written by Sarah Check & AI Sarah

TL;DR | Pricing for beginner copywriters isn’t about finding the “perfect rate” — start with a reasonable structure and adjust as you gain experience. Don’t compete with ultra-low rates on platforms like Upwork or AI writers. Instead, focus on value-based pricing, especially for specialized, niched, strategy-heavy, or SEO-rich copy. Start pitching, gather client feedback, and evolve your rates and offers based on results and demand.

“There’s no ceiling to your potential income as a freelance copywriter. There’s no floor, either.”  – Reddit user ClackamasLivesMatter

What should I charge for XYZ???

The #1 question I see in copywriting forums. It makes sense. As a beginner, it’s easy to feel like you don’t just need a price – you need a solid justification for when the client tells you it’s too much.

Pricing for beginner copywriters tends to turn into a cycle of second-guessing your rates.

You constantly compare them to what others are charging.

You endlessly tweak your pricing on your website.

You freak out when you see some dude on Upwork will write that copy for $15.

But here’s the truth: agonizing over your rates is a super popular procrastination tactic. It just dresses itself up as “wanting to charge fairly” and “doing your research.”

While pricing is important, what truly drives your business forward is landing clients and delivering great work.

The sooner you come up with a pricing structure—even if it’s not perfect—the sooner you can start focusing on what really matters: getting clients and building your experience. Pricing yourself low doesn’t give clients a better deal. Acting like your premium pricing and getting better with your copywriting gives them a better deal.

I wrote this blog to time-machine it back to 2020 Sarah, who felt guilty with any pricing.

We’ll cover key factors that influence pricing, common mistakes to avoid, and practical examples you can adapt to your own services. Don’t worry – I’ve got a nice itemized pricing list with actual numbers if that’s what you’re into.

Plus, I’ll introduce you to a chatbot I trained that can help you refine offers and your pricing even further. It’s as easy as talking to her for a few minutes.

1. What You’ve Gotta Know About Pricing (For Beginner Copywriters)

When it comes to pricing for beginner copywriters – or expert ones – there’s no single “right” answer. People sell web copy from $50 to $50,000. And there are clients for every price range.

Plus, standard pricing have changed dramatically over the past 5 years, especially with AI. It’s easy to generate copy, but hard to optimize it so that it actually makes a business money. Copywriters are getting hired for their marketing expertise even more than their ability to produce copy. I would not trust a copywriter fee recommendation made before 2022.

It’s tempting to think there’s a magic formula clients are comparing you to, but the truth is, there’s usually a sweet spot you discover over time. And it evolves as you get more experience and understand your niche market needs.

What matters most is picking a price and seeing how it lands in the market. The experience you get from testing your rates will be far more valuable than waiting to feel 100% comfortable with a number.

Remember. There are people writing much worse copy than you that are charging egregious rates. And they don’t plan on improving. And people still keep hiring them.

You’re probably not giving your effort or standards enough credit.

Here’s what I’d tell 2020 Sarah:

Don’t Lowball Yourself

Do not set “competitive” prices based on what you see on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. It undervalues your work. It attracts clients that’ll make your life miserable.

Good copy is priced on the value it provides to the client. The closer your copy is to influencing a client’s revenue—like driving sales or generating leads—the more it’s worth. It has nothing to do with an hourly rate.

If you spent 30 minutes writing a sales email that cost your client $300…is that cheating? They’re going to feel they got the deal of the year if they make $3000 with it!

Even if they don’t pull those sales – that’s not totally in your control. What if their funnel sucked? The performance of your copy still gives them valuable data that they can apply to their next launch to make it more successful. So no, making $600/hour is not cheating.

Increase Pricing When the Copy’s Specialized

The more specialized you are in a particular industry or topic, the higher your rates can be. Even if you’re new to copywriting, if you have non-writing experience in your niche, you’re WAY ahead of a general copywriter or an AI writer.

For example, as a nurse, I knew how patients Google their symptoms. Even when my copywriting skills were weak, my target audience knowledge was strong – which inherently fills a huge amount of the gap.

Plus, there are certain industries that demand higher expertise. Add some more to your price if you’re copywriting for high-risk industries like medical, financial, legal, or tech.

Increase the Price When You’re Adding SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO deserves higher pricing because it both requires more research and makes the copy go farther for the client. If you’re specialized (like when I was writing for medical clients as a nurse), you’re going to have a nose for SEO that’s more likely to work well.

SEO is evolving into a “ask engine optimization” as well. Essentially, SEO helps you get noticed by search engines. “Ask engine optimization” helps you get noticed by AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. AI often uses search engines to give you an answer, so SEO you embed in your copy can still help it get noticed by AI.

