If you’re thinking about becoming a freelance writer, then how much money you’ll earn is something to consider. The good news is that yes, you can make a living at it!

How much money do freelance writers earn? Some freelance writers just supplement their income with a few hundred dollars per month. In contrast, others have six-figure freelance writing businesses. It all depends on your level of experience and skills, and how much time you want to put in.

In this article, I’ll let you know how much you can earn from freelance writing, and the three main factors that I feel determine how much you make. I’ll also let you know how much I think you should be earning at various stages of your writing career.

Don’t Feel Like Reading? Check Out My Video On This Topic!

How Much Money Can You Earn From Freelance Writing?

So exactly how much can you expect to make as a freelance writer?

It’s a very simplistic answer, but the truth is really that you can make as much or as little as you want!

It will all depend on what kind of skills you develop, how much time and effort you want to put in, and other factors.

I know some people who just write a few posts per month to earn a little extra beer money ($100/month) all the way up to those who make six figures.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the median annual wage of writers and authors in 2019 was about $63,000. But that’s quite a wide range of people that includes everything from poets to screenwriters. And it includes everyone from the most successful authors to freelancers who are just getting started.

Factors That Determine How Much You Can Earn As A Freelance Writer

There’s a ton of different things that may either cause you to excel as a freelance writer, or make you constantly flounder and wonder what you’re missing if you’re doing them wrong.

But I think they can be broken down into three main areas that will encompass everything else.

How Many Writing Clients Can You Get?

If you want to get paid for freelance writing, then obviously you need clients!

Ideally you want repeat clients that keep coming back time and time again with more work. Otherwise a large amount of your time will be spent pitching new clients, and writing one-off articles or blogs can be time-consuming.

To get clients you’ll need to perfect your pitch. Whether you’re cold emailing clients or applying for writing jobs on job boards, you need to convince people to hire you over potentially hundreds of other writers.

The niches you’re willing to write about will also put a cap on how many clients you’ll be able to find. It’s fine if there are some topics that are too technical or too boring for you to want to write about them, but be aware of the limits that puts on you.

Once you work out your perfect pitch and who you want to write for, it’s mostly a numbers game and getting your pitch in front of as many potential clients as possible.

Don’t work yourself too hard! Be sure to check out my article Avoiding Burnout As A Freelance Writer

How Much Can You Charge Per Word?

In my experience, there is some correlation between how much experience you’ve got and how much you can charge as a freelance writer. It’s like clients have a sixth sense for this kind of thing.

But there are also things you can do to fast track your way to charging higher rates. A big part of it is just being confident and believing that you’re actually worth what you want to charge.

Don’t use wishy-washy language that makes you seem weak or like you don’t know what you want to clients.

And conventional wisdom about negotiating also dictates that you should never make your offer first. Always let clients give their rate that they’re willing to pay first. It’s almost a situation that you can’t lose.

Often times they may offer you a higher rate than what you would’ve asked for, which is free money in your pocket. And even if they lowball you, you can counter-offer with what you think you’re worth. If they don’t accept, then it’s unlikely you would’ve ever reached a deal with that client anyway.

But throwing out your rate first will almost always leave money on the table.

How Much Can You Write Per Day?

Assume you are able to get as many clients as you can handle and they’re all paying you a rate that you’re happy with.

From there, your main limiting factor is how many words you can write each day.

You may think that with an unlimited pool of money that you can take advantage of, you’d be willing to write as many words per day as it takes. But just like your muscles would get sore from working a physical job, you’ll become mentally exhausted by writing too much in a day and will eventually hit a limit.

At some point, your stamina will start to run out and you’ll find that you’re being less productive, and the words are coming out more and more slowly for the time that you spend sitting in front of the keyboard.

See my other article How Many Words Can You Write Per Day for more information.

How Much To Charge At Different Stages of Your Freelance Writing Career

Depending on where you are in your freelance writing journey, I’d set different goals for how much you should be earning.

Just Getting Started

When you’re just starting off, I think that $400 per month is a great goal to aim for. Especially if you’re just writing part-time to see if it’s something you want to pursue further. To make that much, you’ll need to write about 1,000 words per weekday on average, at a rate of $0.02 per word.

Beginner Fulltime Writer

If you’re a beginner to intermediate freelance writer, I would aim to try and make $1,000 to $2,000 per month. At this stage it’s likely to be inconsistent. Some months you might make $0, others you might make $3,000. This is part of the feast and famine cycle that most writers face until they can get a consistent client base that has a steady inflow of work for them.

Intermediate Freelance Writer

Once you’re an intermediate writer who has been freelancing full-time for a couple of years, I think you should aim to earn between $2,000 to $4,000 per month from your writing. If you’re not able to make at least $2,000 per month fairly consistently, then you’ll probably need to get a part-time job to supplement your income.

This is about where I fall in. For the time that I spend writing, I estimate that I earn an average of about $50 per hour. Although I don’t spend 8 hours per day writing, or have a full schedule of writing every day.

Advanced Freelance Writer

Lastly, I would define an advanced freelance writer as someone with a goal of making $10,000 per month or more. This is going to be several years into your writing career, and to earn this amount you’ll need to be consistently writing 5,000 words per day at a rate of $0.10 per word or more.

More realistically, to hit that $10,000 per month mark consistently, you aren’t likely to do it by writing for clients. At that point you’ll want to transition to running your own niche site or blog, or form an agency and hire a team of freelancers to work underneath you.

It’s possible to do just working by yourself. But your freelance writing would need to run like a well-oiled machine with constantly scheduled work, and working 40+ hours per week to earn a six-figure income.

Should Freelance Writers Charge By The Word or The Hour? This article will explain what’s best!

Conclusion

Freelance writing is a very flexible job.

You get to choose how many hours you want to work, what kinds of clients you want to work with, and all other aspects of your business.

So you may just write a few hours per month to supplement your income, or you may do it as a full-time job where you can earn thousands of dollars each month.

The main limiting factors to how much you can earn will be the number of clients you can get, the rate you can charge, and the number of words you’re physically able to type per day.