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?

It’s no secret that I’ve been a long time advocate of promoting yourself through your writing. In other words, you should use some of those writing chops for you and not just for your clients. When I started blogging, I advocated article marketing as a promotional strategy, and while that still has its place, an even better way to showcase your writing talent is by guest blogging. I’ve been doing a lot more of it for two reasons.

1. Guest Blogging is Fun

I am interested in all kinds of things and sometimes I want to write about more than just writing or promotion or blogging. Sometimes I want to release my inner geek in my writing or explore an aspect of parenting. Or try to write about something I’m familiar with for a new audience. Guest blogging allows me to do that. Some of my recent guest posts and articles include:

• Getting Paid to Write – It’s More Than Just Writing
• Five Ways To Go Green In Everyday Life
• How to Plan A Green Vacation
• Twylah – Fan Pages For Your Twitter Stream
• How to Use Speech Recognition Software – 5 Tips for Writers
• 5 Things About Managing Money I Learned From My Mom

As you can see, I’ve written about a few topics I wouldn’t normally cover here.

2. Guest Blogging Enhances My Professional Reputation

I’m a professional writer and blogger. When my clients see my byline attached to posts on well respected blogs, that makes me look good. (And that’s part of the reason I put in my best effort to anything I write. Whether I get paid or not, I still have professional standards and the only person I hurt if I don’t live up to them is myself.) What’s more, there’s a bit of a numbers game, too. When I first got online, I got very excited the first time I did a vanity search in Google and got 100+ results; now those results are in the tens of thousands. If you’re hiring someone, won’t the person who seems to be everywhere at least make you take a second look? So even when I post good quality posts on sites that are still up and coming, I’m still getting some benefit.

3. More Guest Blogging Benefits

And there’s more. The more places I blog, the more I connect with other bloggers – and I have met some wonderful people through blogging. I love connecting with like minded people and get a lot of intellectual satisfaction and mental stimulation from the process (which is a boon for any writer.) Past experience also shows that just as I recommend the people I connect with to others who need professional writing, blogging and social media services, they also recommend me, so everybody wins.

Do you guest blog? If you do, and want to publish posts on writing, then check out our guest posting guidelines and send me your ideas.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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?

This paid to blog opportunity came in by email from Mary Ward (contact details below). I’m posting it here in case you’re interested – Sharon

I Will Pay You To Let Me Post To Your Blog

What I am looking for is bloggers with fairly established blogs who are willing to post a guest post article for pay.  In other words, I will pay you to be a guest blogger on your blog.

This is basically how it works:

• I will provide you with a professionally-authored guest post article of about 400-500 words.  This will be an exclusive article that has not been posted anywhere else, and will not be in the future–a fair value all on its own–as long as your blog meets minimum criteria.  I will pay you $10 USD via PayPal for the posting.
• Minimum criteria are as follows: your blog must have a Google PageRank of 3 or higher, or PR 2 if you can show 9 months or more of regular archives and posting.  OR your blog has 200 or more subscribers, as shown on the site via a Feedburner or Aweber widget (note that if you have the subscribers, your PageRank doesn’t matter and could be lower).
• You must agree that you will not remove the post after payment is made, andthat you will leave the bio line and link, with the anchor text as provided, intact.
• Email me when the post is up with a link, and I will process the payment via PayPal to the address you provide.  This normally only takes a day or two, perhaps a few if over a weekend, and should not be any longer than one week (in the VERY rare circumstance).

I have a wide range of topics and this is an ongoing project, so do feel free to contact me.  I have articles on topics such as health and beauty, green living, seniors, returning to school and online education, health careers, fitness, diet, nutrition, animals and pets, and many more.  If I don’t have anything that suits you right now chances are I will in the near future, or can often work a piece in the next round that is tailored to your blog/topic.

Please feel free to contact me even if you are unsure if your blog qualifies, or if I have a topic for you–I’m happy to consider all inquiries.

Interested bloggers should contact Mary at pdposts(at)gmail(dot)com (please replace at and dot with approp.symbols .  Please include a link to your blog.

Limit is one piece per blog, but if you have more than one blog that qualifies I will gladly place on each blog. This is an ongoing gig and new articles become available each month.

Disclosure: I have not been paid for this post – Sharon

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

This year has certainly been a busy one and I’ve made some progress towards achieving my career goals for this year. Not only have I increased my writing income, but I’ve been able to spend more time with my family, helping me to achieve a good work-life balance.

One of my new ventures this year was to start working more with other writers. I put a small team together, increasing the number of writing commissions that I could accept. That’s proved successful, though there are challenges in working with writers whom you don’t know that well. Overall, I’ve gained a few good friends and several colleagues whose work I respect from around the world.

This year, I was more selfish. What I mean is that when I accepted jobs I thought not only about whether they were good for my clients, but about whether they were good for me. Sometimes you have to know when you should turn down a new writing job or say goodbye to an existing client. I also thought about what happens when clients leave and you need to replace that income.

While managing my freelance writing career, I was also supervising occasional house repairs and dealing with other essential tasks, so it’s probably not surprising that I had a short term burnout. However, it was soon time to get on with other projects, such as launching this blog on its own domain in June. Within a week or so, the blog was listed on Google.

In July, I took a short break in Orlando, and left the blog in the hands of some very capable guests. One of them, Suzanne James, contributed one of the year’s most popular posts, How To Pick A Publisher.

August saw me considering some of my usual preoccupations of promotion, research and the writing life. I’ve continued with all of those for the rest of the year with posts such as: Are You Sabotaging Your Goals?; The Reluctant Expert and How To Build Your Own Buzz.

In October I took part in Blog Action Day with an eco friendly writing post. In November, I wrote a number of posts that I was proud of, including My Two Year Adsense Experiment; Is It Time To Quit The Day Job? and Are All Your Eggs In One Basket?

This year I’ve increased my income from blogging , in part by gigs on Daily Writing Tips, Piggy Bank Pie, Writing White Papers and others. This has led to posts on other sites, and I’m hopeful that this will continue in the coming year. I’m now thinking about setting out my goals for 2008, but that will be another post.

Technorati Tags: get paid to write,writing,freelance writing,blogging,get paid to blog

Yay, it’s another new gig – this time at PureBlogging – and I kick it off with a review of a new place to promote your posts. In Do You Zoom? – BloggingZoom Review, I talk you through how it works and my experience with it so far. I’d be glad if you’d stop by and leave a comment.

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.