Fair Market Rates For Quality Writers – What Are They?

I look on Craigslist and other sites to find freelance writing gigs.  One thing I’ve noticed a fair amount of on the Craigslist site is a few people who keep posting that rates offered are too low, writers should respect themselves by making sure that they are getting paid enough, et cetera.

While in principle I agree with this poster, the rates that the poster linked to (from PWAC) seem high to me.  If I quoted any of my clients these rates they would probably drop me very quickly.  There is no question that I bring added value to my clients – one of them just told me yesterday that his page views were up to 1000 a day!  However, most business owners are savvy enough to realize that they can post their job on a freelancing site like GetaFreelancer.com and get someone to do the job for a fraction of PWAC rates.

I like to fall somewhere in the middle on this issue.  I believe that I offer a better quality product than most businesses would get if they outsourced a writing project to an overseas company.

I also can’t understand why a writer would rant about this on Craigslist, and call anyone who is offering anything less than “market rate” a cheat.  I don’t consider myself a sellout at my rates, and I am constantly working, which is more than I could say for myself if I charged exorbitant rates.  Perhaps the anonymity of Craigslist brings out the ranter in people.

That being said, I have noticed a fair amount of ads lately that pay $1-5 for a blog post, which is nothing short of ridiculous. I even had an incident where a major search engine executive asked me to list a job on my freelance writing site for a rate that would have been unacceptable to most people who have graduated from high school. Not only do I not post these ads, I actively discourage my readership from even accepting such jobs to build a portfolio.

I should answer the question posed in the headline. PWAC rates at writers.ca are considered to be the industry standard, even if I find them a little on the high side, even impossible in some cases. Your ideal quality writer that you are not sourcing overseas should be charging anywhere from 50% to 80% of those rates. If they have a boatload of experience, they will charge the exact rates found on writers.ca and you probably want to hire them; they are very much worth the price. I wouldn’t pay those rates for someone who hasn’t been a professional writer for at least a decade, but if they have the experience they are more than worth it.

If you want to be charged a fair but not irrational price for your writing projects, contact me today. If I’m busy, I’ve got other great writer friends that do awesome work that I can refer you to.