I have made a good living as a professional writer for 10 years. White papers, case studies, press releases, and trade journal articles are my bread and butter as a freelancer. My rates are average for business writing:

•    $200 per press release page (not per release, per page)
•    $500 for a 2-page case study
•    $1 a word for a trade journal article from 800-2000 words
•    $600 a page for white papers from 5-12 pages

I am NOT saying this to brag. My rates are decidedly middle-of-the-road.

Here is the million dollar question: Why should you care?

Because so many writers write for peanuts. Because so many buyers pay pennies for good work. Because so many new writers think they’re lucky to make minimum wage.

I’m sick of it and I suggest you should be too.

The truth is that while some writers make very good money writing for online-only business, it’s far easier — and more lucrative — to write for businesses whose primary outreach is not Internet marketing. This is because pure Internet marketing — i.e., using the Internet as your primary marketing vehicle — is founded on the low financial barrier to entry. It simply doesn’t cost very much to buy a URL and pay a small monthly fee to host your website. It can take a lot of hard work mind you, but not a lot of money. Many of these people (including yours truly) write their own content so writing fees are a non-issue. But those who don’t are simply not interested in paying their writers a  lot of money. That would go against their whole economic model.

So if you can write — and are sick of writing for peanuts for an Internet crowd — then read on.

• Hire an accountant or a bookkeeping service. Every writing business must keep a record of its day to day financial transactions and even the smallest of transactions add up to big tax deductions over the period of a year. You can’t simply file everything under ‘miscellaneous’ and you can’t spend an hour or so every day taking care of just mundane bookkeeping duties either. Bookkeepers and accountants only charge for the time that they actually spend working for you. Usually they have many clients. If they spend one hour working on your records then you will only be charged for that one hour. You aren’t a bookkeeper or an accountant and you would have likely spent three or four hours doing the same tasks and then with questionable results. Hire an accountant or a bookkeeping service!
• Hire a VA (Virtual Assistant). A virtual assistant can save you hours and hours of time on the mundane tasks that are required to run a successful business. A VA can check your email and send only the emails that you need to personally deal with to you. Entrepreneurs get more junk mail than anybody! A good VA can also act as a travel agent and make airline and hotel reservations for you.
• Subcontract assignments to other writers. This bears some explaining. When you are starting out then obviously you are going to be doing all of your own writing. But as your business expands, then consider assigning some or all of larger or frequent projects to subcontractors. They will return their drafts directly to you for finalization and client approval. You will pay them a portion of client fees. Of course, if your business gets really big then you can hire writers. But subcontracting is great for flexibility and growth.

It sounds odd to talk about outsourcing for outsourcers, but it can make a lot of sense. When I find myself juggling dozens of writing jobs and clients I turn to a virtual assistant to make sense of my project stages and deadlines. I also use her to help me maintain my marketing plan. Don’t waste your time, effort and energy on tasks that can be done better by others. Especially when you work for yourself, take time to investigate outsourcing. It does not have to be expensive and you can add hours to your day each and every day when you outsource mundane business tasks to others.

I am not talking about hiring employees as that activity is fraught with complexity (payroll taxes, anyone?) Outsourcing tasks is much easier than hiring permanent staff – less paperwork and less risk, and you can easily replace the outsource provider if you’re not happy with the work.

Outsourcing is easily available. For example, you can outsource such tasks as bookkeeping and accounting, article and eBook writing and submission, travel and event planning, and research. Others can do these tasks better and more efficiently than you can while you spend your time growing your writing business.

Being a business owner does not qualify you as an accountant, an advertising guru or a writer. You aren’t necessarily qualified to be an event planner or a travel agent. When you decided to become a home-based business owner that did not automatically make you a jack-of-all-trades. I grant you that sometimes money limitations means you have to suck it up and do it yourself. But many independent writers make such a habit of that, they waste their valuable writing time doing non-peak tasks. Even when they could afford someone else to help!

You can waste a lot of your valuable time on tasks that you just plain aren’t very good at. You are the idea person. It is your job to make your business grow and you’ll be good at that provided that is where you use your work time and energies.

If you insist upon doing everything yourself, whether you are good at it or not, you will use up all of your thought and energy and have nothing left to do the things that only you can do to make your business grow. And that serves no one well, including your clients.

There are only just so many hours in a day and you can only spend just so many of those hours working at making your business successful. Outsourcing helps you do your important writing work better and faster and still have the time you need to live.

My story started in computer support at a division of Avery Dennison. I was 7 months pregnant when I found myself crawling UNDER a scientist’s desk to repair his computer.

I wasn’t in a position to quit yet but I vowed that I would. And soon.

I got my chance a couple of years later. Avery Dennison had massive layoffs and I was one of not-so-upset laid off employees. My severance pay helped and I worked part-time as a trainer and consultant for a well-known career counseling company. I guess they thought that since I kept landing on my feet they could use my expertise.

I knew I wouldn’t hold on to the contracted position forever, so when a journalism job came up at a technical magazine I jumped at it. I had never been in journalism or any type of professional writing for that matter, but I knew I could write. They knew it too and thus began my journey into the rewarding world of professional writing.

