

In 2019, the writer resource company Make a Living Writing ran a similar survey.
#Average cost per word for writers full#
The ClearVoice 2018 Freelance Writers Pay Survey (click image to view full infographic) Only 9 percent earned $20 per hour or less. It showed that for 91 percent of freelancers, rates were close to evenly distributed between $21 per hour and more than $100 per hour. In 2018, talent marketplace ClearVoice published its most recent survey of more than 500 freelancers. So where do the majority of writers fall in comparison to that average? Freelance rates: The experience factor ZipRecruiter’s average is well below the median for its range, but PayScale’s average is right in the middle. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics gives an hourly wage of $29.89 per hour, but that includes all “writers and authors,” from penny-per-word writers to bestselling authors.ZipRecruiter, gives an average hourly wage of $31 per hour but specifies that most writers’ salaries range between $17 and $35 per hour.On Payscale, the national average is listed as $23.67 per hour.ZipRecruiter has an even broader range: $5.29 to $193.03 per hour.Īverages do help to narrow it down a bit.Payscale reports a pay range of $10.31 to $53.79 per hour for freelance writers.If you search for “How much do freelance writers make per hour?” you’ll find a range that’s so broad, it’s barely useful. But what the average actually is, and who’s in that range, varies more than I thought it would.Ĥ The Take-Away – Finding Your Rate There is no “typical” pay rate for freelance writers. No – not all writers are scraping by for pennies. It took a lot of digging, but I finally found an answer. So was the stereotype true? Was I, as a writer, doomed to spend my life working for a poverty wage? How much do freelancers make on average? That would be $31,736, according to the living wage calculator. The required annual income before taxes to earn a living wage in Boston, where I am based? Now, almost 10 years into my freelancing life, I look back on that newbie writer with the same kind of head-shaking fondness as a college senior looks at a freshman.Īssuming a five-day week, $100 a day works out to $500 weekly, which is $26,000 a year. I was young and living on the cheap, and if I made $100 a day I considered myself lucky. Nowadays, that would be a tough salary for a freelance writer, even at the start of their career. The columns are not dependent on or derived from each other.ĮFA Members: For more information, see the Rates Survey Report and Rates Survey Information pages.When I first started freelance writing, I was happy with any work that came my way.

Respondents were given the option of providing these responses or selecting “Other” or “N/A.” Data for each column in the rates chart was collected and generated independently. **Per-word rates and pages per hour may or may not apply to all projects. Writing (work-for-hire only), medical/STEM Writing (work-for-hire only), business/sales Writing (work-for-hire only), ghostwriting full-length nonfiction Writing (work-for-hire only), ghostwriting full-length fiction
