Writing Gigs And Some Math

previously published on my Halcja's Place blog

This week I was offered a writing job. It was supposed to be something steady and longterm, unlike the writing gigs that I do on Fiverr. The guy wanted me to write 20 articles per week, 500 words each. He asked, how much it'll cost him, even though I linked him to my other gigs. I guess, he thought that since he wants to buy these articles in bulk, it should cost him less. Right now I have an active comment writing gig where I write somewhere around 250 words worth of comments for $5. I figured that article writing is more work than commenting on blog posts and decided on the price of $10 per article. And I never heard back from that guy. I was probably out of his budget. I can only speculate, but I don't think it would be a stretch to assume that he wanted to pay $5 per article or something like that.

A quick google search told me that "most intermediate to advanced freelance writers charge between 10 cents and $1 per word". So that would be a minimum of $50 for a 500-word article. But, of course, that is for the "cool kids". Further investigation showed that prices can range from $0,03 to $0,30 per word. I'm guessing, that's for beginner writers. And that's still a minimum of $15 per article

I'm not a native English speaker, so I stand even lower in this hierarchy.

But to give the guy credit, at least he only offered me a writing job. Whenever Ukrainian companies approach me, they not only want me to write the articles. Nope. I have to do website maintenance on top of that. Bonus points if they want me to build the website as well. And they always ignore the big bold "Freelancer" in my CV and act surprised when I ask if I can work from home.

If I had a steady writing job, my life would be so much easier. Right now my work doesn't even feel like work sometimes. More like gambling. I know that it needs time. It'll get better eventually.