I’ve been freelancing as a science writer as a side hustle for about a year now. I started off charging around $20/h on Upwork. After paying their 30% fee and then setting aside another 30% for taxes, there wasn’t much leftover. Also my clients were often inexperienced and sometimes rather demanding/unprofessional.
After a few months I was getting a lot of gigs but not making that much money. So I decided to start gradually increasing my rates to see how high I could go without losing all my potential business. Most of my old clients couldn’t accommodate the higher rates, but I was quickly contacted by others who were more than willing to meet my price. I’m now up to $45/h and still getting plenty of work. Plus my clients are often larger companies that are more reliable and offer longer-term assignments. The work I’m doing now is more interesting to me and the money is actually enough to make a difference in my budget. I think the higher rates make me seem more confident in my skills so people are willing to pay for more my experience. Moral of the story is don’t under-sell yourself, you’re worth more than you think!
Edit: For those who are asking what exactly a science writer does, basically I’m helping companies write about science in a way that’s accurate and also understandable to a general audience. For example I did some work for one of the big genetic sequencing companies to explain some basic concepts on DNA and heredity. I’m a scientist as my day job so it fits in nicely with my expertise.
Submitted January 21, 2019 at 08:14PM by AlzScience http://bit.ly/2U4lV9G