After 5 years at the magazine I was a single mom and needed to be home with my son, so I resigned to start my own freelance writing company for technology and business clients. The magazine was my first client and my best one for several years.

I loved freelancing but after several years decided that I needed a steady job with a good salary that still allowed me to work at home. My search ended with an industry analyst firm in the technology field. The main skill? Writing.

I share my story so you’ll see that you don’t have to settle for tiny little Internet article payments to be a professional writer. People say that it’s possible to make a living by selling cheap articles. As a segment of a business model – well maybe. You have to write extraordinarily fast and well or use article spinner technology. Some people do it and do well enough. But really, the most decent unique articles one person can pump out per hour are 2-3. And frankly, all of the incredibly cheap buyers out there demand “unique original content” for $3 an article. And instead of getting laughed out of the room, writers scramble for the opportunity. And so writers charge what the market will bear. Think about it this way: If you can write 3 unique articles in an hour – a very good rate – then you’re making $9-$12 an hour. Better than minimum wage I guess, which is how many buyers justify the horrifically low cost. But you should think to yourself – “Is that what I am really worth for good content? Really?”

Let me give you some prices. When I was freelancing I charged $1 a word for a technical or business article. I charged $200 per press release page. And I charged $600-$1000 per white paper page. (This is not a typo.) Because I’m a pretty fast writer this worked out to a very nice hourly rate.

Were my prices high? No – they were on the low side of average. Now you can see why I have apoplexy when someone suggests that they should pay me $3 for an article. Oh, PLEASE. (Note: now that I am on commission with my firm, my take-home per piece is even higher.)

O.K., rant over. Thanks for listening.

If you take only one thing away from my story, let it be that if you can write for business and business people, you have a valuable skill. There are certain areas in writing that won’t make you much money, including online article writing. (If you are writing articles for your own business that’s different – I’ll talk about that later.)

But like anything else worth doing, you have to concentrate on it. If you don’t have a background in technology or business than you need to build one. You can do it; it’s actually not that hard where business is concerned. And you need to write, and write a lot. And you need to market your writing.

Trust me – I’m on the lazy side. I’m a classic case of “if I can do it, anyone can.”

You can do it too.

Successful Writers are Well Paid Writers

A lot of modern writers start off with the idea that writing articles for online businesses is the way to success. They read about article marketing and how many opportunities there are to write. They read about eBooks and decide to write one of those. They decide they’re going to write sales letter galore.

And some of them do. Heck, some of them are millionaires — or close to it. But these are the superstars of copywriting whose skill translates into large amounts of money for their clients (i.e., copywriting sales letters whether online or print). What I find is that many writers limit themselves (even doom themselves) by accepting low-priced payments and then staying there.

What the well paid writers will do is look at their balance sheets and realize that, yes, they could go to work for McDonalds and make the same money. (Probably more.) Buyers will point out that even if you’re making pennies by writing, at least you can work at home – making incredibly cheap writing the basis for a stay-at-home mom’s financial life. Gee, thanks guys.

Don’t do it. Start with a business model that will allow you to make real money – not less than $30K a year at the lowest end. The upper end scales to $85K and up. Not bad for a good day’s work.

Here’s the difference: online business has a very low financial entry point. You can establish a business online with a minimum cost. This attracts people who have no experience or interest in paying traditional rates for business writers. So they offer a few paltry dollars per article to outsource their writing.

Experienced business writers look at those rates and either have apoplexy or get the giggles. And they go back to their well paid clients and businesses. But new writers get caught up in the same online entry point. And what does the market bear? $5 an article if you’re lucky. And the writers write for that and are grateful for the chance.

Don’t be one of them.

I have made a good living as a professional writer for 10 years. I have done this working for others and for myself, sometimes at the same time. I worked for free exactly once: when I wanted to break into white paper writing. I offered to write a white paper pro bono. It turned out well, the client was pleased (I got a box of Godiva chocolates) and from then on I charged good money to write more.

White papers, case studies, press releases, and trade journal articles were my bread and butter while I was freelancing. My rates were average for print business writing:

• $200 per press release page (not per release, per page)
• $500 for a 2-page case study
• $1 a word for a trade journal article from 800-2000 words
• $600 a page for white papers from 5-12 pages

I am NOT saying this to brag. My rates were decidedly middle-of-the-road.

But they will tell you why I am so appalled at the $3-per-article prices you find for online articles.
I understand why buyers want that. In this day of high quantity article writing, $3 per article keeps the costs in control. It doesn’t seem to matter much that the articles are spun, duplicated, or otherwise poorly written. Quantity is the name of the game. Quality goes begging. And so do writers’ rates.

Look. If you are using tools that let you produce numerous articles an hour to sell, O.K. As long as they’re decent quality and not copied, that’s fine with me. But if you are stuck with writing two or three articles an hour for $3-$5 per article, then it’s not O.K. Not when you can do so much better.

Let the cheapskates hire someone else’s desperation or tricks. You can get out there and make real money as a writer.