Writers: Do You Have a Daily Rate?

Writing for a living can have it's financial challenges. While you're between royalty checks, signing events, or other sources of writing income, the "ends" that are supposed to meet sometimes act like they are not interested in knowing each other at all. To compensate lulls between checks, you may want to consider taking on a freelancing projects. If you do, be proactive about your writing income by determining your daily rate.

Importance of a Daily Rate
Having a daily rate is vital when you’re trying to decide whether or not to accept a job or if you’re asked for a ball park figure on rates.

• Decide how much you have to make this year and break it down.
• Realize how much time it will take to do the job.
• Ask your client what their budget is.
• Offer to do one or two small tasks cheaply, then re-negotiate.

Now that you know why you should care about your daily rate, here’s how to do it. Say your goal is to earn $100,000 from freelance writing this year.

There are 365 days in the year, but 104 of those days are weekends. There are also roughly 10 holidays a year where it’s virtually impossible to get much work done — Christmas, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, etc. Family members will likely expect you to shut off your computer and pay attention to them on these occasions.

Let’s hope you’re not working weekends or major holidays, and that you also plan to take at least two weeks off a year (an important time to regroup). That leaves around 240 real, viable work days in the year.

Divide $100,000 by 240 and you get roughly $417 a day. That’s your daily rate. Want to earn $50,000 a year? That’s around $209 per working day.

Break out those calculators!

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Found at: http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com