I think I do need to work on my marketing techniques. So far, I’ve been doing good on my own and I’ve never had a dry spell for two months now. However, I do seek growth proactively.

Bly’s books are good, but they are very industry-specific. I’ve found a lot of other valuable information in other business books that didn’t mention a writing career.

But I was also involved in an enterpreneurship program that basically taught everyone running a business runs into the same basic challenges — the idea being take business basics from other successful small business people and apply them to your own businesss. Harvey McKay’s Books are excellent, as are success-oriented books like Think and Grow Rich, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, etc.

Heck, even some of Tony Robbins stuff is good as long as you realize he’s always trying to sell more books and tapes.

Katharine>> I absolutely agree. Low-paying jobs could make ends meet, true, but they sometimes curb career growth because you might find yourself too exhausted to pursue higher-paying gigs.

I just tied Deb, and it’s her site!

From your posts, I don’t consider you a newbie. That was more for those just coming out of or still in college. I never read books like that in traditional journalism classes. Though I did a lot of outside reading, it was all in the TV arena (degree is in Radio-TV, though I was involved in journalism via the school newspaper at the same time).

Personally, I tend write around 350 words in an hour, though I also tend to cut 50 (and sometimes 100) of that by the end of it.

-Misti

Yes, desperation does strange things! The biggest problem with taking time-consuming, low-paying jobs like that is suddenly you don’t have the time or energy to look for the better paying work you need.

You might try negotiating. You could always tell them that you’d be happy to blog for them for a grand a month — but at the pace of two posts per day, instead of eight.

I can easily do 500-600 words in an hour if the research isn’t heavy. Work that requires more research is more in keeping with Phil’s 250-words-per-hour range.

When I write basic content (i.e. SEO articles and blog posts) I usually do enough research to ensure my work is accurate and appeals to the basic web surfer. For more specialized articles, I hit the books a little harder.

Some projects go very quickly (newsletters/articles/fast fasts). Other stuff definitely takes time (concepts, names, etc). It’s nice to hear how long it takes different people to write different things. It’s also an interesting way to bid and keep track of my profits.

I usually figure 250 words an hour, with the idea that I research/interview for 30 minutes and write for the next 30. More creative writing (PR is about as creative as I get) takes longer.

I remember reading that Robert Bly charges something like $200 an hour, and all of his writing is advertising related — so he’s not cranking out copy at even half of these word-per-hour rates.

It’ll depend on what you want (or need) to get per hour. I can usually write a good, average length (i.e. 300-350 words) post in about 30-45 minutes. Since my goal is to get all of my work above $30 per hour, I typically quote $15-$20 per post. At the very least I would recommend that bloggers accept no less than $10 per post.

If you need to perform blog maintenance such as moderating, reading, and responding to comments, submitting the URL to blog directories, and posting links on forums and other blogs, the time required to do these tasks should also figure into your rate calculations.

The problem is that many small-time businesses see blogging as cheap marketing. However, that’s only true if they maintain the blogs themselves. Why they think it should continue to be cheap marketing when they decide to outsource it is beyond me.

Personally, I don’t think the rates should be that much different than writing web-based articles. It’s all content, yet rates that we would laugh right out of the water if it were for articles are somehow deemed acceptable for blog posts.

I don’t care how many words the posts would be, it’s not enough. As you pointed out, just organizing your thoughts will take some time. You’re looking at less than $5 per post, or — to look at it another way — $1000 per month to do a full-time, professional job.

It’s not enough. Not by a long shot.

Yes, there is a difference between writing for someone else’s blog and having your own. The former appears to always be low paying, the latter seems to work for some people. Certainly, I’m all in favor of the workers owning the means of production.

MelissaO:

There are other versions, but I like this one best and refer people to it:
http://www.grantprofessionals.org/about/images/codeofethics.pdf

16-19 are the hot ones. I tell potential clients that it would be unethical to do otherwise. Note that you *can*, and I *do*, accept part of my payment based on a successful award. But it has to be a fixed amount that is part of general operating expenses for the organization.

Have I lost business this way? Oh, yes. Not a lot, tho. It all works out.

Run like a thief in the night from any job that wants you to pay for training materials….

In fact, I think it’s a scam. I couldn’t find ANY reference to the company with Google, and what freelance writing job demands $10 training materials?

-Misti

First, I think that the ad for a content writer for a prominent online magazine is being spammed all over Craig’s List. I found the same posting on Rhode Island’s Craig’s List and when I emailed them for more info, I received an auto-response directing me to a URL which doesn’t exist. Hmmm….

And Erik, I always read your posts with interest because I envision myself being a freelance grant writer when I grow up! Well, not really when I grow up, but when I get enough experience working on grants at my paid job to go after freelance gigs. But when I see orgs looking online for grant writers, many seem to think it’s acceptable for the writer to work their payment into the grant proposal, which is so not kosher. Do you ever find yourself educating organizations about this misconception or do you generally work with people who are well aware of the need to either pony up the $ at the beginning or find some person to volunteer their time?

Also ask who owns the content. A lot of blog companies only ask for non-exclusive content for a month, and then after that you could resell everything…so if that’s the case, it might be worth your time.

Big ones will tend to be few and far between — just the nature of the beast. I look for big ones, but make sure there are enough small ones to fill when necessary.

An entrepreneurship program I was involved in — and a one-time client — recommended having no more than 20 percent of business with one client (even 20 percent can be too high, depending on one’s business). That way, loosing the client won’t hurt too much.

Of course, the better paying the client, the easier it is to have too large a percentage of business there. This also points out the need to continue marketing (this is also a note to myself) — clients will leave for a variety of reasons and you may jettison some clients for other reasons.

Best of luck in replacing the one that left.

I agree that I have yet to see where blogging makes more sense than spending time marketing other services, but I think that there is a business to be had there for those who dedicate some time and effort and are willing to wait for a payoff. Deb seems to have done this.

If one has enough other work, spending a little time blogging and learning that market could lead to profitable blogging in the future. The big thing is getting to learn the business through networking with others who are sucessful at it as well as those who are skeptical (to get a realistic view).

If things were different this summer (trying to sell the house), I might have devoted some time looking into blogging beyond just what I read here.

But I would not have done that to the exclusion of other marketing, which has landed me several new clients lately — four $1,000-a-month ones in the last four months — an opportunity that I would have missed if I spent the time looking into blogging. The blogging research and actual blogging itself would have had to come during other time (the time trying to keep the house presentable to potential buyers — very hard with two teens).