The more words you can write per day as a freelance writer, the more money you can earn. But like with learning any skill, it takes practice and experience to gradually increase what you’re capable of.
How many words can you write in a day? For beginner writers, I recommend starting off writing 500 to 1,000 words per day. For full-time professional writers, I think you should aim to write 2,000 to 5,000 words per day.
In this article, I’ll go over how many words a blogger, author, or freelance writer should write per day. I’ll give numbers to aim for at each stage in your writing journey, and more.
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How Many Words Can A Freelance Writer or Blogger Write Per Day?
It’s hard to put a number on how many words the average blogger or freelance writer can write each day.
My guess would be that there is a huge variance. With some writing only a few hundred words per day, with others writing many thousand.
Although it’s not a perfect analogy, we can look back at how much some famous authors wrote per day.
Mark Twain averaged about 1,800 words per day in a four or five hour sitting. Although he also had times where he wrote 200,000 words in 60 days.
Ernest Hemingway only wrote about 500 words per day. And that was working from first light until noon or later.
Others like Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) wrote 10,000 words per day.
This is a pretty huge gap! So really it will depend on what your goals are, and how much stamina you’ve got when it comes to writing.
How long your posts are will dictate how much you need to write each day. See my article How Long Should A Blog Post Be? for more information.
How Many Words Should You Start Off With?
If you’re just starting off as a freelance writer, I’d recommend aiming for 500 to 1,000 words per day. Even if you’re just doing it part-time or as a hobby.
You can pick up some easy jobs on a content mill like Textbroker and finish them pretty quickly. If you find yourself bored at work on a Friday afternoon with nothing else to do, write for an hour! (If nobody is looking.)
Even as a complete beginner, I could do a couple of 200 – 300 word Textbroker jobs in an hour or two.
Gradually Increase Your Word Count
I believe that building up your writing stamina is just like building up muscle. It takes some time. And if I take a break from writing for a week or two and try to get back into it, I can definitely feel it!
So what you want to do is write consistently, and keep gradually increasing the amount that you’re writing.
After a few months, I think that 2,000 words per day is a really good goal for beginners. Especially if you have a full-time job. It will take some extra dedication to motivate yourself to write for a couple of hours after a long day at work.
Going Pro As A Freelance Writer
Once you consider yourself a full-time freelance writer, I think you should really aim to get yourself up to writing 5,000 words per day.
That sounds like a ton, especially if you’re first getting started. But like I mentioned, you can work your way up gradually and it won’t seem so bad.
If you followed the tips from my How To Write FAST! article, you should be able to write about 1,000 words per hour before long. So 5,000 words per day will be a solid 5 or 6 hours of work per day. About 25 to 30 hours per week… still less than a full-time job!
Don’t get me wrong. This is still a very ambitious and you will be a PROLIFIC writer if you can consistently manage to write 5,000 words per day. My guess is that very few people manage it for any length of time.
It’s also unlikely that you’ll always have 5,000 words of paid writing to do for clients each and every day. So I’d recommend starting your own blog or niche website to fill any extra word count, but still maintain that consistent word count.
The Math Behind How Much You Should Write Per Day
I recommend trying to write 5,000 words per day. Because even if you’re only getting paid $0.02 per word by clients, you can still make $100 per day at that point! That’s about $25,000 per year, even if you take a couple of weeks of holidays.
Before long you should hopefully be able to work your way up to a better rate like $0.05 per word or more. At that point, you can theoretically earn a more comfortable living of $60,000 per year or more if you have a consistent inflow of work.
How Much Do I Personally Write Per Day?
For me, I can write for about 4 or 5 hours per day before I start to burn out and become less productive.
Not including researching and editing, I can write about 1,000 words per hour or more.
So writing 4,000 to 5,000 words per day is pretty comfortable for me, and something I feel like I could maintain long-term.
I max out at around 8,000 words per day when I’m really pushing myself. The most I’ve written before is about 150,000 words in a month. And my wrists and hands were definitely sore after that.
There are definitely days that I’m feeling lazy and unmotivated, or borderline depressed. On those days I can still usually bring myself to at least write one 1,000 to 2,000 word blog or article.
My own writing schedule is also a bit sporadic. Sometimes I’ll write for 2 hours a day when I have more loose deadlines. Other times I’ll write for 4 or 5 hours a day or more if I’ve got 30 articles lined up to write. And then there are times where I don’t write at all for weeks.
How Many Words Should You Write Per Year?
For full-time writers, I think 1 million words per year is a good stretch goal.
A million words breaks down to 4,000 words that you’ll need to write each and every weekday.
Meaning that you’ll aim for it, but you probably aren’t going to accomplish it.
That’s the goal that I personally set for my 2019 New Year’s Resolution. I didn’t accomplish it, but setting it as a goal was definitely instrumental in my writing 150,000 words in January of 2019.
By around May, I just didn’t feel like tracking it any more. But it’s safe to say that I probably wrote around 500,000 to 600,000 words last year.
How many blog posts do you need to write? See my article How Many Blog Posts Should You Write Per Week or Month? to find out!
How Much Should Fiction Authors Write Per Year?
If you want to be a serious full-time fiction author, I think you should aim to write 1 novel per month.
Like with freelancing or blogging, this is probably something that it will take you some time to work up to. But eventually you should be writing 5,000 words per day for 3 weeks at a time, followed by 1 week of editing and formatting.
For more advice on writing fiction quickly or just some inspiration, I’d recommend checking out the Youtube channel of writer Chris Fox.
How Much Should Bloggers Write Per Year?
One great thing about being a blogger is that you don’t have to worry about finding clients. You can write as much as you want, and the only limits are your own energy level and ingenuity to keep coming up with new topics.
Of course a big downside of starting a blog is that you won’t get paid right away. If you want to make money from blogging or a niche site, then I think you should be aiming to get 100 pieces of content up on your site as quickly as possible.
Blogs and articles take time to rank, so the best time to get your writing online is yesterday!
In one group I’m a part of, we had a challenge to try and write 60,000 words for your website in a month. If you’re just getting started with blogging or creating your first niche site, I think that’s the kind of momentum that you need to come out of the gate with.
I think you should aim to get 30 articles or blogs up on your website in the first 30 days. In the beginning, it will be a ghost town and nobody will start visiting your site right away. So the more content you can get up, the faster people will start to come.
Once you’ve got a significant amount of content up on your website, then you can slow down to only writing 2 or 3 blog posts or articles per month.
“But Your Goals Are Unrealistic!”
“No one can write 5,000 words per day consistently!” you may be saying to yourself.
If you found yourself reading this post and scoffing at my suggestions, and think that they’re unrealistic, ask yourself why.
Are you justifying your current low word count, or scared to try increasing it and fail?
It’s okay to fall short of your word count goals, and it’s likely to happen a lot when you’re just getting started. It takes a lot of willpower, mental stamina, and determination to sit down and write 5,000 words per day for several days in a row.
It’s also not like I’m recommending something that I don’t do myself.
Last month I wrote about 75,000 words for clients, plus a little of my own writing on top of that. And I actually felt like I wasn’t writing fast enough and could’ve done more.
So if you don’t believe that you’re capable of writing 5,000 words per day as a full-time writer, I’d challenge yourself. You may be surprised!
Conclusion
Different writers may have very different word counts. It depends on your rate, how serious you are about your writing and if it’s part-time or full-time, and what your goals are.
Some freelance writers or bloggers may only write 500 words per day. While others may write 5,000 or more, especially during busy times!
No matter what stage you’re at in your writing journey, I recommend pushing yourself to always write a little more than you did last week. Think of how much more writing you could do in the next decade if you doubled your word count each day!