One of the issues writers always struggle with is what to charge for their writing. Here’s how I advised a friend recently. She was contacted by someone asking her to guest post for a set fee and wanted to know how to respond to them, as the money didn’t seem huge but she wanted to build up the paid blogging side of her business.

Here was my initial advice on average rates for writing blog posts:

What you can charge for posts depends on your profile and their budget. Small blogs may only pay $15-20 a post, while corporate/big blogs may be anywhere upwards of $50.  So the fee offered (about $30) sits right in the middle. (I also know bloggers who don’t do posts for less than $100-$150 apiece for corporate clients. )

Then I suggested that another consideration should be the work involved in writing the post:

If it’s a topic you’re expert in and you can write without thinking about it too much, then that would be ok (just) for a short post (400-500 words). If you have to write a longer, more detailed post and provide images, upload it yourself and so on, then you could ask for a bit more if you think they want it badly enough.

I followed this up with thinking about how the job sat with her personal productivity:

One way I work out a rate is to think of my hourly rate and halve it because I can easily write two 500 word posts in an hour, if it’s a topic I know inside out. (Update: but most people would expect you to take an hour to write a post and more time for associated tasks, so keep this in mind as well.)

Finally, I provided a short script for a response that left room for a future price increase:

You could also respond positively to the offer and make it clear that you will do it for $30 as an introductory rate, but would want more if it turns into something regular.

I always believe in leaving room for negotiation.

New writers, would this work for you? Experienced writers, what other advice would you add?

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, by now you will know that I’ve landed a gig writing occasionally for the Quips and Tips blog network.  This writing gig was a gift to myself and although it’s a paid blogging gig, the reasons I wanted to do it had very little to do with the money. What I like about this gig is:

• Although I can write for the well-known writing blog, I can also write for the goals blog, the money and love blog or most of the others in the network. It’s nice to have a choice.
• I can choose when I write. There’s no pressure to deliver a set number of posts in a certain time. That means when my client work is lighter I can write more, and when I’ve got a heavy workload, I can write less. That alone makes it a dream writing gig.
• I get links to my sites, resources and profiles from a respected group of sites – lots of SEO juice there.
• I can use the knowledge I’ve built up of different subjects. All though all of you know that I write about writing, did you know that when I started freelancing, I wrote a heck of a lot about financial stuff? Credit cards, mortgages, loans, insurance, estate planning – I’ve written about all of those, sometimes exhaustively. That’s why my first post is on funeral planning, but I plan to write about more fun stuff in the future.
• It’s fun – I get to choose my topics which means there’s finally a home for some of the random things that occur to me. I can turn these into articles in the Money and Love topic (which I think has a lot of scope). And if they’re not right for that one, they might suit another blog in the network.

As you can see, I’m getting a lot out of this writing gig and of course, I plan to give a lot back. Fair’s fair!

Have you ever taken a writing gig for reasons other than the pay? How did that work out?

Ghostblogging is a great way to get paid to write. As I’ve said before, blogging is how I got my own start in freelance writing and a good portion of my income today comes from blog writing, posting, and the marketing of client’s blogs. People and companies pay writers to write for their blogs and these writing gigs are much more informal than many other types of writing jobs, which is what some ghostbloggers enjoy most about it. You can get paid to blog for others in many different niches, offering you a great opportunity to make money doing something that could be a lot of fun. It’s most fun when you have an endless supply of things to blog about and make it as interactive as possible.

Blogs need to be focused for them to be effective. A lot goes into the successful ones and if you’re blogging for someone who is using their blog as a platform to increase their brand, improve their SEO, sell something specific, and / or improve customer relationships you’ll want to: write about things that are interesting to readers, utilise good blog optimisation practises, and if you’re doing it regularly, you’ll want to find a way to keep great ideas coming. Here are some of the ways you can do all of that so that you’ll get results for your customers, resulting in their wanting to keep paying you to write for them:

1. Industry research. Stay on top of the industry you’re writing about. Subscribe to other blogs in that niche and set a Google Alert for topic-related phrases.  Google will send you links, save you research time, and could supply you with endless blog post ideas. I love checking Google Blogs Search and Google News with keyword phrases when I need help.
2. Find out which keywords your client should rank for. Keyword optimisation isn’t everything but keeping it in mind will definitely help you help your customer rank for words and phrases that will get them the results they want. Pepper the blog posts with these phrases, especially in the title, subheadings, anchor text, and image tags. I also look to see who is currently ranking for those words and work to help my client look better in the search engine results than the existing top spots.
3. Interact. Interact with the blog readers. Try to inspire conversation in the comments with your text and get involved in conversations that get started as a result of your posts. Comments are good for the client’s search engine rankings and conversations attract crowds (which is always a good thing in the blogosphere).
4. Social media. Suggest to your client that social marketing and bookmarking services are part of what you’ll do for the blog. This provides you with additional invoicing opportunities, increases the blog’s exposure, and participating in discussions about the topic as part of your project will provide you with further ideas for future blog posts.
5. Linking. Take opportunities to link internally to other posts. This will keep the reader on the site longer and benefits the site from a search engine optimisation perspective. Don’t hesitate to link to authority sites in that niche as well as interesting news articles and other blogs.  The readers and authors of those blogs may follow track backs back to your customer’s site. Talk to your client about your strategy to ensure they’re on board but when you do link in and out of the blog, it will benefit the reader and the blog itself.

