How Much Does Hiring a Freelancer Cost?

This question is of course very ambiguous. You can find Freelancers who work for very little. These people either live in third world countries where the national average income is less than USD 2,000 per year or they have little to no experience as a Freelancer.

You can also hire old-school Freelancers who have been working since before the Internet. These people will ask for much higher pay, but they have vast amounts of experience under their belts and they usually work for established companies such as the Washington Post, Forbes, and other big media names. Finding them and getting them to commit to your project will mean you need to have connections and a high budget.

And then there are those of us Freelancers who work online. Many of us are experienced and have been doing this for years, but we cannot generally ask for the budget that a traditional freelancer should get. Why? Because we are bidding against Joe Dolittle and Amal Pradesh who are more than willing to write that book for you for less than $250 and edit your 350 page tome in one day for the same. In addition, they have bolstered their profiles with fake credentials because they know 90% of the people looking at it will not fact check to see if they really wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.(Seth Graham Smith and Jane Austen are the actual authors.)

As you could probably tell from my last post, I appreciate honesty when employers post about budgets. If you do not have $500 or $1000 to spend on a book, I would rather you posted it as a $50 job. If you do not, you are wasting my time and yours. But better still, save your money until you have a good budget to pay someone and then post your job. You see, if you want a 25 page "e-book," it is fair for a freelancer to ask $1000-$2000 for it. The traditional freelancer would ask $5,000+ so you are getting a deal.

Look at it this way. It takes someone 2-4 weeks (or longer) to research and write a 25 page book. In college, I had to produce 20-40 pages of written work every week, so I might be able to push it out quicker if I had an ideal situation (i.e., my family didn't need me to do anything the entire week and I was not interrupted). But is $50 a fair income for two weeks worth of work (or longer)? Could you live off that amount of money--$25 a week? This isn't even enough for someone in Jamaica to live off, where minimum wage is set at $135 per week as of this post. Even people in India make more than $25 per week on average. That leaves your choice of workers from places like Cambodia, Afghanistan, or the DRC. Or the another option: You could be hiring someone that is for whatever reason completely unemployable in their country. You are also probably going to get plagiarized work--because the freelancer is not going to waste his or her time actually writing the book for that low amount or because the freelancer does not write English well-enough to not use other people's words and complete the book or because the freelancer does not know what plagiarism is. A person doing research who takes too detailed of notes is going to be prone to plagiarism. This is also true from people writing out of their scope of knowledge.

Now granted, a new freelancer who does not realize the time and effort required to write a book might apply. Or, like I did in my early days, they may apply for such pittance simply to get good reviews and begin building their profile. And, you will get a good review back, but you shouldn't feel proud of yourself for the deal you scored. You are taking advantage of someone. In addition, that someone is not going to keep working for you. They will quit as soon as they find better pay. They will quit if you fail to leave good feedback to help them build their profile. It is no secret that one main reason any employer has high turnover is because of poor pay. If you are good to your workers, they stick around.

In addition to the fact that you are asking someone to do something for you and basically not get paid, have you looked at the further implications? I can write a new book every 2-4 weeks and post it myself on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles. I have a lot more experience, knowledge, and ability to do this than you do. My book will generate me over $50 in income if it is well-written, and it will continue to generate income for years. Experienced freelancers are not ignorant of this fact. You may smugly say, but I am giving the plot for the book to the freelancer. Do you really think you are the first person to ask a freelancer to write a book about a Keto Diet or Rockstar Romance? We see them all the time and using this vague "idea" for our own means is not plagiarism. After all, 50 other people have exactly the same idea and have also posted it. Plus, chances are good you got the idea after seeing some other book on the same topic that was selling well.

It is true that if you want to make money, you must have money. If you want a professional writer and a product that will sell well, you need to have the money to do hire a professional--otherwise write the book yourself and don't waste your $50. Well-written books that are properly marketed will generate good income. Poorly written books will end up with bad reviews to the point you might not even be able to give them away for free. In fact, you might not even make your $50 off of them.