Writing guide
Where the money is in writing: an honest map of the pay
Articles, copy, technical docs, ghostwriting, staff jobs, screenwriting: how the work differs and where the pay actually sits.
Every writing income conversation collapses into one question - what does it pay? - and the honest answer is a map, not a number. Here is the map.
The honest baseline. The most cited public reference in the industry is the Editorial Freelancers Association’s rate chart, rebuilt from member surveys every few years. The 2024 edition puts most professional writing work around 4 to 6 US cents per word, or roughly 50 to 70 US dollars an hour, with technical writing near the top of the band. Those figures describe experienced US-based freelancers; local markets differ, and newcomers start below them. What the chart is really for is calibration - it proves the market’s floor is not zero.
Freelance articles and blogs. The entry door. General-interest pieces cluster near the bottom of any range; niches move you up it - finance, health and technical writing reliably outpay “anything goes” blogging, because the writer absorbs risk a generalist cannot. The arithmetic of pricing your own piece is on the how-much-to-charge guide, and the rate calculator turns your target income into a per-piece number you can say out loud.
Copy and content. Writing that is measured against revenue - emails, landing pages, product copy - pays above article rates for the same reason salespeople eat first. It is also the natural home of retainers: one client, a reserved block of your month, a predictable invoice. The retainer guide explains the fence you need to build around it.
Technical and specialist. Documentation, UX writing, white papers. Fewer gigs, stickier clients, top-of-band rates: the EFA’s own chart places technical work at the high end precisely because the writer carries subject-matter weight a generalist cannot fake overnight.
Ghostwriting and screenwriting. Ghost work should sit 20 to 50 percent above your bylined rate - the pricing logic is on the ghostwriting page. Screenwriting is the outlier on this map: unions publish minimums and the craft is real, but entry is gatekept by staffing and spec sales. Treat it as a second craft you build on the side, not a faster ladder.
Staff jobs and the long game. A salary trades your ceiling for a floor; freelancing trades the floor for the ceiling. Neither is the correct answer - but whichever you pick, the mechanics are identical: track every payment (the income tracker keeps the ledger), set tax aside on payment day, and let the numbers, not hope, set your rates.