Over at the Authority Blogger Forum my friend and super forum moderator, Jen has started a great thread about freelance blogging rates.
As she says, while there is a lot of information out there about freelance blogging, the one thing people rarely talk about is how much you should get paid.
While in the thread I say
The reason I don’t mention rates in posts is because what I see as normal rates might not be for the people reading. I know what I charge, anything else is speculation. For beginners being made an offer is a victory, for old hands you need to know what you can manage to live on.
I have no doubt in my mind that the people present in this thread could make far more than the baseline $10/post, $25/post or more but it all depends on the particular gig, niche, research, word count, yada yada.
… I think it is fair to say there is a range of fees paid, per post, and more rarely salaried.
It seems the most common fee paid per post is between $7 and $50 per post, depending on all the usual factors. As your experience grows or the complexity increases you can go well beyond that.
Salaries tend to be low hundreds a month unless you are working for a super-successful blog or doing work for a profitable company. For example, say you worked for an electronics retailer, compared to a small gadget blog.
It’s like selling a house, it is only worth what someone is willing to pay. What you have to do is get some gigs then put your rates up until your rates are too high so you don’t get any work
I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer to this, what do you think is a fair rate? I would value your input over in the forum thread.