With that said, let's talk about what my writing - or your writing for that matter - is actually worth. As with anything else in this world, what you think your writing is worth really doesn't matter at all. In reality, your writing is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. That's it. If you were selling a refrigerator, and you thought it was worth $100, but you couldn't find anyone willing to pay more than $50 for it, then the refrigerator was only worth $50.
Creative people - myself included - often let their pride get in the way of success. Success is achieving a goal. If your goal is to make a living as a writer, then you have to be willing to set your pride aside, look at the going rate for writing, and write for that amount. You can choose to 'hold out' for the rate that you think your writing is worth, but I can tell you that you won't have much success in reaching your goal if you do this. There are too many people who can write well and who are also willing to write what a buyer is willing to pay - and there are even too many buyers who are willing to accept lower quality work in order to pay very tiny prices in the market.
If you want to earn the really high rates for writing, you need to do your writing in a different market, such as for an offline magazine. Those actually pay fairly well, but getting your work accepted, or getting assignments, is extremely difficult. If you want to write online or write online content, you had better get used to the fact that you are not going to make hundreds of dollars from one article. It simply is not going to happen. A few years ago, the going rate was about $1 for every 100 words in the online marketplace. There are still buyers who are willing to pay this amount, but they expect a great deal for that dollar. They expect superior writing skills, proper usage of grammar and spelling, and precise keyword density.
If you look at the freelance sites today, however, you will notice that buyers don't even want to pay $1 for every 100 words. More often than not, they want to pay about .33, but they still have the same high expectations. Now, when I'm working at a freelance site where I'm a newcomer, or if I am working with a buyer for the very first time, I may be willing to work for that tiny amount of money in order to prove myself. But, once I've proven myself on a site, or with an individual buyer, I won't write for less than $1 for every 100 words.
How long does it really take to type 100 words? I personally type 96 words per minute, and I tend to get jobs where I already have a great deal of knowledge on the topic, or the topic is very easy to research. So, I look at it this way. If the article is to be 500 words long, I plan to make $5. It will take me a total of 5 minutes to actually type the article, including the title. If it is a topic that I do not know well, and the research required will take ten minutes, I will make $5 in fifteen minutes, which amounts to $20 in an hour, spread out over 4 articles (1 article every 15 minutes).
As you can see, you can make a living writing - even when the rate sounds incredibly low. Many 'wanna be' writers who let their pride get in the way scoff at the thought of writing 500 words for a measly five bucks. Back when vWorker would actually let all bidders see what other bidders were bidding, I would scan through the bids and laugh at some of the ridiculous expectations of writers. Some would bid $200 or more for five three hundred word articles on the simplest of topics. Of course, those writers had no ratings, and no work history listed on their profiles. This was, of course, because they put too much value on their writing - far above what any buyer was willing to pay for the work.
What is my writing worth? The going rate, whatever that may be at the time.
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