A writer’s service I subscribe to has a member’s only bulletin board where a very diligent and dutiful person weeds through mountains of worthless “job” posts to provide snippets to the “least worst” of the writing opportunities for members. Some of the opportunities are really great and others, well, they have some issues. I’m in no way picking on the person who does this work. I highly respect this individual and plan to renew my membership for as long as I’m able to write. It’s a really good little service/group. Sometimes bad things slip through though. Here is one such post.

We’re searching for a freelance writer with strong technical fluency and a sincere, enthusiastic tone to write emails to technical folks (software engineers, product managers, product designers, etc.). You must have prior experience with (or a strong interest in) software engineering — online coding courses, bootcamps, building your own apps etc. count. Our customers are tech companies with a diverse set of products and technologies, so you’ll learn a ton about different technologies and parts of the software stack. We’re looking for someone who can work at least 30 hours a week (ideally 40 hours) on a contract basis. Our headquarters is based in San Francisco, but we have team members all over the globe. $20/hr

This one slipped through because $20/hr is the typical rate for a remote blogger writing whatever interests them at the moment. Yes, you can find tons of “job” postings on Craigs List and other places looking to pay $5/article for 1500 word articles but they are shit sites and they get shit writers. After they’ve blown their $50 content budget the site will disappear. It has been my experience the minimum threshold for a quality blogger is $20/hr with you providing editing services and $40/hr if they have to obtain 3rd party editing. This is the actual market rate, not the bullshit wages you see advertised in the seedier places.

Operative phrase alert: remote blogger writing whatever interests them at the moment.

These people don’t want a blogger writing about whatever interests them. They want a coder. Someone who has written a lot of code, likes boot camps and learning to write lots of other code. In short they want an IT consultant. Here’s the problem. “Market rate” for qualified IT consultants, not people claiming to be qualified, but those actually qualified breaks down as follows:

  • Remote: $60-$90/hr
  • 47-state on-site: $80-$120/hr
  • CA-NY-NJ on-site $300/hr

The last rate is because nobody should have to live or work in those foreign countries.

So, do the math. You can write code remotely for $60/hr or you can write code remotely for $20/hr. Which will you choose?

Just how skilled a writer are they going to get?

Yet another $5/1500 word article gig.