Review of: The Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey. Volume 2.

Review by: Nick Usborne

"An essential resource for freelance copywriters who need to know how much to charge, and for companies which want to know how much they should pay."

Agreeing on the right fee can be a point of friction between freelance copywriters, and the companies they hope to work with.

All too often, copywriters just don’t know how much they should be asking for.

And even when they do, they may be faced with a prospective client who simply doesn’t know how much they should pay.

This lack of knowledge, or absence of a simple industry benchmark from which both parties can work, often leads to discontent, and sometimes to the cancellation of the project.

What Chris Marlow has done, in this second volume of the Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey, is establish benchmarks for no fewer than 40 different kinds of writing jobs.

From brochures to white papers, emails to web pages, case histories to direct mail pieces.

In each case, based on input collected from 358 freelance copywriters in late 2006, you’ll find a range of prices presented, and the identification of a median price.

These 40 benchmarks alone are sufficient to make this survey an essential purchase for any freelance copywriter, or company hiring freelance copywriters.

However, the Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey offers more than that.

In addition to the data on pricing, this survey also provides information on how much freelance copywriters earn, how they find new assignments, and how they manage their time.

Here are a few examples of the kind of data you can expect:

* 80.8% of copywriters use referral marketing as a first-year marketing strategy

* 39.4% of copywriters relied on their Websites for clients in their first year but in their “current” year, that figure jumped to 61.6%

* First year gross earnings of full-time freelance copywriters were strongest at between $25,001 and $50,000, coming in at 29.1%

* Most copywriters (60.1%) think region affects pricing levels for copywriting jobs, and many share their reasons why

* Technology won as “the most lucrative niche market to work in,” coming in at 36.8%

Concluding thoughts...

As I mentioned, being able to estimate well is essential to the success of any freelance copywriter.

By the same token, anyone purchasing the services of a copywriter would do well understand how much they should be paying.

As a whole, our industry lacks a set of benchmarks that people can use, at least as a guide.

Volume 2 of Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey remedies that situation.

It is fully up to date, includes a lot more data points than the first volume, and also includes information and resource recommendations on other aspects of the freelance life, including time management.

In my view, this is an essential purchase for any freelance copywriter, and for any company which isn’t sure how much to pay the freelancers they use.

Find out more about Volume 2 of the Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey here...