Hi friend,
One of the dangerous things about freelancing is there’s a tendency for guidelines to become rules and those rules to become mantras. People hold onto them tightly and refuse to question whether they’re relevant (or even necessary).
What works for some doesn’t work for others—or it doesn’t apply to all scenarios. Just because a colleague has told you they have a rule they follow, doesn’t mean it’s useful or helpful for you.
I run into a lot of people who say they wouldn’t take a project for only 10 cents a word. It’s too little money, it’s not worth their time, and it doesn’t value their skills. How they came up with 10 cents a word is beyond me, other than that they heard other people say 10 cents a word is too little and they’ve decided it’s true for them, too, because why not?
They won’t get out of bed for less than 25 cents a word (to grossly paraphrase Linda Evangelista)
In many cases, this is true. 10 cents a word is too little for what’s being asked. The projects are too complex and the hourly rate drops almost into the negatives by the time the freelancer is done the work.
But there are cases where I’ve made a ton of money off projects that paid only 10 cents a word.
Here’s what you need to know about making money off projects that appear to pay too little to be worth your time.
In my career, I’ve taken on projects writing blog posts and magazine articles for organizations that offered 10 cents a word. While people might think I’ve turned my nose up at them right away based on my continued advocacy for writers and editors to charge what they’re worth, I haven’t.
In fact, those have been some of my most lucrative and long-standing projects.
A lower per-word rate doesn’t always translate into a lower hourly rate.
If a project pays you 10 cents a word for 1,000 words that’s $100, right? (I’m not a math person, so feel free to double-check).
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if it’s an article that only takes you an hour to write, that translates to $100 an hour. That’s a fantastic hourly rate. And that’s what I got (up to $150 an hour in some cases).
These were for:
Magazine articles for a variety of publications
Blog posts for financial firms
Blog posts for a marketing agency
Profiles of business owners
Each was between 1,000 and 1,500 words and took me only an hour to write. Generally speaking, they were a lot of fun because they didn’t require a lot of heavy thought or translating of highly technical language. They were written in a friendly, professional tone, they explained concepts or ideas I was already highly familiar with, and they were topics I loved.
When someone comes to you with an offer for 10 cents a word, don’t automatically dismiss it because it sounds like you’ll be working for peanuts.
Instead, consider the following guidelines when determining if a project is right for you based on the pay:
It should involve no more than one interview. Too many interviews lowers your hourly rate (interviews are time-consuming to manage and often you need long interviews to get very few words).
It should be on a topic you have a decent understanding of. Too much research also lowers your hourly rate, so you don’t want to spend a lot of time building up a base of knowledge. You want to be able to write the content quickly and accurately. For me, those topics were dance, horses, and basic financial and legal information.
If possible, you want the project to be on an ongoing basis, such as regular articles or blog posts, or for a large scale of content all at once (such as 10 profiles to go in a magazine at one time). I’m more likely to take a slightly lower pay (not drastically, but slightly) for something ongoing because then I can build a relationship with the client; I get to know their style, tone and requirements more—which makes it easier to write subsequent articles; and it’s regular income I don’t have to constantly market myself for.
It should work out to a decent hourly rate (which means you want it to take as few hours as possible to write). One thousand words at 10 cents a word is no good if it takes you 10 hours to write. That’s $10 an hour (feel free to check that math, too). If the hourly rate is around what you normally charge, give the project a try (just remember to track your time so you can figure out how accurate your estimate was).
It shouldn’t involve many rounds of revisions. If the client requires too many revisions from you, this also lowers your hourly rate. Unfortunately, you may not know how picky they are until you’ve done a few pieces for them, which is where a trial period can help you sort things out.
It shouldn’t involve any extras, such as sourcing images, creating infographics, or posting to social media unless you are paid on top of your per-word rate for such extras. 10 cents a word is too little for you to provide anything beyond the words they are paying for.
So there you have it. 10 cents a word might well be worth your time if you can find projects that fit the requirements and leave you earning a decent amount for the effort you put in.
If not, don’t be afraid to walk away. Just because 10 cents a word works sometimes doesn’t mean it works all the time.
Here’s to your freelance success!
Heidi