Oh shit oh shit oh shit A freelance writing gig has just been thrown on my lap out of nowhere, and having never written for a living before (or even planned to) I have absolutely no basis on how much I should charge. To give you some context, this would be 50 articles, 400 to 500 words each. Uuuuuuuum advice? Guidance? Help? Anything? I'm so lost. EDIT: HAHAHAHA go figure I would misspell "writing" on the title. That's how nervous I am.
It depends on how kind you wish to be, because the circumstances would give you a little more room with negotiation. I'm paid by the local newspaper $50 each week, once a week, for about 3 paragraphs. Sometimes I can go as high as 5 paragraphs. That is the room they have allowed me. On Wordpad, it comes out to about a page and a half. But I doubt a client is going to pay $50 for less than 2 printed pages. What you need to ask yourself is, aside from can you handle this, is how long will it take you. That will give you a better idea of the value to ask for, as opposed to blurting something out at the beginning. And I've made that mistake before. Never again.
I don't know much about this, being new to writing myself, though I agree with Kaiser; writing takes a lot of time, in any situation. Also, just wondering, what would you be writing about?
If freelance writing is something that you are interested in pursuing beyond this, then determine a minimum of how much you feel the time is worth. I've written 400-500 word articles on self-help during lunch breaks because that is a subject that I could very easily crank out novels about. However, writing articles about recent scientific breakthroughs or the stock market might take a bit more time. Determine how long you feel these articles will take you. Determine how much you believe that time should be worth. Accept that amount. Don't get greedy because 50 articles will give you a huge amount of experience and diverse examples of your writing to use in the future. If you don't want to pursue freelance writing beyond this and it doesn't matter if they aren't willing to pay your demand, then demand whatever you wish. Though it will still be wise to be reasonable.
Thank you all so much for your input. The original time-frame is two weeks, although I'm confident I can negotiate some extra days if I need them. That said, while not an expert, I'm fairly familiar with the topics (web hosting, e-commerce and domain registering, mainly) thanks to my occasional dabbles in web design, so I don't expect to have much trouble cranking out the articles in the allotted timeline. Plus, I would be writing them in my native language, which should make the process all the smoother (my superb dominance of English notwithstanding ). To be honest I had settled on a minimum price per-article already, but reading what you guys have said about valuing your own time has reaffirmed my decision and will definitely help me be confident if I need to stand my ground on the matter. Thanks a lot!
If it helps, think of your word count in terms of pages. 400 words on a single spaced, one-inch margin page (typical unless your client has a specific formatting style they would like you to go with) is about one page. So overall, you'll be writing just a little over 50 pages. Think of how long it takes you to write 400 words. I'm assuming each article will probably take about an hour so you want to charge a rate that falls in line with what you can be paid hourly to stay happy. Let's say you charge about $15/article. That'll leave you with about $750 by the end of the project. My rates actually vary based on the project. I tend to charge a little more for articles that require a lot of research, for instance. If a client also expects me to upload and publish the article on their website, I take that into account too.
