Pricing B2B writing projects can be confusing.
Not only do rates vary by industry, experience, and individual company, but there are different pricing structures.
Do you charge by the word? By the project? By the hour? What makes sense for you as a new B2B writer? And do you even have a choice?
Read on for insights into the world of B2B writing pricing.
How to Assess B2B Pricing Models
There are three standard pricing models for freelance writers. Per word, project, and hour, and if you poke around job boards, you’ll see all three.
Talk with freelance B2B writers; you’ll also find they charge in any of these formats. It’s helpful to understand the models, so you have a framework.
Per Word
The per-word payment model is antiquated, and it dates to the early days of print when traditional newspapers had a finite amount of space. Writers had to fit their writing into those limited parameters.
You couldn’t go over your limit unless there was a breaking story. Then, a less important story might get the boot, and the writer would be able to write a longer, more in-depth piece. In such cases, they’d get paid more because they were getting paid by the word.
Yet, the per-word model makes no sense in the modern world. There’s no space limitation online, and per word doesn’t reflect the amount of work involved. Writing is more than words. It’s the final output of research, thinking, and revising. So word counts are not an accurate measuring tool.
Can you imagine paying a musician by the note? Of course not.
However, you will encounter it until the per-word rate disappears for good, so it’s helpful to have a reference point.
Ten or twenty cents can be a good place to start if you’re brand-new to content writing. Once you have more experience, you can seek out more lucrative assignments, closer to $1 a word or more.
However, there can be hidden costs to those $1-a-word assignments. Often such assignments require a high level of experience, can take hours, and involve numerous, detailed edits.
Some B2B writers discover they can write those twenty cents per word articles so fast they maintain a high [internal] hourly rate. (You can gauge an internal hourly rate per piece by the number of hours it took to write the piece divided by the final payment. We’ll talk more in a minute about the actual internal hourly rate calculation.)
Per Hour
You’ll want to know your internal hourly rate no matter what model you’re working under. That’s helpful for estimating your income and which projects to pursue, and when you run into a client who wants an hourly rate, you have one.
Take agencies. They often charge hourly rates, so you must follow their model.
Yet, when it comes to working directly with clients, per-hour pricing can open you up to micromanaging. Of course, they don’t want to start a relationship with an open-ended tab, so they will ask you to estimate it. This means you may as well go with project pricing from the get-go.
However, there is a time when hourly rates make the most sense, and that’s when the project is complicated and open-ended. Then you might define a range of hours at X amount per hour.
Project Pricing
A flat rate or project pricing means your client knows exactly what the project costs at the outset. That makes it easy to draft a contract or Statement of Work and get your client to sign off.
Whether it’s a $200 blog article or a $5,000 content strategy consulting project, it’s easy to understand.
Project pricing is also a great way to give yourself a pay increase because you get faster the more you work with a client.
Imagine if you work with a client every month. Maybe the first project takes 10 hours, and the tenth one takes three hours. By the tenth, you’ve effectively gotten a pay raise.
Knowing a client’s industry, style, and preferences helps you write faster, more compelling content. If you were charging by the hour, you’d be penalized.
Now that you have a better grasp of these three B2B writing pricing models, it helps to realize the best way to maximize your income.
The best way you can make more money is by tracking your time and figuring out what types of content you write fastest and enjoy the most.
Why Successful B2B Writers Track Their Time
There are two primary benefits to tracking your time:
- You want to get good at estimating your workload. If you can write one type of article in three hours and another project takes eight hours, you want to know this. Otherwise, you can end up overloading yourself.
- You want to know your “internal” hourly rate. Your real internal hourly rate is a blend of paid client work and nonpaid work like marketing and administration. This number helps you gauge your income and budget and decide whether to take on a project.
How can you track your time? I use an app called RescueTime, which sorts your tasks into different categories so you can see at a glance what you’re doing.
You could even write it down on paper if you’re good at remembering that sort of thing.
What method you use doesn’t matter; the point is to choose something you’ll consistently use and get an idea of how long it takes you to do certain tasks. That way, you’ll develop a sense of which projects are most lucrative for you.
And if you want a great guide to help you set or double check your pricing, don’t forget AWAI’s Pricing Guide.
What do you think? Does this help you understand the three common pricing models for B2B writers?