Side note: since SEO applies to – you guessed it – search engines, it isn’t relevant for copy that’s not going to be searchable on the internet, like email copy or some sales pages.

Don’t. Work. For Free.

Working for free is a great strategy in some cases. But when your clientele is 1. small clients and 2. companies, $0 pricing for beginner copywriters is super unproductive.

Over and over, I see this awful cycle of beginners offering their services for free (or super cheap) because the lead struggles to afford them.

If they can’t afford you now…how do you know they’ll afford you later?

Offering free work is great for situations where you’re pretty experienced and you want to pitch a premium client that’s drowning in options. These people are not desperate for you, but you know you can give them stellar results. Like, if I wanted to work with an industry expert who had copywriters pitching them every day, I’d want to stand out by delivering value up front.

Free work’s also a good option when you’re refining a novel service or product. As you test something with really unforeseeable outcomes, it’s classy to make their buy-in easy. But I doubt you’re offering something that new if you’re doing common types of copy.

And…if you really want to…you can do free stuff to build your initial portfolio and testimonial base.

Otherwise, set a fair price and stick to it. Your time and skills are worth something from day one.

Raise Your Rates As You Get Experience & Get Results

Pricing isn’t static. As you gain experience and build your portfolio, you can and should raise your rates. Add in inflation.

Start somewhere, learn from client feedback, and adjust accordingly.

Remember, pricing is a learning process. Pitch your price, see how people react. See what people it attracts. See what people it repels.

Raise your price when you get your clients results (you’ve proven the value of your service!). Raise those prices when you’ve been doing the same thing for a year. Raise your prices just for the heck of it to see what happens.

2. Copywriting Fees Based On Project Type | Pricing Copy (for Beginner Copywriters) When You Don’t Have Experience

Charge based on the value you deliver. But what about when you don’t know what that value is – and you have no client results yet?

The lack of clarity around pricing for beginner copywriters stops a bunch of them from even putting themselves out there.

First, I strongly recommend project-based pricing rather than hourly rates. Project-based pricing encourages you to work more efficiently because you’ll make more money the faster you work.

Plus, you’re delivering very different value with different types of copy. A blog might not be worth $500/hour, but a landing page might.

Additionally, project-pricing gives clear, predictable costs for your clients, making it easier for them to plan their budgets. It’s better for both of you. They’re less worried you’re going to ride the clock to get more money out of them.

Here’s some recommended starting rates for BEGINNER copywriting. This isn’t based on an industry standard—frankly, I’ve found it’s all over the place. This is what I’ve seen over the past 5 years in the industry and with my peers.

• Blog Posts: $200 per 1K to 1.3K-word blog with SEO. If you’re writing for specialized industries such as medical, legal, financial, or tech, consider adding $100 to your base rate. Add another $100 for a 2k+ word count (a 2k word blog has become more of the standard since it tends to perform better than shorter blogs).

• Website Pages: $500 for a minimum of 500 words, including SEO. Add $100 for specialized industries like medical, legal, financial, tech, or high-ticket products. Charge at least $1000 for one-page websites.

• Emails:

  • Nurture or Newsletter Emails: $75 each.

  • Sales Emails: $200 per email in a campaign. Double it for high-ticket and high-risk products.

• Landing Pages: $700 minimum. Add $500 or more for specialized industries like medical, legal, financial, tech, or high-ticket products.

• Product Descriptions: $100 each. Add $200 for specialized industries or high-ticket products.

• White Papers: $2,000. For specialized industries, double it.

• Social Media Posts: $50 for a 100-300 word post. Although social media content tends to lean more toward general content than real copy, this is a popular rate.

• Facebook Ads: Varies enormously since different “creative” needs to be tested. At least $100 per ad (they’ll often need 3-5 at a time).

It’s important to start somewhere, even if these figures seem daunting at first. And remember: charging by the project > charging by the hour.

3. Raise the Value, Raise Your Pricing: Creating Offers is the Secret to Premium Pricing for Beginner Copywriters.

As you get more experience, one of the most effective ways to increase your income is by creating and pricing bundled offers. Specifically, offers that bundle several services your client is already needing.

Bundling related services is a win for you AND your client. You take more off your client’s plate, and it opens the door for ongoing work and retainers.

Here are some popular bundles I’ve seen in the industry:

• Monthly Blogs + Emails + Social Media Posts: This package handles all the organic marketing copy. You can offer a monthly package that includes a set number of blog posts, corresponding emails, and social media posts. And you know what’s cool? It’s really easy to come up with related emails and SM posts right after you’ve written the blog.

