Welcome to the forum. And welcome to your new blogging career.

I wouldn't say $150 per hour is an "average" rate. It's definitely on the high end. It's just my own personal average per freelance writing project. But that comes with around 12 years of experience writing for clients and a strong background in marketing, PR, and social media which gives me an edge in selling services. That said, there's no reason you couldn't work up to a goal like that in a reasonable amount of time. 

I would say $50 per hour isn't a terrible place to start, especially if you don't have much experience with paying clients yet. It sounds like you're doing a great job building clips though. With a couple of years, I don't see why you couldn't be up around $100 per hour. And who knows? You might even manage to land some great gigs early on that put you at that rate sooner. 

What you can charge as a professional blogger will largely depend on the kinds of blogs you write for. For example, you might be lucky to get $50 per post on a traditional niche blog, but you might be able to write those posts quickly. On the other hand, you can earn $500 and much more per post writing for corporate blogs. But those posts will often take more time (because you'll need to interview staff, run things by legal departments, etc.), and you'll often ghostwrite them which means you won't get public credit. It's all about what you want to do. 

I'd suggest starting by using our freelance hourly rate calculator. We've set it up to help with these exact situations.

There's a link right at the top of the calculator itself that says "advanced freelance rate calculator." Click that link to access the advanced version of the tool. 

Using the advanced version, you can figure out the bare minimum hourly rate you need to charge to reach your financial goals. And then of course you can mark those minimum rates up accordingly, based on your credentials and increasing experience. The only expense I don't think it accounts for is taxes because tax rates vary as your target income varies (and it varies between states and countries). So just add your estimated yearly taxes to the "other" expense category so it's accounted for. 

Hopefully that tool will help you figure out what you need to charge.  

First of all, thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself; I am honored.

My name is Ruan Oosthuizen and I reside in Cape Town, South Africa. I am going to keep it as short as possible although I have to add, I am a writer and words come easily; please forgive me should they come more than anticipated

I quit my J.O.B. in August 2011 and started my web hosting and web development company. I still have that going in the background and although it's still paying the bills at the end of the month, that is not my passion. I discovered I was born to write...

I have been guest blogging with a while now on sites like kikolani.com, WeBlogBetter.com, Problogging Success and have recently been accepted to Problogger and Famous Blogger. What I never was aware of is that some people are actually earning a decent living from freelance writing and freelance blogging to be more specific.

Even though English is not my first language, I have enough confidence in my writing ability and skills with what I think is enough experience to at least make a decent start and work my way up earning myself a good income doing what I'm absolutely passionate about.

I have never been paid a single cent for a blog post although I have plenty blog posts published all over the place. I wanted to create my own success story as a person being easily inspired by other success stories, so I just launched a new blog/site (will also be my writer's home) where I will be documenting my freelance blogging journey from the very start. The vision is to be able to help at least one other person in future through my experiences and what I've shared on the site, from the very beginning, making every mistake I will make, and reaching every little goal I set for myself.

How I landed here was actually through my search for "how much I should charge for my work" and although from what I got so far  could gather that working at a ate per word is not a good idea as no two 1000-word articles are the same, I still need to figure out how I will calculate my hourly rate, as I honestly have NO idea what market averages are even at this stage.

Jenn I think you mentioned something like $150 per hour as a nice average but surely that would probably not be a starting rate for a newbie, right? I guess the first 'mistake' I am making right here is portraying my inexperience but as with the aim of my website, to me it's all about transparency and honesty - it's the only way I know I will make a success of this dream.

I better stop writing now and work some more on gettign my rate worked out so I can start applying for writing gigs. I will keep an eye out and come have a read whenever I find the need

Keep up the good work!

Kind regards,

Ruan