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More Opportunities for Web Writers and What to Charge Your Client for Them

Written by: AWAI’s The Golden Thread

Article Overview: American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI) Vice President of Marketing, Rebecca Matter, shows you the reasons you should be thankful you're a web writer. Read about the opportunities available and what you should charge for your services.

More Opportunities for Web Writers and What to Charge Your Client for Them

With tomorrow’s holiday, I’m seeing a lot of “thankful” lists floating around. Well here’s one more for you …

Be thankful you are (or will soon be) a web writer. According to the Associated Press last week:

“Despite the bad economy, U.S. Internet advertising revenue rose in the third quarter … totaling almost $5.9 billion in the third quarter, up 11 percent from the same period last year. It marked a 2 percent rise from the second quarter.”

I think we can be thankful for that! And then we can be thankful for all the opportunities you have to claim your piece of that huge web pie …

If you read last week’s Wealthy Web Writer, you now know how to price your standard web copy projects.

But as a web writer, you have a lot more opportunities to earn money from your clients … most of which don’t involve writing any copy!

Let’s take a look at the top six opportunities, and how much you can make …

Website Planning Services

When a client is building a new website, they should hire someone to work on the overall strategy and website architecture with them, to make sure the overall concept and navigation is well thought out. During this strategy session, you would work with your client and/or his marketing team, and map out the content and scope of the website. This does not include any technical input.

Fee Range: $750 - $2000

Editorial Strategies

Before launching a new eletter or e-zine, a client often will consult with a writer or marketer to think through the editorial focus, and ultimate intention of the email program. Depending on your experience and comfort level, this strategy session can range from planning out the editorial calendar, to providing input on design and format, to choosing an email service provider for the dissemination of the email content.

Fee Range: $1000 - $2000

Blogs

Blogs are a great resource for generating fresh and relevant content on a website. And to be most effective they must be updated at a minimum of three times per week. But after getting one started, many blog owners get caught up in their day-to-day life, and find posting that often to be difficult. That’s where you come in. As a web writer you can contract with a client to post regularly (set number of posts per month) or on an “as-needed” basis.

Fee Range: $50 - $500 per post

Copy Critiques

Once you work with a client and demonstrate your web copy skills, he may want you to review the copy put out by his staff writers to make sure it’s at the same level as yours. You’ll simply review their copy submissions, and send back your comments.

Fee Range: $200 - $1000

Special Reports

When you are writing various landing pages and subscription offers, you may choose to add a few special reports to sweeten the deal. These special reports can add a nice little bump to your project fee if you choose to then write them yourself.

Fee Range: $250 - $750

Training

As with the critiquing, once your client sees your results, he may very well want you to train his other employees on writing for the search engines, web pages, etc. A client may also want you to train his staff to maintain the pages you write, after you have completed your project. (This of course assumes you don’t want to do the maintenance yourself!)

Fee Range: $5000+

So there you have it. In addition to easily clearing six figures with your web copy, now you have a complete list of additional services you can offer your clients.

However this list comes with one small caveat …

You always need to consider the value of your time. As you become a more seasoned web writer, you may find that your make the most money when you are in fact writing.

Just remember that in order to become a wealthy web writer, you must always be conscious of how you’re spending your time.

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Article Tags: advertising revenue, dissemination, e zine, editorial calendar, editorial focus, eletter, email service provider, internet advertising, marketer, marketing team, overall strategy, planning services, relevant content, second quarter, strategy session, technical input, ultimate intention, web copy, web pie, web writer



Related Forum Posts
Seminar attendance - I read through most of these posts and the first thought that popped into my head Andy already posted. Charge a fee to register, that will be refundable at the end of the seminar. This will ensure they show up and STAY for it.
Offer Credit instead - I'm not sure if ChrisH was referring to this but i'll state it more expicitly .. Charge upfront and offer a refund of double the value back in "Credit" towards your Product or Service you have for sale at the end of the event.
Consult your customers before you change your procedures.... - Not sure where this topic should go, but... I just finished reading a rather funny series of posts on MySpace. I belong to a group called WritersCafe. This group also has a webpage, where people post their stories and poems for other people to critique. Apparently, today, the Writers Cafe website has undergone a complete makeover...and its users were taken completely by surprise - apparently no one in charge at Writers Cafe bothered to tell anyone that the format would be changing, or asked for any input on what the changes should be. So there's over 2 pages of complaints on the Writers Cafe group message board, with people saying they can't log in, they dont' like the new design (it looks too "girly" - whatever the heck that means!), and other complaints. And while this only happened today, I have seen other instances of this. Every once in a while yahoo.mail or google groups implements a change in design - and it is never as good as it used to be. Then of course there's the IMDB (internet movie database) which also recently changed its design without telling anyone first or solicting input - and the new design stinks. Fortunately there's a button so you can use the old design, which is what I do... But in all these experiences, the main point of irritation is that no one in "charge" ever asks the people who use their site, if they want changes made and what they should be. It's like they've got all these programmers on staff and have to justify their salaries, so they have them work up "improvements" - but these are techheads who probably don't use the site, so they just do what they like, rather than what users like. The fact that it happens continually, across various businesses, is a rather disturbing trend.
Re: What Do You Outsource Mostly? - Writers are my biggest OS cost, but also have software developers and a marketing team.
Re: Work At Home EStore (13775) - Maybe we need a folder where people who want to post this type of stuff can post it, rather than scattered throughout the forums... Something like Opportunities for Entrepreneurs... or something?


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