Episode 31 - Kapwing: Greg Ciotti on the future of content marketing
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As the world of work changes, the role of freelance writers is becoming more prominent. There are an estimated 70 million freelancers in the United States alone or 36% of the workforce. For in-house content teams, knowing how much to pay freelancers per article is unclear. With millions of freelancers out there, how do you know which ones are worth hiring? Where do you find writers with the niche skills you need?
Let’s start with pay—rates will depend on the writer’s experience, the subject matter, and the amount of heavy lifting the in-house team has to do before publishing. To give you a range, the Superpath community says you should pay $350-$700 for a 1200-word B2B SaaS article.
For comparison, rates range from $250 to $399 based on Peak Freelance’s 2022 Freelance Writing Rates Survey. Respondents in the survey wrote for various niches, including lifestyle, health, and fitness, where writers generally charge lower rates due to higher supply.
Knowing how much to pay for certain types of projects is important, as is knowing where to find writers, how to maintain good relationships, and create a network of freelancers.
Let’s dive in.
A good starting point for a freelance relationship is paying people what they’re worth. Certain freelance niches have higher earning potential than others—B2B SaaS is one of the higher ones, as shown by a quick comparison of Superpath’s community’s average rates and Peak Freelance’s average.
So if you run content at a SaaS company and are paying $250-$350 per article but not getting the results you want, it could be because highly skilled freelancers are charging more. On the other hand, if your content is based on subject matter that’s not highly technical, you could pay around $300 and still get a high-quality article. So look at it as a continuum.
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Many beginners will charge on the lower end of the rate spectrum (regardless of industry) to gain experience. While this can save your company money, you’ll also need to do more heavy lifting, whether that’s giving detailed briefs or doing several rounds of edits.
To give you an idea of pricing based on experience, an article by Demand Jump lists out sample rates which we’ve converted to flat fees for a 1200-word article:
Let’s put these rates into practice with two example projects.
Let’s say you have a batch of four to eight basic SEO articles per month that you want two freelancers to write. Your budget is $250-$350 per article, falling into the intermediate category.
Since you’re hiring less experienced freelancers, you’ll need to provide detailed briefs with keywords, links to informational articles, and possibly titles and headlines.
Depending on whether you pay $60 per article or $250, you may have to do several rounds of editing or have clean, ready-to-publish articles upon submission. The saying “you get what you pay for” is no exception here—writers charging on the lower end of the range likely don’t have much experience working with clients and meeting their expectations.
Let’s say you want to start creating ghostwritten thought leadership pieces from your founder based on their personal experiences and industry observations. Providing a brief and getting a freelancer to follow along as in the SEO project won’t work in this scenario.
You’ll need a ghostwriter who understands how to help the founder share their own ideas. They need to ask good questions, identify a good tone of voice, and make the client feel comfortable with ghostwriting. It's not their own words, so SME doesn't matter as much, but they should still have experience with thought leadership ghostwriting.
If they lack relevant experience, the content won’t build trust and credibility. So it’s worth paying $700 to $800 for someone who knows what they’re doing and will help your thought leadership be persuasive and impactful.
Most freelance writers prefer to charge a flat rate per project based on scope, research, editing, and revisions. While you can pay per word or hour, charging a flat fee per project and agreeing on a clear scope with the freelancer makes it easier to communicate and budget.
Someone charging per word may be inexperienced—they haven’t realized that much more goes into writing than just the words on the page—or they may be experienced but from a publishing background where magazines set per-word rates. Either way, flat fees tend to work better in B2B writing.
Finally, per-hour rates can be inaccurate for both parties. Unless you’re using a time-tracking tool, you’re going off good faith that the freelancer worked X hours. Charging per hour makes sense only if you’re hiring for tasks outside the scope of writing, like uploading content to the CMS or building backlinks.
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Helene Fleischer, Content Marketing Manager at PolicyMe, recently asked the Superpath Slack community about paying deposits to freelancers. If you have to pay a deposit, that will impact your cash flow and needs to be factored into your budget.
According to our community, paying a 50% deposit for long-term projects like a batch of articles, eBooks, or white papers is standard. Though not as common, some freelancers ask new clients for 100% upfront payment or 50% for smaller projects like a blog posts.
Once your relationship is established, you can ask the freelancer(s) to bill you at the end of the month for all articles completed. And please, don’t be a company freelancers have to chase for invoices. Pay quickly (within a few days is best), and don’t drag out payment to net 60 terms.
Your relationships with freelancers will be much better just by paying on time.
It’s also fairly common for freelancers to hire subcontractors for their own work. For example, we’ve heard on Twitter that some top-tier freelancers who charge $1k+ per article actually have lower-quality work, likely due to subcontracting.
The more in-demand the freelancer is, the more they can raise their rates and may be incentivized to outsource. To make sure everyone’s on the same page, lay out terms on outsourcing in a freelancer contract before starting work.
One of the most common struggles business owners have is not being able to find freelancers. Some struggle with sourcing because there’s a cost and pay disconnect—you can't expect $50 articles from Fiverr to make waves in your industry. But at the same time, knowing the best places to look for professional freelancers can be overwhelming.
Here are your best bets.
Freelance rates are a big deal, but they’re not the be-all and end-all of working with freelancers. Your relationship with your writers will be much more successful just by paying on time, paying fairly, and communicating about scope and expectations before starting work. Keep these factors in mind as you move forward with your next project, and your future freelancers will thank you.
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Cierra is the Content Marketing and Community Manager at Superpath. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.
