Copywriter prices: plans and packages to suit every pocket

Chances are, if you’re a sole trader, startup or SME trying to up your marketing game, you’ve looked into the prospect of hiring a copywriter.

Where you start looking often comes from a recommendation. That can be of the ‘new money' variety: through professional networking such as LinkedIn; or more ‘old money’:

‘a friend of a friend who knows a bloke down the pub who knows a girl who does that type of stuff, I think.’

Essentially, it all amounts to the same thing – and ultimately both routes are likely to take you to the same destination: a copywriter’s website.

And that’s when your problems begin.

Copywriter Prices: Do they actually exist?

You see, copywriters’ websites – like copywriters themselves – vary in quality. But, regardless of the first impressions you gain from a website, it doesn’t matter if you look at 1 or you look at 100 - the vast majority of copywriter websites have one thing in common.

Most of them are missing the same thing:

Copywriter prices.

The mysterious and murky world of copywriter pricing

At first, I found this lack of pricing a bit strange. After all, if you walk into a supermarket, you expect all the products to be priced up, don’t you?

What’s more, when it comes down to it, most prospects:

1. Just want to know how much they’re going to have to pay.

2. And then want to pay less than that.

When I started out as a freelancer, I had no idea what ‘the going rate’ for work was. I knew the ridiculously low figures that people seemed to want me to work for, and I had an idea about the ridiculously high fees I wanted to charge.

Seriously though, I knew there had to be a perfectly reasonable and fair middle ground to go for.

But where was it?

Well, I was never going to find the answer looking at other copywriters’ sites, that’s for sure.

I began to think I’d entered a very shady, murky world. Did I need a special code word to access these elusive things called ‘prices’? Was everything done on a nudge nudge wink wink basis - a special language of knowing glances and Masonic handshakes?

Of course, now I know– and I’ll be sharing what I know with you in this post.

And I also have a special announcement to make…

Breaking the mould entirely, my website actually does have *whispers* copywriter prices on it!

Okay, so I do realise that as disruptive innovations in the copywriting sector go, the decision to put a few prices on my site is more of a ripple than a wave – a dripping tap rather than tsunami – but still…

Why you don’t see many copywriter prices on websites

Of course, I totally get why there’s a distinct lack of pricing on most copywriters’ websites. The old Jewish saying ‘words should be weighed, not counted’ is absolutely spot on.

Pricing by the number of words is problematic. I know that if I’m ‘in the zone’ and writing about a topic I know a lot about, I can often rattle off 500 or so words in less than an hour, pretty comfortably.

But, if it’s a topic I’m not much of an expert on – say, Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides (honestly, that’s a real thing – Google it, if you don’t believe me) then it may take me a little longer.

And even if I am writing in my comfort zone, and I do get 500 words done in 45 minutes, there’s every chance that it’ll take me another hour, on and off, before I’m totally happy with the opening paragraph or the conclusion (or the bit in the middle).

Similarly, I’ve literally agonised for hours before now over a tagline that was only 5 or 6 words in total.

How much a dollar cost?

Or: How much a word cost? Words have value but some have more value than others – Think Nike and ‘Just Do It’… only 3 little words but how much wonga has that slogan raked in for the brand over the years?

So, pricing by the word is flawed, as is pricing by the hour - for the same reason – as you rarely know how long something will take to do.

And then we come back to this thing value. In a past life I was a full-time teacher. I was a middle leader and a senior leader. All told, I have 2 decades worth of experience in education. You’d hope I’d be able to add some value to an article or white paper – but what price does this ‘value added’ come at?

I’m coming up with more questions than answers here, aren’t I?

Everything has a price to pay

But the thing is – despite the obvious problems of pricing by the word or the hour - copywriter prices have got to come from somewhere.

Of course, the reluctance of copywriters to broadcast their prices from the off partly stems from a deep-seated fear of ballsing-up a price quote spectacularly…

We’ve all done it – the £100 gig that ended up taking 2 days to complete.

At the same time, you have to price on something. You can’t price quote on thin air. You can’t say to a prospective client who’s asking about a price: ‘Well, how long’s a piece of string?’

That just won’t cut it.

And, trust between copywriters and clients is one thing, but I can’t see ‘Let me go away and complete this massive project. When I’ve done it, I’ll tell you how much you owe me’ ever working either.

Price plans and packages to suit every pocket

So, the long and short of it is this. My site does have prices. I’ve included ‘typical’ price plans and packages based on the type of work that I do the most and what my clients tend to ask for.

But, as I’ve explained in the FAQs section of the site, it’s actually rare for a client’s needs to fit neatly into a single generic package. Basically, I will always provide price quotes that are fair and reasonable. If a client is fair and reasonable in return about what they ask for and expect from me, we’re usually a good fit.

I try to be as flexible as I possibly can to suit all needs and budgets. It’s very rare that I simply can’t find a common ground with a client.

Get in touch if you have a project to discuss or would like to know more about the services I offer.

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