If you decide on being paid to write, one of the most important decisions you need to make is your specialization, meaning, what sub-industry in writing you want to concentrate on.

These are the most well known sub-industries in freelance writing:

* Academic Writing

Some very good examples of this are thesis papers and the like. It’s basically research writing for scholars.

* Article Writing

This could be about anything and everything. Most articles are written to give information and pre-sell affiliate products.

* Website Copywriting

Website copywriting are sales-oriented writing pieces with the intention of selling to the reader. Just like advertising copy, a website copy gets to the heart of the readers’ emotions and makes them buy stuff.

THE BIG EARNERS

Of all the classes of writers, who do you think earns the most money?

Web copywriters on average earn $125 to $235 per hour, with some writers earning a percentage of website sales. Maria Veloso, author of the book, Web Copy That Sells, is one of the few writers who get also get paid a commission or percentage of website sales.

Freelance academic writers earn at least $24 per 500 words. Article writers, on the other hand, are paid (or at least should be paid) $6 to $12 per 500 words.

Why the big disparity in writing rates? I think it’s primarily because of the difficulty of the work. With article writing, you basically tell people information that they do or don’t yet know. The style is basically straightforward, “write-as-you speak,” so there’s not much effort to it except to check for errors, and making sure that the author resource box has a compelling call to action.

Academic writing is more difficult since you’ll be dealing with research data, apart from the fact that you’re writing for scholars, thus the writing must adhere to a very scholarly style of writing.

With website copywriting, you are basically selling to people, which is a very difficult thing to do especially on the Internet. People who are online are ever more wary of advertisements than they are when watching TV. That said, website copywriting thus becomes part magic and part writing skill.

Don’t believe me? Try writing a website copy and track how many people are buying through your sales page.  Do you see any sales?

Read more: How To Become A Freelance Writer

Filed under: For Freelance Writers • For Website Owners

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!