I have a pretty successful freelance writing business. I earn money writing from home in the comfort of a little home office tucked away downstairs in my house.
The secret of making money writing online from home is speed. I go out of my way to charge clients on a project basis rather than charging for writing on an hourly basis. That means that the same freelance writing project can pay either $50 an hour or $70 per hour, depending on how well you execute it.
Some writers will tell you that this is not good business practice and that hourly writing gigs are the way to go because you get paid for all the work you do for a client no matter what. My guess is that these freelance writers, whatever their other skills, are not fast.
Charging hourly is not optimal for a lot of reasons. First and foremost is that no matter how much you think that charging hourly means that you never work for free, that isn’t really true. For example, you have no way of building in any expenses that you incur while working on the project for the client, projected or not, other than increasing your hourly rate. Which brings us to the other major problem. People have a preconceived notion of what a “fair hourly rate for writers” is.
The trick is that a good hourly rate for writers is based upon not just how much a writer’s time is worth per hour, but also how long a “standard” writer takes to complete a project.
Is it fair for two writers to turn in the same quality project but for one of them to be paid less for that deliverable because that writer is faster at their job?
Writing Faster Equals Higher Per Hour Writing Rate
It’s not just typing speed either, although that can be a big part of it. A skilled freelance technology writer might be able to locate and research a topic faster and at greater depth than a freelancer who does not specialize in technology, software and gadgets might. Then, there is the factor of being faster at using technology and computers. One writer might be able to script out some shortcut keys, maximize the features of their web browser and plug-ins and be able to make a blog post into WordPress in half the time it takes another writer.
In other words, should their be a penalty for efficiency?
I don’t think so, and I don’t think most clients do either.
If you are starting a freelance writing business, consider billing by project right from the start. You might guess wrong at first, but chances are you won’t be filled completely up by writing projects until you build up your business pipeline anyway, so you’ll have plenty of time to “catch-up”.
By the way, I threw this post together after the long-overdue update I planned to post here ballooned into a much bigger discussion. You can go check out my thoughts about small business security for home offices at ArcticLlama.com.