I love blogging. I have about a dozen of my own blogs and regularly blog for other sites as well as ghostblog for clients.

Oh, and…if you want to learn more about getting started in blogging, Sharon Hurley Hall has just released Getting Started in Blogging for the Kindle.

I am a professional blogger and writer, so pay me in cash. Pay me by Paypal, wire transfer, direct credit or even e-cheque, as long as I get paid for my work. Why do I feel the need to say this? Because I applied for a blogging job today. The ad stated that it was a paid blogging job. I spent some time crafting a suitable letter, emailed it off and waited for a reply. When it arrived, it turned out that the ‘compensation’ they were offering was simply ad revenue share.

The ad asked for high quality bloggers. I’ve been blogging for a few years now and have racked up a lot of well written posts on a lot of topics, so I think I qualify. But that’s exactly why I expect to get paid for my work. What they want me to do is to spend hours, days and weeks creating a good blog for someone else’s site on the off chance that their marketing methods will drive lots of traffic to the site. Sorry guys, been there, done that, got the hole in my bank balance to prove it, so I won’t be taking up your underwhelming offer.

I have nothing against making money from blog advertising, but I don’t need to go to another site to do that. Somewhere out there are about four blogs making me a pittance from the measly page views they garner despite the site owners’ promises of promotion and traffic, so I’m not going down that road again. On this blog, where I have put in the time to develop it and nurture it, I make money from advertising – and I don’t have to share it with anyone.

4 Guidelines for Setting Blog Posting Rates is the latest in a series of quality articles from Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial. I’m not just saying that because she interviewed me recently. In fact, this article answers what everyone who’s hoping to get paid to blog wants to know. What do most people charge for paid blog posts. Yuwanda gives a range of pay scales, which match my own experience of the paid to blog market. How do the rates Yuwanda mentions compare with your experience?

Someone asked me the other day about ghost blogging. She wanted to know about what it was and how to get started in it. Here are my answers. Ghost blogging is like ghostwriting. While ghostwriting is writing where you get no credit or byline, ghost blogging is blogging where you get no credit or byline. It’s work for hire, just as any other ghostwriting job.

Where do you find ghost blogging jobs?

I find these in the same places that I find other ghostwriting jobs. I go to the Freelance Writing Gigs site as my first port of call. I also get updates from the Writer’s Bridge and from a number of other sites that offer blogging jobs, one of the best being Problogger’s job board (most of these are bylined jobs, but a few may not be). There’s also Craigslist, where you need to weed out the ones that are worth bothering with. Finally, I set up a Google Alert for ‘blogger wanted’ and see what it brings. This gives me a long list of jobs to choose from. Of course, because I am a ghostwriter, clients often ask me about writing blog posts for them, so I get a lot of work through referrals.

How do you prepare for ghost blogging?

The best preparation is to have a blog – or several blogs – of your own. This proves that you know how to blog. If you know the ins and outs of WordPress and other blogging systems, then that helps too. And you need to have some expertise in the topic that the client wants or be willing to learn.

I also find that guest blogging is good preparation, because it forces you to think about writing for other audiences, which you have to do when you ghost blog. I’ve blogged on a number of sites and these have helped me to further develop my blogging skills and to meet new readers. I also use these for my portfolio so that I have a range of published posts to show to potential clients.

How much does ghost blogging pay?

That’s a how long is a piece of string question. Pay rates range from a couple of cents a word to a respectable rate. Variables that affect the rate include:

• whether it is bundled with other writing services
• the client’s budget
• the ghost blogger’s experience

Some people only want short posts that take 10-15 minutes to write, so if they offer me $10, I might accept it. On the other hand, I would want more for a researched and well thought out post. My policy is to ask for what I want but to know what I’m prepared to accept. What I’m prepared to accept might depend on how busy I am and how the rate compares with the rates for other work.

Can you use your ghost blogging posts on your resume?

