Am I offering a fair wage to freelance bloggers?

May 22, 2009 8:18 AM

How much do I pay a freelance blogger?

The company I work for has four shopping blogs. We're looking to hire freelance bloggers to write 2-3 posts per week. The posts require a minimum of research and no expertise. That is, I don't care if the writer has a college degree as long as they can write 50-150 words about blenders or coffeemakers or home theatre or whatever. This isn't meant to be expert bloggers giving complicated instructions; its more like the advice you get from a friend who knows a bit about whatever product you're shopping for.

I've been told $5 per post is about right for the kind of writing I'm trying to get. Is that an okay rate?

posted by ben242 to work & money (5 comments total)

$5 per post is low, but I'm sure you can find someone to do it at that rate. If you don't care about quality, you might as well go even lower by outsourcing it to Mechanical Turk or overseas somewhere.
posted by nitsuj at 8:26 AM on May 22

What do you want out of it? A quick bit of filler to go alongside some nice pictures, something that sounds like a genuine personal recommendation for a product, or a professional blurb? The first could be farmed to Mechanical Turk for very little, but output can be almost anything. Option 2 could be done for $5, but that's someone who is a "hobby" blogger or just looking for quick money. Option 3 is more the range of a freelancer.

I'd think anyone who considers themselves a freelance anything intend to make a living from this. Maybe there are some industrious writers who can crank out hundreds of advert puffs a week, but I wouldn't consider that person a blogger. They're freelance advert writers.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:17 AM on May 22

$5 per post is about right for the kind of writing I'm trying to get.

As a (sometimes) pro-writer, this figure strikes me as insultingly low, regardless of how minimal the amount of work required. What you need to do I think is package it (ie: ten or twenty or fifty short blurbs for a few hundred bucks). Make it at least a day's work.
posted by philip-random at 9:35 AM on May 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thoughts. (He says some people consider $15 per post insultingly low.)
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:53 AM on May 22

Not sure if anyone is still checking this thread, but I thought I would tie up the loose end anyway.

I posted the listing on Craigslist in Cleveland, Detroit, and New York showing a rate of $4 to $10 per post depending upon length. In Cleveland and Detroit -- where the posting was free -- the ad got flagged and taken down. In New York, the post has been live since May 22 and has gotten a little over 140 applicants ranging from people with their masters in english lit to kids just out of college. I ended up hiring three people for an average of $6 per post.

I can't say for certain that the Cleveland and Detroit posts were flagged by people who were insulted by the low rate, but that is what I think happened.
posted by ben242 at 2:22 PM on June 10