by Eric Goudie

Created on: September 03, 2010

There are no hard and fast rules about how much money you will make as a freelance writer, just some general guidelines and a few good sources of information. Your salary as a freelance writer has everything to do with how hard you’re willing to work at looking for jobs, completing jobs and improving your skills so that you can get higher paying jobs.

The internet has opened up the market for freelance writers to anyone with an internet connection, meaning a flood of new talent has entered an already saturated marketplace. This has drove down a lot of freelance writing rates (much to veteran writer’s chagrins) but it has also meant that a lot of people are now able to get into the business of online content, and the opportunities for beginning writers to get their feet wet has never been greater.

Begin your search by Googling “writing sites.” You should come up with a list of content sites like Helium, Associated Content, Triond, Shvoong, Hubpages, Squidoo, eHow, Demand Studios, etc. These are places where any decent writer should be able to write and publish content and get paid for it. You won’t get paid much – maybe $1 or less per submission, and even then only if it’s good enough, and you may or may not get a share of the residual ad revenue the sites generate from your work (or a few pennies of ad revenue may be all you get). There aren’t a lot of people getting rich on these sites (though some people do all right), but they do offer important opportunities for new writers to build their portfolios, gain experience and hone their craft.

For writers who are a bit more established (or are experts in their niche) it takes a bit more work finding out the type of salary range that they can command. This author has found this very helpful site which suggests basic salaries for various types of written materials. Though insightful, this is only a guide, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Skilled-but-inexperienced writers should research salaries by looking at the type of pay being offered for the jobs they want to do. Quite often prospective clients will expect you to negotiate for a higher pay-out, so take the figures you see as being slightly low-ball, though in the general range of what you can expect. In order to win these jobs though you’ll have to beat out every other writer who applies, so be sure you’re not wasting your time going after something that is far above your skills and experience as a writer.

In the end, your salary as a writer (forget about benefits, you’ll have to arrange those yourself ) depends a little bit on the niche you’re writing in and a lot on your skills and experience. The more you have of the latter two, the more money you will make.

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