I have been writing for many years. More than I am willing to admit to at this point. But, recently, I decided I needed financially to venture into the freelance writing world.
If you haven't been down this route....It is a tough world. Because I am new on the three sites that I signed up for...I make my bids lower than what I actually think my time is worth and what the national standard says I should charge.
I know you aren't going to believe this. But I got beat out on an editing job just today. The project was to edit 236 pages and I got beat by someone who said they would do this job for $35.00. People...that is about $0.15/page. I know money is tight everywhere and everyone needs to get the most value from their dollars. But, $0.15/page for a line edit job is absolutely ridiculous.
However, I will not give up. I will just keep looking at the postings and hope that some other people will see the benefit of hiring someone with my experience for their jobs.
I know what you are thinking....if you are a writer, why aren't you going for the actual writing jobs? Well....those seem to pay even less. There are so many postings on these sites for article and content writers, but they only want to pay you.....get ready.....anywhere from $1.00 - $2.00 for a 1000 word article. You read that correctly. I see it all the time.
If I decide to write a 1000 word article, first I would need to research the topic. The research may take one to two hours, depending on the topic. Then I need to really digest it so I can write a unique article that can pass CopyScape or some other plagiarism software. so lets say the digesting of information takes 30 minutes to an hour. That means I have already used up two to three hours and I haven't even begun to write anything yet. Then I am looking at approximately another two to three hours to write, edit, and polish the 1000 word article. So, I just spent somewhere between two to five hours writing an article that I will get paid at most $2.00. Does that sound like time well spent to anyone?
Check back for more on this saga!
Have a great day!
Dee
