How Much Do Freelance Writers Charge?

If you’re considering hiring a freelance writer for your business or organisation, one of the first questions you’re likely to ask is how much they charge. It’s a good question, it’s an important question, and just like most questions like this, there’s not one straightforward answer.

With that said, if you just want to know the broad, catch all range of what a freelance writer will charge you, I can give you something to start with. The starting rate for a decent freelance writer is £0.09 ($0.10) per word, and this increases up to over £0.85 ($1) per word for more qualified writers or those with specific technical knowledge. The best writers can charge significantly more than that.

Per word charging doesn't really capture everything that a freelance copywriter does though, so many prefer to charge on an hourly, day rate or retainer basis.

In this article, we’ll explain these figures in more detail, give you some tips on whether you need to pay for a writer at the upper end of the scale, and cover the different ways that writers can charge.

How Do Freelance Writers Charge?

Ok, so we gave you some figures above for what a freelance writer might charge per word. Now plenty of writers do charge by the word, however we find that most clients prefer to pay based on the project or specific deliverables. It makes it simpler to pay the invoices and avoids fluff being added for the sake of padding out the word count.

For example, for someone getting 4 blog posts a month it’s a bit annoying for both the writer and the client to have to create and pay an invoice for £1,342.90 one month, then £1,541.08 the next, rather than just a fixed £1,400 every month.

With that said, the cost for a 2,500 word epic analysis needs to be higher than for a short 500 word overview. Many freelance writers will therefore offer a set cost for articles or writing within a word count range.

How Much Do Freelance Writers Charge for a Blog Post?

Blog posts or articles provide a huge amount of value to a company website, and they are often the bread and butter of a freelance writers business. The main purpose for most company or business blogs is to drive traffic to the website, to attract readers who might be interested in your products or services.

That’s why we’ve written this article! If you found it because you’re thinking of hiring a freelance writer, maybe you’ll consider hiring us, or at least have a conversation about what you need.

With this in mind, you can’t just blog about anything. It needs to be related to your business and it needs to be optimised to appear in the search results in Google. This is another reason why hiring a professional copywriter can pay off in the long run. You might be able to write a blog post just fine yourself, but an SEO writer will know the tricks and tips to maximise the ranking potential of your articles.

The price for a blog post will obviously depend on the length of the article and the complexity of the topic. Whether it’s worth it to you or not will depend on the complexity of the topic, how professional you’re trying to be on your site and the audience in question.

Are Freelance Writers Worth the Money?

If you don’t have a plan for why you’re hiring a freelance writer, then no, we are not worth the money! You need to have a strategy behind why you’re hiring someone. Throwing random words and articles up on your website and hoping for the best is just going to leave you with a lighter wallet and no increase in traffic.

Utilising the services of a professional copywriter for your business is well worth the money, if you do it properly. You need to know your ideal customer. You need to know why people want to use you. You need to know what action you’re trying to achieve with the writing.

You need to have a content plan in place (though we can help with that bit). When you get really clear about what it is you’re trying to achieve by hiring a freelance writer, the money you spend can pay massive dividends.

A high quality blog post that you pay for once, can drive traffic and new customers to your site for years. Over time, if you create enough content, you become known as an authority within your niche who happens to also sell a product or a service, rather than a business selling a product or a service who happens to have a blog. This becomes an unfair advantage that makes customer acquisition easier and easier over time. 

So yes, content can be expensive and good writers aren’t cheap. But as long as you have a strategy and a plan to implement, it is well worth the investment.