Get Paid To Write: “What’s It Worth?” Charge According To Value

You want to get paid to write. However, it’s a challenge. On the outsourcing sites, other writers undercut you.

Although you spend the day tapping your fingers to the bone, you make little money.

There’s a solution.

Get paid to write: the solution

There will always be people who want to pay peanuts for writing services—and writers who will accept those peanuts.

A solution: commit to charging according to the solutions and benefits you provide to your clients.

Please don’t lower your rates, because you’ve heard that X dollars is the “standard rate”. Or because writers charge peanuts on the freelance marketplaces.

A tip: avoid writing for peanuts. If you do, you’ll become overworked and depressed; you may even damage your health. (And yes, in the dim and misguided past, I’ve burned out from overwork, so I know whereof I speak.)

Today, the writing marketplace is global.

Companies in your town which are looking for cheap content can easily hire writers who live across the world, in countries where costs and wages are low. Compared with what you charge, these writers charge little. They can afford it.

However, you can’t match those tiny rates if you live in a western economy.

Want to get paid to write? Remember: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money” .

Get paid to write, because: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”

Occasionally, you’ll meet someone who believes that writers shouldn’t be paid at all: they should write for love, or literature, or something…

YOU can get paid for your writing, even if you’re a new writer.

Take the amazing Samuel Johnson’s advice to heart. As he put it in the 18th century: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

Samuel Johnson charged what he thought a writing job was worth.

In 1746, Johnson was paid 1,500 guineas—which is around £260,000 or USD $308,000 in today’s money—by a several London booksellers. They asked him to create an English dictionary. The job took him seven years.

In yearly income terms, Johnson wasn’t overpaid for his dictionary, but I’ll bet his bookseller-clients whined anyway.

Published in 1755, Johnson’s dictionary was titled A Dictionary of the English Language. It remained the primary reference to English, until the Oxford English Dictionary was published almost 200 years later.

Samuel Johnson got paid for a solution. He charged what he thought the job was worth, and provided way more value than he (or anyone else) expected.

Think big—I lost money for years, because I thought small

Consider that you can get paid for ideas.

For many years, when I looked at the weird and wonderful things I could write, I thought of small things. Such as: names, titles, and slogans. Indeed, often I didn’t charge for them; I’d start thinking aloud, my listener would grab an idea, and hey presto—they received a valuable service for free.

Here’s how to make money from your creativity, starting right now, with our new program, Weird, Wonderful (And Easy) Ways To Increase Your Writing Income Today.

 

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