I keep seeing blogs and forum posts that promise "You too can make $100 a day freelancing!" as though doing so is the greatest accomplishment a new writer could achieve.
While it's a place to start, I think it's a low place to start. It makes us lazy -- the "all you need to do is" approach to freelancing generally sends writers right to the content mills.
What do you think? What's your absolute minimum you want to earn annually? I hesitate to ask about daily because it's tougher to earn "daily" than to shoot for annual totals that you can track monthly (my method -- do whatever works for you).
Would $100 a day be enough for you? If so, convince me. If not, tell me what is enough.
Ooh. Good question and issue Lori.
This sounds like the kind of thing some relative newbie would brag about and promise to “teach” even newer writers how to do, similar to the ridiculous courses on landing your first client or earning your first $1000 as a freelance writer.
That said, the validity for me would depend on a few things:
1. Who’s offering the advice and why?
2. Who are they targeting?
3. Is this kind of advice something they’re actually charging for?
In the last case, anyone charging for such mediocre bare bones basics would be someone I’d avoid like the plague. The first is more about whether this is an experienced pro who has a legitimate reason for setting that target (knowing their audience). But I’d be most concerned with who that target audience is.
Given a typical work week:
$100/day = $500/week = $2000/month = $24,000/year
There’s certainly nothing impressive about that if someone’s looking to earn a full-time living freelance writing. That’s true even if they’re in a low cost of living area where that seems like a lot of money. It’s beginner stuff. Even if you’re in one of those areas, you could earn twice that with little to no extra work — just better targeting. And if you can do that, there aren’t many good reasons not to. So this advice wouldn’t apply to those folks.
But…
If this person were targeting part-timers exclusively — maybe people only working 10-15 hours per week — then this starts to look a little less like a desperate money-grab or clickbait / linkbait from the person talking about it. And it could be fairly significant earnings for those folks.
So while I don’t like this kind of thing on the surface, especially given the types of fake “authorities” who tend to give this sort of unambitious advice, I could see where it might have a place.
Oh! I know that $100 may not seem like much and nothing special to brag about, but consider if we were to write three ot five articles per day. Let us assume that we did five articles a day.
$500/day = $2500/week = $10,000/month = $120,000/year and possible much more.
To some of us this may seem like an impossible mission but it can be done. We just need to apply the methods of Ideas + Actions = Results, however some cases may call for Ideas + Plannings + Actions = Results.
Keep in mind that the word impossible is a lie.
Wish you all success and prosperity.
Cheers!
She’s not talking about $100 per article sadly, but earning $100 per day for a day’s work. $100 per article (thinking in terms of relatively quick online articles / blog posts) is a respectable rate for someone pretty early on, though very low for pros. The bare minimum I suggest a new writer with no experience starting at is $50 per blog post (and that’s for short posts, not ones reaching several thousand words). But with just a few portfolio pieces, they can easily move beyond that.
Be careful about crunching numbers in general though. I know it can be exciting thinking that way — “if I only write X articles per day, I can earn a whopping $xxx,xxx per year!
This is the same justification content mill writers have used for years. But it doesn’t work in reality. Every time I see writers do this and actually come across them a year or so later, they’ve either realized it was a mistake and moved to better things or, in most cases, they’ve quit. Writing so many articles per day isn’t sustainable in the long-term. Writing isn’t a quantity game because it all boils down to having a limited number of hours we can invest. So always aim to work smarter, not harder in the sense of earning more money for less time put in. It’s a common myth that higher-paying articles will take longer than lower-paying ones. So increasing rates and improving client targeting is usually the better option so you can really reach those kinds of income targets and avoid burning out in the process.
elsordo, it’s not about how much or how little you make — that’s 100% up to you and you alone. It’s about the promises that aim low. These sort of “offers” from people trying to sell you on their latest book, course, or webinar are making it sound like $100 a day (not per article) is the measure of success. It’s a start. It’s not a terrible start, but they’re selling you on the notion that $100 per day is an amazing feat.
You don’t need anyone to teach you how to earn $100 a day. You can do that without help. And as I like to say, aim higher. Always aim for more than you made last month until you get your earnings to a point where you are able to earn a good living.
Jenn’s right — $50 per blog post is a good minimum starting rate. And elsordo, if you made $100 an article to start, that would also be a good starting point. You mentioned writing three to five articles per day. I have to wonder what client wants that many in one day, and it always brings me back to a content mill. You’re better than that. You can get one client to pay you three times that $100 (or even more) for one article.
Always aim higher.
Jenn, apologies if this is self-promotion, but I think elsordo could benefit from it.
elsordo, here’s a link to my blog post about this topic. I hope it helps.
The $100-a-Day Freelance Shell Game – https://wordsonpageblog.com/2017/06/the-100-a-day-freelance-shell-game.html
Thank you Jennifer and Lorri, the discussion from this forum is really beneficial and I am glad that I stumbled on you two professionals. Lorri thank you for the link. Cheers!