How Much to Charge for Copywriting: Per Hour, Per Project and Per Word

How much should I charge for copywriting? The formula

Charge the hours a piece takes times an hourly rate built from your income goal. Hourly rate = (take-home goal / (1 - tax reserve) + yearly business expenses) / billable hours a year. Project price = hours x rate. Per word = project price / words.

With the assumptions below, $75,000 / 0.75 = $100,000 before tax, plus $8,000 of expenses is $108,000.00. Twenty-four billable hours a week for 45 weeks is 1,080 hours, so the rate is $100.00 an hour.

I build pricing maths and I am not a copywriter. Every hour and word count on this page is a placeholder for your own. No market rate appears here, because a rate that pays another writer's bills says nothing about yours. Why the "naive rate" line underprices you is covered in the freelance hourly rate calculator guide.

Copywriting rates per hour: calculator for your own numbers

Type your take-home goal, yearly expenses, tax reserve and billable hours. "Hourly rate to charge" is the number every project, per-word and retainer figure below multiplies.

Billable hours are hours on an invoice: briefing, research, drafting and revisions. Pitching, admin and unpaid samples are not, which is why the example uses 24 hours a week and not 40.

The 25% tax reserve is an assumption, not a recommendation. The IRS states: "The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%." That is 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare (IRS: Self-employment tax); income tax comes on top. It also says individuals generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe $1,000 or more, across four payment periods a year (IRS: Estimated taxes). Confirm your own percentage with a tax professional.

Copywriting rates per project and per word, by deliverable

Price the project from its hours, then divide by the words to see the per-word rate. Per word is an output: hourly rate x hours per 1,000 words / 1,000.

One hourly rate produces per-word rates from $0.50 to $2.00. The 800-word sales page costs 3 times as much per word as the blog post because it takes 15 hours per 1,000 words against 5. Briefing, research and revisions do not shrink with the word count: drafting is 40% of the blog post's hours and 33.3% of the short sales page's, where 8 of 12 hours are spent away from the draft.

Client interviews, briefing calls and review meetings belong inside the project hours. An unplanned 1-hour call is $100 of work whether or not it adds a word. To price the build of the site those five pages sit on, see how much to charge for a website.

Can I get paid $1 per word? Check any per-word offer against your hourly rate

Effective hourly rate = offer per word x words / hours the piece takes. Take the offer if that is at or above the rate you need; otherwise negotiate the scope or decline. Whether a client will pay $1 a word is a market question this page does not answer. What $1 a word pays you is arithmetic.

At $1.00 a word the blog post pays $200.00 an hour, twice the rate needed. The same $1.00 a word on the 800-word sales page pays $66.67 an hour, $33.33 short. A per-word rate that is generous on one deliverable loses money on another.

The last column is the speed an offer demands: needed rate / offer. At $0.10 a word you must finish 1,000 words an hour, research and revisions included. The example blog post runs at 200 finished words an hour, so that offer pays $20.00 an hour.

How many revision rounds should the price include?

Price each round as hours, and state the number in the quote. An extra round costs its hours x your rate: $100 on the blog post and $300 on the website in this example.

Three rounds on the website is $2,400, $600 more than one round. Quote one round and deliver three, and the $1,800 is spread over 24 hours: $75.00 an hour. How many rounds to include is your choice. Scope wording and the layout of the quote document are in the freelance quote template guide.

How much to charge for copywriting per month on a retainer

Monthly retainer = hours the month's content takes x hourly rate. Four blog posts at 5 hours each plus 2 hours for a planning call and topic list is 22 hours: $2,200 a month, $550 a post, $0.55 a word.

Then check capacity. The example's 1,080 billable hours a year are 90 a month, so one retainer takes 24.4% of the month. Four of them use 88 hours and bring in $8,800; the 2 hours left are worth $200. Together that is $9,000, one twelfth of the revenue the year needs. A fifth retainer would need 110 hours in a 90-hour month.

What happens to months when the client sends no brief is a policy question: the consulting fee guide works through use-it-or-lose-it against rollover.

Rush fee, deposit and kill fee: the arithmetic

All three are policies you set; the percentages here are assumptions.