• Blogs + Website Uploads & Analytics Reporting: Many clients get stressed with the backend website stuff. They love a full-service package where you write the blogs AND handle the technical side of uploading them to their site and tracking the analytics. It lets you both see how your content performs and refine the strategy over time. This package is perfect for ongoing work and retainers.

• Complete Funnel: This bundle includes everything from the opt-in page and lead magnet to the landing page, checkout page, and welcome sequence of emails. It’s a comprehensive package that supports a client’s entire sales funnel. It’s super valuable for a single copywriter to handle it all – the branding ends up much more consistent. And if you offer to do the technical side of uploading it all? More $$$.

• Sales Sequence of Emails: For clients launching a product or service, they need an email sequence. It’s high value, direct response copy – and it tends to be very easy to write.

• Whole Website with Meta Descriptions: Writing (or re-writing) web copy is super time consuming. You offer a ton of value to do it all, especially the bonus SEO and meta descriptions. It’s a big project, but it’s one that clients often need when undergoing a rebrand or launching a new business.

• Newsletters + Backend Handling: In addition to writing the copy, you can offer to manage the technical aspect of uploading emails to the client’s email platform and keeping an eye on analytics (and letting that guide future email copy into more success). You can learn on the job by asking ChatGPT about how to do stuff on their particular platform. This adds a major layer of convenience for the client.

• Cluster of Product Descriptions: This package is great for e-commerce clients who need detailed, persuasive product descriptions for a launch of related products. Offering to write multiple descriptions at once helps them maintain consistency across their catalog while saving them time.

• Cluster of Facebook Ads: Facebook ads are a high-demand service, and companies tend to need 3-5 to run at a time. Offering a bundle of ad copy lets you provide several options for the creative they need so they can test what performs well.

• Funnel Audit & Copy Pitch: You can offer to audit their existing copy, identify weak spots, and pitch new copy to improve their conversion rates. If you’ve gotten similar clients great results, then your insight’s super high value.

All you have to do to create offers is see what bundles people really want. You can see what other people are offering. Ask your clients if they’d be interested in X, Y, and Z together.

Then, you do a little math. Add up the pieces of copy. And if there’s something you’re not sure about, give yourself a “secret” hourly rate (like $100), estimate the time it’ll take, then add that to the offer price.

Pricing for beginner copywriters doesn’t have to be tricky. Pick a price, promote yourself, see how lands, adjust from there.

If Copy Delivers the Value…

There’s A Client Willing To Pay Premium

Pricing for beginner copywriters can be all over the place. The process is as much about learning and adapting as it is about setting decent rates from the start.

Your prices don’t have to be set in stone. They can and should evolve as you gain experience, confidence, and a proof of conversions.

For example, let’s say you want to sell blogs for $200/each. Set that as your price and reach out to companies that need blogs (and that you could write for with integrity).

If they DON’T sell, you can use that info to adjust:

• Volume of people you reach out to (this is the issue 99% of the time. You just need to do more outreach)

• Who you’re reaching out to (it may need to be more niched, or be toward companies with higher budgets)

• Your social proof (you need to be less shy on your website/in your outreach about results you’ve gotten for clients. And if you haven’t gotten a client results yet, whip up some excellent sample blogs you can share as portfolio pieces)

• Product/market fit (basically, is your blog offer meeting a real need people have? If not, figure out what a blog would need to have or do for a client to want it at your price)

If you DO successfully sell blogs at $200, you can figure out:

• What kind of person keeps buying it (find more of those clients and get referrals! Do more of what’s working.)

• What those clients also ask for (for example, if clients keep asking if you’d upload the blogs yourself, you could add a $50 upcharge and add it to the offer)

• What results clients get from your blogs (get those happy testimonials and awesome case studies!)

One crucial step that beginners often overlook (and I know I did) is following up with clients to see how your copy performed. 

Did your emails lead to higher open rates? How many people clicked bought after hitting the landing page? This feedback not only helps you refine your skills. It gives you concrete results to back up your pricing when pitching to new clients.

The most important thing is to get your pricing out there and start working with clients.

The experience you gain will teach you far more than hours spent agonizing over picking the “right price.”

If you’re ready for more guidance, you need to check out Opal, my offers and pricing chatbot, for personalized advice.

She can do the math for you and help you explore putting together offers. One conversation with Opal might be the clarity you need to move forward and start pitching.

Drop your email and I’ll connect you two.