with an automatic sales and fulfillment process (meaning you only have to worry about marketing - even that tones down when word of mouth picks up).

I recommend: Freelance Switch (a freelance blog) offers an excellent article on diversifying freelance income streams.

Another resource I recommend on the topic of diversifying freelance writing income to maximize earning potential is the Six Figure Freelancer e-book (read my review of Six Figure Freelancer).