• Rush fee. A 25% rush markup turns the $500 blog post into $625, $125 for moving it ahead of booked work.
• Deposit. 50% of the $1,800 website is $900 before work starts.
• Kill fee. Bill the hours worked. Cancelled after briefing and research (6 hours), the work done is $600; the deposit covers it with $300 over. Cancelled after the first draft (15 hours), the work done is $1,500, $600 more than the deposit.

A flat 50% kill fee is simpler to write, but in the second case it leaves $600 of finished work unpaid. Have a lawyer check the cancellation wording in your contract.

Who owns the copy: usage rights and work made for hire

Ownership follows the written agreement, so settle it before quoting. This is a summary of two U.S. Copyright Office circulars, not legal advice.

Circular 30 says: "Ordinarily, the author is the person or persons who actually created the work". Works made for hire are the exception. For a commissioned work the circular lists four criteria: the work must fall within one of nine listed categories (a contribution to a collective work is one), there must be a written agreement, the agreement must say the work is a work made for hire, and all parties must sign. "If a work fails to satisfy any of these requirements, it is not a work made for hire" (U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 30).

Circular 1 says a transfer of copyright ownership "generally must be made in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed", and adds: "Transferring a right on a nonexclusive basis does not require a written agreement" (U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 1). Whether your sales page or emails fit a listed category, and what a full transfer should cost, are questions for a lawyer. I found no primary source for a rights percentage, so none is given here.

How much to charge for copywriting as a beginner

Use the same formula with your own smaller inputs. A lower income goal pulls the rate down; fewer billable hours push it back up.

With a $36,000 goal, $3,000 of expenses, a 20% reserve and 16 billable hours a week for 45 weeks, the rate is $66.67:

A beginner is also slower. If the 1,000-word post takes 8 hours and not 5, it prices at 8 x $66.67 = $533.36, or $0.53 a word: close to the established writer's $500, because the slower hours offset the lower rate. A $0.10-a-word job at that speed pays $12.50 an hour; it would take 667 finished words an hour to reach $66.67. Charging less than the formula gives while you build samples is your decision. Log the real hours so you know the size of the discount.

Copywriting price formulas for Excel and Google Sheets, and what the template does

Five formulas reproduce the rate, the project price, the per-word rate, the reverse check and the retainer. Inputs go in column B, with the tax reserve typed as a percentage.

Common mistakes: quoting per word before counting hours; one per-word rate for every deliverable; unlimited revisions; leaving calls and research off the estimate; selling more retainers than the month holds.

What to put in your copywriting rate sheet: income goal, expenses, tax reserve, billable hours and weeks; for each deliverable the word count and hours for briefing, research, drafting and one revision round; rounds included; rush, deposit and kill-fee terms; who owns the copy.

A free online rate calculator returns an hourly number; quoting software adds invoicing for a subscription; a spreadsheet keeps your assumptions in a file you own. The freelance pricing template is $14.99 one-time for Excel and Google Sheets. Step 1 returns the break-even hourly rate from your take-home goal, billable hours, working weeks, expenses and tax set-aside, then a recommended rate on a profit margin you set. Step 2 quotes a project from estimated hours x that rate, plus a materials or software cost and a rush or complexity markup. It has no per-word cell and no word-count input: divide its project quote by your word count. It has no retainer tab, and it is a pricing sheet, not a branded quote document. The freelance rate and quote spreadsheet page lists every input.

Step-by-step: How Much to Charge for Copywriting: Per Hour, Per Project and Per Word

1. Work out the hourly rate. Divide your take-home goal by (1 - tax reserve), add yearly expenses, and divide by billable hours a year. The example gives $100.00.
2. Estimate hours per deliverable. Add briefing, research, drafting and revision hours. The 1,000-word blog post is 0.5 + 1.5 + 2 + 1 = 5 hours.
3. Price the project. Hours x rate. 5 x $100.00 = $500; the 12-hour short sales page is $1,200.
4. Convert to per word. Project price / words. $500 / 1,000 = $0.50; $1,200 / 800 = $1.50.
5. Check any per-word offer. Offer x words / hours. $0.25 x 1,000 / 5 = $50.00 an hour, half the $100.00 needed.
6. Write the terms as numbers. State the revision rounds included, the price of an extra round ($100), the deposit, the kill fee and who owns the copy.

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