Blog writing rates happen to be the most important thing in the world when you’re planning to make a living out of being a blogger. As was mentioned before, being a blogging professional is more than just having and posting on your own blog—you need to have a solid means of making money from it, whether it’s through products or services. More often than not, bloggers end up taking on various writing gigs for a living. A good number of them even find income from being regular contributors to other people’s blogs.
But how much SHOULD you charge for writing blog posts for other people? For the more experienced writers who already have established rates for different services, making adjustments to their blog writing rates probably won’t be so difficult. But for people who have no idea how to set prices for blogging services, things tend to be a little more daunting. So how do you know if you have the right blog writing rates for the projects you’re working on? Well…
How much money do you need in a month?
It’s always best to start with the assumption that you’ll be making money from nothing but THIS particular project in a month. Because this type of work is technically freelance, there’s a very big chance that you will lose some clients—the likelihood of you working for one client in a month is high. That’s why it’s best to work under the assumption that you’ll only have one client for any given month and then base your blog writing rates on that and your regular monthly expenses.
Of course, there are other things you need to pay for—food, shelter, health insurance, and the like. Then there are the things that you need to invest in just so you can do your job. Apart from electricity and Internet service (which you need to write and post your articles), you’ll likely also need to spend on business phone numbers that you use exclusively for speaking to your clients. Calculate how much that costs in total, add a buffer amount that you’re comfortable with (say, 25% of your total expenses), and break your rates per service accordingly.
While many can live with blog writing rates of $100 per post, it may not be feasible for you.
Easy = lower prices; Hard = higher prices
It’s one of the simplest rules of thumb that you can give yourself. Once you’ve figured out what you want your base rates to be, you need to take into consideration the specifics of every project as you negotiate it with a client. How hard do you have to work on each blog post? If they expect you to do everything yourself (i.e. they don’t give you materials), then you need to increase your blog writing rates for that specific project. The same is true if you’re expected to do or write about something that you’re not used to, or are not familiar with at all. Rush jobs should also warrant higher rates.
In fact, if they expect you to do a little more than just writing for their blogs – activities such as editing some of their work and even promoting their blogs on various social media sites – then you should raise your blog writing rates accordingly. On the other hand, if what they’re asking you to do is simply write short “general knowledge” kinds of posts that you can write while half-asleep, then you can definitely afford to lower your pricing.
The key here is to be aware of what you do or don’t find easy, then get your rates to reflect them.
Are you a professional blogger? How do you determine YOUR blog writing rates?
It is very helpful post for those who don’t have idea that how to set rates for blog postings. Your shared points are very worthy you know that how a blogger should set rates. I personally think that it depends on writer’s ability, knowledge and experience then someone can set blog writing rates.
I’m glad to know this helps, Jean! 🙂 And I agree that keeping your own abilities and experience in mind is a good jump-off point for many writers who’d like to make money off of blogging.
It’s not easy for newbies to know how much they can charge for a blog post, and this article is helpful. I think it’s a good to start with lower rates to get customers more easy, and then raise the price as you become more experienced. To have flexible rates is also a good tip.
I like knowing that my insights can be helpful, Ludwig 🙂
With regards to the lower rates – I only agree that lower prices are good if you have no experience whatsoever in writing or blogging. Otherwise, you’d risk shortchanging yourself. Going too low may make it difficult for you to raise your rates later on; it may also attract some “challenging” clients who keep trying to get more out of you for less. So it’s best to set reasonable rates and stick to them as much as possible – even when you’re trying to be flexible.