How much to charge for freelance web articles?

Submitted by mattbarton.exe on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 14:01

Greetings, everyone. I know that many of the folks here have a great deal more experience than I do at getting paid freelance work, so I just thought I'd ask a basic question: How much can anyone expect to earn writing game-related articles for commercial websites and online mags? I'm trying to figure out what constitutes a fair price, and whether I'm just working for peanuts when I could turn this hobby into a nice sideline. I did some internet research and came up with the figure of 50 cents a word, which seems far more than I expected--I've been receiving somewhere between 1-5 cents per word and considered that lucky. Can anyone give me more info on this? I realize that writing these types of articles is more a labor of love than anything else, but is it really true that there's just no money in this biz?

It Depends

Submitted by Patrick (not verified) on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 16:14.

Some sites pay a regular stipend which isn't very much, equaling between 1 and 5 cents a word. The Escapist pays 25 cents a work, which is the best I've seen in games publishing. If you want to go to 50, you probably need to be writing for mainstream publications like The Atlantic, Newsweek, ect.

I write for a newspaper and

Submitted by Laurie on Thu, 03/01/2007 - 14:14.

I write for a newspaper and I get around 8 cents a word for that. Other places, I get the game I'm reviewing (which works out to 1-5 cents). I think you can make more dependent on the number of ads for the publication. Have you read Dibbell's _Play Money_, he talks about how he made more money as an eBay power seller of gaming goods than he had writing, and he's a major journalist so I would think that would indicate that the money isn't good unless you want to work constantly.