No, it’s work for hire. I tend to describe the gigs in general terms, like: ‘Here’s a list of topics I’ve blogged about.’ However, ghost blogging is confidential so I can’t put links to the posts in my resume.

Is it weird to blog for someone else?

I approach it like any other writing job, but it’s fun, because I don’t have to think too much about keywords and I do have to make it an enjoyable read. I love blogging, and ghost blogging gives me the chance to blog about topics that I might not blog about on my own blogs. As a born again blogger, this really appeals to me, and making money from it is the icing on the cake. If you want to make money from blogging, then this is certainly an option to consider.

Technorati Tags: blogging,ghostwriting,get paid to blog

A few months ago, I set myself the task of increasing my income from blogging. When I was in school, my teachers used to criticize my writing for being too concise. So although I have since learned to write in a variety of styles and to a variety of lengths, blogging is the perfect job for me, as I need to be able to write concisely and clearly.

As part of my efforts I made contact with a few sites that were looking for regular guest posters. These included PiggyBankPie, Writing White Papers and Daily Writing Tips. PiggyBankPie in particular had a unique approach to using bloggers. Founder PatBiz saw the site as a launch pad for getting paid blogging and writing work for the site’s contributors.

Yesterday the first of these opportunities came to fruition. I received my first commission: a post on blog carnivals for Mixed Market Arts. It just goes to show that you can get paid for doing something you love and you can get paid to blog.

As you know, I’ve been doing reviews of paid to blog programs. However, sometimes you just want the lowdown on what you get paid and how much you have to write. That’s what I’ve provided in my guest post on PiggyBankPie. It’s called: Ten Paid To Blog Programs At A Glance.

I’ve been blogging for PayU2Blog for some time now and this is the biggie. The payouts are at the low end – $5 a post – but the work is regular and plentiful, and no blogger could ask for more. When I started blogging with PayU2Blog, I got all my opps by email once a week and I had about a week to do them. Now, there’s a more sophisticated system. Opportunities are generally added to your online account once or twice a week and the information includes a deadline date.

One of the features that sets PayU2Blog apart from the rest is that most opportunities are approved on the spot. You type in the link, hit submit and bingo – that counts as a completed post. If there is a problem with completion (sometimes the system doesn’t recognise perfectly good links) then a manual review will pick them up. I have been paid for every single post I have done for PayU2Blog and it adds up to quite a bit.

This is another blogger friendly company. Display a logo on your blog and you can be entered into a $100 prize draw. This isn’t pie in the sky – I won the draw once and got $100 for doing absolutely nothing. There’s a forum where bloggers can meet and chat and there’s a messaging system in your account panel so that you can send messages if you need to. The guys at PayU2Blog always respond within a short time.

There’s not much more to say about PayU2Blog except that signup is easy and that they accept most indexed blogs. I get as many opps for my Blogger blogs as for my hosted ones. In fact, I usually get upwards of 10 opps a week and have made hundreds with this company. If you’re looking for regular blogging income, then PayU2Blog is certainly worth considering.

The Linky Love Army is a blogger friendly paid to blog army. Forgive me for sounding like I’ve got the rose tinted specs on, but I am impressed with the way they work with bloggers. Ok, they’ve got an improbable name, which is probably why most people call them the LLA, but the name comes out of the wedge blogging concept. The idea is that when bloggers review products and services, they also link to other bloggers who have done the same and those bloggers benefit from more traffic. In the LLA, being at the thin end of the wedge is a good thing, because you’ll get more blogs linking to you.

That aside, it works like many other paid to blog companies. You login to the bloggers’ interface, which is very plain. Click on ‘view missions’ and you will see which blogging jobs are available. Click on ‘view’ next to each mission to see what links you need to include (mostly, there are three different links, one to another blog, and two to a company) and how much you will earn. Write your post at the specified length, submit the URL using the link at the bottom of the mission details and you’re done.

What you earn depends on their assessment of your blog. I have several blogs with them and for my last mission, pay ranged between $5.50 and $10 for posts on the same topic. As with other paid to blog companies, each post must be unique.

What I like about the LLA is:

• they are quick to approve your blogs and they explain the reasons for rejection in a nice way. Adding blogs is very easy and you can input relevant keywords so that you get missions that suit your blog
• they pay fast – I did two missions on Friday and was paid on Saturday
• they respond to emails – I asked about not getting missions, got a nice reply and found four new missions when I logged in
• they have a referral program for blogger signups and posts
• they keep coming up with new ways for bloggers to earn money
• they are blogger friendly – I know I said it before, but it’s worth repeating

The Army speak doesn’t do much for me, but that’s only a personal niggle. Apart from that, I have found the LLA to be a great company to deal with – and they’re not even paying me to say that.