I bet you have said this out loud (or at least thought it): “It is not about writing fees or money, for me writing is about doing what I love!” That sentiment is all well and good, but at the end of the day passion isn’t going to put food on the table for you and your family, nor is it going to help you pay the rent (and if you are charging “love money”, rent is all you will be paying, because good luck buying a house!).

You have to remember that freelance writing is a business, although it is a form of art as well. This is particularly true when it comes to writing for the Internet for a living: most clients are not looking for you to write inspiring or humorous stories, they want content to help them compete with other sites for informational purposes or for Search Engine Optimization purposes (Whoops! If you haven’t heard that term before, we have the right section for you! Understanding SEO is a great way to land clients and show them you know what you’re about!), or for both.

Nothing will put you in a more business and less artistic frame of mind than writing a couple dozen articles on the advantages of buying a condominium in Toronto, and if you haven’t established a good criterion for determining your writing fees, you will certainly wish you had!

The Writer’s Market is a web site based on surveys completed by freelance writers all over the world, though mostly in the United States (don’t fret, the US market is a pretty good measuring stick for writers from developed, English speaking countries all over the world). You will find a wealth of information on the site, including how much the average freelance writer can expect to earn (usually between $35,000 and $50,000 per year) and a great break down of what individuals are charging for specific jobs.

That’s great for the brick and mortar freelance market, but how does one go about establishing writing fees for an Internet based writing business? This site wouldn’t be very helpful to you if I didn’t offer some recommendations in this area, so here are some of the ways that I have determined writing fees over the course of my career.

Charge low to build high.

On bidding sites particularly, you will find that there are “tiers” when it comes to potential clients. Some buyers are only looking for a lot of material to be banged out quickly, at the least possible cost. Higher paying clients want to see positive feedback and some quality samples before they take you on for a job. People brand new to the bidding market should probably set their great expectations aside for a while. My first couple of jobs paid $5 per article; not a lot, but I did them well and got great feedback, and within four months I was able to triple the rate, and still get jobs.

How quickly can you write?

One of the advantages I have is that I am able to process information and write it down very quickly. Even writing at $5 per article I was able to have a per hour wage that was competitive with the entry level jobs I might find around town.

Compare hourly rates based on your fees with those you could expect in a non-writing job.

I alluded to this above, and I will spell it out here. It is of no use charging low writing fees if you are making less than you could at another job. The jobs I was getting paid $5 per article for were 400 words or less, and I could complete between 3 and 6 of them in an hour. That translated to an hourly rate of $15-$30 (US, and in Canada at the time our dollar was about 1.10 on the exchange rate). This was either on par or double what I could expect at another job, so I was pretty happy with the writing fees I was charging.

Consider what you are writing about.

Now, if I was writing a 1000 word piece which compared recreational vehicles (that came later), I would not have been too happy with the writing fees I was charging. That topic would have taken me an hour or two to research and write, resulting in a very low hourly wage.

Once you get established, raise your rates!

I knew that $5 per article was coming in pretty low, and that eventually if I wanted to make a real living I would have to raise my rates. I couldn’t write four articles an hour for the rest of my life, and even more importantly, I found that the work was not filling a forty hour work week. After I had built up a solid reputation, I was able to raise my rates, and today I charge between $15 and $25 for a 500 word piece. Now a lot of writers used to magazine and newspaper writing may (or may not, I have never been able to get a straight answer on their writing fees out of them) scoff at even the higher fees I mentioned above, but I think the key it to be happy about them within yourself. At even $15 per piece, I am making an hourly wage that is equivalent to my wife, who is a Registered Nurse. It’s a wage that I am happy with, and one that my clients are willing to pay for the work that I put in.